Time Discipline and The Natural World
In societies based around agriculture, hunting, and other pursuits that involve human interaction with the natural world, time discipline is a matter governed by astronomical and biological factors. Specific times of day or seasons of the year are defined by reference to these factors, and measured, to the extent that they need measuring, by observation. Different peoples' needs with respect to these things mean sharply differing cultural perceptions of time. For example, it surprises many non-Muslims that the Islamic calendar is entirely lunar and makes no reference at all to the seasons; the desert-dwelling Arabs who devised it were nomads rather than agriculturalists, and a calendar that made no reference to the seasons was no inconvenience for most of them.
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Famous quotes containing the words time, discipline, natural and/or world:
“The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person,
videlicet, in a love-cause.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
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—Stephanie Martson (20th century)