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The criterion for calendric failure is simple the authorities responsible for selecting a calendar recognize that a calendar is not working and replace it. In the modern cases known, the failed calendar replaced an existing calendar for political reasons for a brief period of time, was found wanting for practical reasons, and was replaced in its turn by the pre-existing calendar (Gregorian in both cases). |
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A calendar is, as I have observed before, primarily a social contract, not a scientific instrument. A calendar must serve the needs of the people who use it. A new calendar must possess some clear and enduring advantage, for some social purpose which is important in the context of the society, over an existing calendar, in order for it to be adopted permanently. The advantage, whatever it may be, must be powerful enough to overcome the innate conservatism of humans regarding time, and its keeping. |
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With regard to the French Revolution, the reform of time was part of the process of rationalization of units of measurement, which proved to be one of the enduring legacies of that revolution. From it came the metric system and, more importantly, a modern mindset. Prior to that revolution, weights and measures varied from region to region and even from town to town. Names for the measures varied as well, and the coinage with which it was all paid was hopelessly muddled. This situation was accepted as normal at the time. The modern mind regards such a situation as quaint and intolerable. |
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Yet the calendar and clock reforms, which were considered an integral part of the metric system, did not survive. In fact, they are the notable failures in a system which has otherwise been accepted successfully, and without violent revolution, virtually all over the globe. |
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In considering the effects of political revolutions in general, Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution (pp. 243244) remarks, ''It is in the social arrangements that most intimately and immediately touch the average man that the actual changes effected by our revolutions seem slightest. The grand attempts at reform during the crisis period try to alter John Jones' relations with his wife, his children, try to give him a new religion, new personal habits. The Thermidoreans abandon most of this attempt, and in the end John Jones stands on certain matters about where he stood when the revolution began." |
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It is significant that Brinton's classic work on revolutions never once mentions the calendar reforms of either the French or Russian revolutions. Yet it is difficult to imagine a more complete revolution than one that successfully changes a people's notions about time. |
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The FRC was both a technical and social failure. The technical failure is perhaps less explicable. Given the stature of scientists such as two of the authors, Laplace and Lagrange, their desire to implement the latest and most modern results of rational science must have overcome their understanding that the date of equinox cannot be fixed by rule. Certainly, nationalistic sentiment was allowed to dominate scientific reasoning in the choice of epoch. |
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