I feel like we could fix this problem with new terminology. We have words for many various events and stretches of the diurnal cycle: Dawn, sunrise, morning/forenoon, afternoon, sunset, and dusk, but nothing quite so definite for the night hours. I would certainly understand what it would mean if somebody said, “the evening of the 3rd into the wee hours of the 4th,” but those terms lack precision. Both foremidnight and aftermidnight would convey the meaning, but sound awkward.
Historically, I think it makes sense that we base the reckoning of a day on our natural photoperiod. Until the advent of artificial lighting, the night was a liminal period of time, and hardly anybody was awake and active to make dividing it up useful. I suppose we could change the rollover time to noon, but that divides up the sunlit period across different days. At least we already have words to use, and “the morning of January 1st” would be unambiguous, as would “the night of January 1st,” but counterintuitively, the morning of January 1st would occur after the afternoon. Making it some other time would just be just as arbitrary, and much more awkward. Sunrise, for instance, varies quite a bit throughout the year. (By about half an hour even at the equator, and by almost 5 1/2 hours in Oslo.) So, now does the sunrise on January 1st occur just after or just before the new day begins? What about places where the sun stays in the sky for longer than a clock-day during parts of the year?
But even from the historical perspective it doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they pick dawn as the natural starting point of the photoperiod? As you said, nobody was awake at night, so why did they choose a time when nobody was awake to make the differentiation on the date?
When you say “sunrise varies quite a bit”, that’s only from the perspective of a midnight-centric time measurement; sunrise wouldn’t vary, it’d be the start of the day by definition.
There are some issues with using dawn, but they wouldn’t be a concern historically and we have modern solutions;
Like days wouldn’t be exactly 24 hours, and dawn is affected not just by latitude but also geography.
But fundamentally it’s more satisfying if a calendar day is compromised of one single contiguous day and one contiguous night 😌
I feel like we could fix this problem with new terminology. We have words for many various events and stretches of the diurnal cycle: Dawn, sunrise, morning/forenoon, afternoon, sunset, and dusk, but nothing quite so definite for the night hours. I would certainly understand what it would mean if somebody said, “the evening of the 3rd into the wee hours of the 4th,” but those terms lack precision. Both foremidnight and aftermidnight would convey the meaning, but sound awkward.
Historically, I think it makes sense that we base the reckoning of a day on our natural photoperiod. Until the advent of artificial lighting, the night was a liminal period of time, and hardly anybody was awake and active to make dividing it up useful. I suppose we could change the rollover time to noon, but that divides up the sunlit period across different days. At least we already have words to use, and “the morning of January 1st” would be unambiguous, as would “the night of January 1st,” but counterintuitively, the morning of January 1st would occur after the afternoon. Making it some other time would just be just as arbitrary, and much more awkward. Sunrise, for instance, varies quite a bit throughout the year. (By about half an hour even at the equator, and by almost 5 1/2 hours in Oslo.) So, now does the sunrise on January 1st occur just after or just before the new day begins? What about places where the sun stays in the sky for longer than a clock-day during parts of the year?
Better to just agree on some new words, I think.
Maybe new words would fix it.
But even from the historical perspective it doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they pick dawn as the natural starting point of the photoperiod? As you said, nobody was awake at night, so why did they choose a time when nobody was awake to make the differentiation on the date?
When you say “sunrise varies quite a bit”, that’s only from the perspective of a midnight-centric time measurement; sunrise wouldn’t vary, it’d be the start of the day by definition.
There are some issues with using dawn, but they wouldn’t be a concern historically and we have modern solutions;
Like days wouldn’t be exactly 24 hours, and dawn is affected not just by latitude but also geography.
But fundamentally it’s more satisfying if a calendar day is compromised of one single contiguous day and one contiguous night 😌