Positivist Calendar
The Positivist Calendar (also called Comte Calendar ) is a solar calendar proposed by Auguste Comte in 1849 to reform the Gregorian calendar . However, like other Comte designs, it never achieved wider distribution. The calendar was later reworked by Moses Cotsworth into the very similar International Perpetual Calendar .
The system of the positivist calendar
The calendar has 13 months of 28 days each plus a feast day in honor of the dead at the end of the year (13 × 28 + 1 = 365). This extra day is not assigned to a month or day of the week. In this way, the week and month can be synchronized, which means that every month basically starts with a Monday. Comte took over the idea of interrupting the weekly cycle with an extra day from Marco Mastrofini, who in 1834 published a calendar project that is now known as the world calendar .
| Mon | Tuesday | Wed | do | Fr. | Sat | So |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th |
| 8th | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14th |
| 15th | 16 | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th | 21st |
| 22nd | 23 | 24 | 25th | 26th | 27 | 28 |
In addition to the common year with 365 days, the calendar provides for a leap year with an additional extra day at the end of the year, which should be dedicated to the memory of female saints. The beginning of the year and the switching rule agree with those of the Gregorian calendar. However, the Christian year counting should be replaced by a positivist one: Year 1 ( epoch ) should be the Christian year 1789, in which the French Revolution began.
The months of the positivist calendar were named after famous personalities and annually go through world history under continuous thematic setting - a world history that leads to scientification:
| Name ( French ) | Namesake | Gregorian calendar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginning | The End | |||
| 1 | Moise | Moses | January 1st | January 28th |
| 2 | Homère | Homer | January 29th | February 25 |
| 3 | Aristote | Aristotle | February 26th | 25th March |
| 4th | Archimedes | Archimedes | 26th of March | April 22 |
| 5 | César | Julius Caesar | April 23 | May 19th |
| 6th | Saint-Paul | Apostle Paul | May 20th | 17th of June |
| 7th | Charlemagne | Charlemagne | 18th of June | 15th of July |
| 8th | Dante | Dante Alighieri | 16th of July | 12. August |
| 9 | Guttemberg | Johannes Gutenberg | 13 August | the 9th of September |
| 10 | Shakespeare | William Shakespeare | September 10 | October 7th |
| 11 | Descartes | René Descartes | 8th October | November 4th |
| 12 | Frédéric | Frederick the Great | November 5th | 2. December |
| 13 | Bichat | MFX Bichat | 3rd of December | 30th of December |
| Jour blanc | Remembrance Day | December 31 | ||
In leap years, the months from Archimedes to Bichat begin one day earlier than the Gregorian calendar, the day of remembrance is on December 30th and the leap day on December 31st.
In addition to the usual weekday names, the positivist calendar also features special day names based on a total of 364 greats in history favored by Comte, an idea that he adopted from Maréchal's calendar design from 1787 . Apparently this was supposed to replace the day saints of the Catholic Church .
Advantages and disadvantages
A major advantage of the calendar is that all months are structured the same, both in terms of their length and the assignment of the days of the week. So week and month are in phase. The calendar is thus structured extremely clearly. In addition, monthly events - for example the payment of salaries - could take place regularly. Year-independent calendars are possible.
The opponents of the calendar design criticize, among other things, its ideological basis, which is expressed in the name of the month, and the indivisibility of the number of months 13. This makes it impossible to divide the year into statistically meaningful sections such as half-years or quarters. Integrating the traditional seasons into the calendar is also difficult. The interruption of the weekly cycle is not acceptable for Judaism , Christianity and Islam .
Ultimately, the deletion of a total of 30 traditional daily calendar dates causes acceptance problems. Many anniversaries such as national holidays would be eliminated.
Effects of the calendar
Except in positivist circles, the calendar was never used in practice. In the 1930s, as a slightly modified International Perpetual Calendar (IFC), it temporarily received greater attention.
The differences to the IFC consist on the one hand in the choice of month names (the IFC uses - with the exception of the month of Sol - the classic month names, while the months of the positivist calendar are named after famous personalities from antiquity to the 19th century) others in the placement of the leap day: in the IFC, the leap day follows June, in the positivist calendar on New Year's Day.