Dionysius's legacy has provided little 

 but trouble. First of all, he didn't even get 

 the date right, for Herod died in 750 a.u.c. 

 Therefore, if Jesus and Herod overlapped 

 (and the Gospels will have to be drasti- 

 cally revised if they did not), then Jesus 

 must have been bom in 4 B.C. or earlier — 

 thus granting the bearer of time's title sev- 

 eral years of life before the inception of his 

 own era! 



But Dennis's, misdate of Jesus counts as 

 a mere peccadillo compared with the con- 

 sequences of his second bad decision. He 

 started time again on the eighth day of 

 Jesus' life, January 1, 754 A.u.c. — and, get 

 this, he called the date January 1 of a.d. 1 

 (Anno Domini, or, "yeai" of the Lord"). 



In short, Dennis neglected to begin his 

 new time with year zero, thus discombob- 

 ulating all our usual notions of counting. 

 During the year that Jesus was one year 

 old (by Dennis's state of reckoning), the 

 time system that supposedly started with 

 his birth was two years old. (Babies are 

 zero years old until their first birthday; 

 modem time was already one year old at 

 its inception.) The absence of a year zero 

 also means that we cannot calculate alge- 

 braically (without making a correction) 

 through the b.c.-a.d. transition. The time 

 from 1.5 B.C. to a.d. 1.5 is one year, not 

 three year's. 



The problem of centuries also arises 

 from this peculiarity — and for no other 

 reason. If we insist that all decades must 

 have ten years, and all centuries one hun- 

 dred years, then year 10 belongs to the first 

 decade — and, sad to say, year 100 must re- 

 main in the first century. Thenceforward, 

 the issue never goes away. Every year with 

 a '00 must count as the hundredth and 

 final year of its century — no matter what 

 common sensibility might prefer. The year 

 2000 must complete the twentieth cen- 

 tury — and not launch the next millennium. 

 Or so the pure logic of Dennis's system 

 dictates. If our shortsighted monk had 

 only begun with a year zero, then logic and 

 sensibility would coincide, and the wild 

 millennial bells could ring forth but once 

 and resoundingly at the beginning of Jan- 

 uary 1, 2000. But he didn't. 



Since logic and sensibility both have le- 

 gitimate claims upon our decision, the 

 great and recurring debate about century 

 boundaries simply cannot be resolved. 

 The logic of Dionysius's arbitrary system 

 dictates one result — that centuries change 

 between '00 and "01 years. Common sen- 

 sibility leads us to the opposite conclu- 

 sion: we want to match transitions with the 

 extent or intensity of apparent sensual 



change, and 1999 to 2000 just looks more 

 definitive than 2000 to 2001 , so we set our 

 millennial boundary at the change in all 

 four positions, rather than the mere incre- 

 ment of one to the last position. (I refer to 

 this position as "common sensibility" 

 rather than "common sense" because sup- 

 port invokes issues of aesthetics and feel- 

 ing rather than logical reasoning.) 



One might argue that humans, as crea- 

 tures of reason, should be willing to subju- 

 gate sensibility for logic; but we are, just 

 as much, creatures of feeling. And so the 

 debate has progressed at every go-round. 

 Hillel Schwaitz, for example, cites two let- 

 ters to newspapers, written from the camp 

 of common sensibility in 1900: "I defy the 

 most bigoted precisian to work up an en- 

 thusiasm over the year 1901, when we will 

 already have had twelve month's experi- 

 ence of the 1900s." "The centurial figures 

 are the symbol, and the only symbol, of the 

 centuries. Once every hundred years there 

 is a change in the symbol, and this great 

 secular event is of startling prominence. 

 What more natural than to bring the cen- 

 tury into harmony with its only visible 

 mark?" 



I do so love human foibles; what else 

 can keep us laughing (as we must) in this 

 vale of tears. The more trivial an issue, and 

 the more unresolvable, so does the heat of 

 debate and the assurance of absolute right- 

 eousness intensify on each side (just con- 

 sider professorial arguments over parking 

 places at university lots). The same clamor 

 arises every hundred years. An English 

 participant in the debate of 1800 versus 

 1801 wrote of "the idle controversy, which 

 has of late convulsed so many brains, re- 

 specting the commencement of the current 

 century." On January 1, 1801, a poem in 

 the Connecticut Courant pronounced a 

 plague on both houses (but sided with 

 Dionysius): 



Precisely twelve o'clock last night. 

 The Eighteenth Century took its flight. 

 Full many a calculating head 

 Has rack'd its brain, its ink has shed. 

 To prove by metaphysics fine 

 A hundred means by ninety-nine; 

 While at their wisdom others wonder'd 

 But took one more to make a hundred. 



The same smugness reappeared a cen- 

 tury later. The New York Tunes, with antic- 

 ipatory diplomacy, wrote in 1 896: 



As the present century draws to its close we 

 see looming not very far ahead the vener- 

 able dispute which reappears every hundred 

 years — viz: When does the next century 

 begin?... There can be no doubt that one 



person may hold that the next century be- 

 gins on the Istof Januaiy, 1900, and another 

 that it begins on the 1st of January, 1901, 

 and yet both of them be in full possession of 

 their faculties. 



But a German commentator remarked: 



In my life I have seen many people do battle 

 over many things, but over few things with 

 such fanaticism as over the academic ques- 

 tion of when the century would end. . . . Each 

 of the two parties produced for its side the 

 trickiest of calculations and maintained at 

 the same time that it was the simplest matter 

 in the world, one that any child should un- 

 derstand. 



You ask where I stand? Well, publicly 

 of course I take no position because, as I 

 have just stated, the issue is unresolv- 

 able — for each side has a fully consistent 

 argument within the confines of different 

 but equally defensible systems. But pri- 

 vately, just between you and me, well, let's 

 put it this way: I know a young man with 

 severe cognitive limits as a result of inborn 

 mental handicaps, but who happens to be a 

 prodigy in day-date calculation (he can in- 

 stantaneously give the day of the week for 

 any date, thousands of years past or future; 

 we used to call such people idiot savants, a 

 term now happily fading from use, al- 

 though I have no love for its euphemistic 

 substitute, "savant syndrome"). I asked 

 him recently whether the millennium 

 comes in 2000 or 2001 — and he re- 

 sponded unhesitatingly, "In 2000. The first 

 decade had only nine years." 



What an elegant solution, and why not? 

 After all, no one then living had any idea 

 whether they were toiling in year zero or 

 year one — or whether their first decade 

 had nine or ten years, their first century 

 ninety-nine or a hundred. The system 

 wasn't invented until the sixth century and 

 wasn't generally accepted in Europe until 

 the eleventh century. So why don't we just 

 proclaim that the first century had ninety- 

 nine years? Centuries can then turn when 

 common sensibility desires, and we under- 

 score Dionysius's blessed arbitrariness 

 with a caprice, a device of our own that 

 marries the warring camps. Neat, except 

 that I think people want to argue passion- 

 ately about trivial unresolvabilities — lest 

 they be compelled to invest such rambunc- 

 tious energy in real battles that might kill 

 somebody. So be it. 



What else might we salvage from re- 

 heai'sing the history of a debate without an 

 answer? Ironically, such arguments con- 

 tain the possibility for a precious sociolog- 

 ical insight: since no answer can arise 

 from the "externalities" of nature or logic, 



Natural History 4/94 



