Rigel Kent

To understand how calendrical matters were handled by the Shang 商 Chinese. It is important to learn to count numbers in modulo 60 . The reason for their preference of modulo 60 is not exactly known, probably the ancestors of the Shang Chinese shared a similar set of extrasomatic knowledge with the ancestors of the Babylonians when they were still in North Africa . The current norm of handling the grouping of days is to use modulo 7: \(L\) Day count Name of the day 1 Day 1 Monday 2 Day 2 Tuesday 3 Day 3 Wednesday 4 Day 4 Thursday 5 Day 5 Friday 6 Day 6 Saturday 7 Day 7 Sunday The ancient Chinese, however, used several different styles to count their day ...

《甲骨文合集》里面有一块编号19780的牛胛骨是这么写的: 丙辰卜，丁巳其阴乎？允阴。 这一句释文的白话大概可以是这样：在第53天问卜：明天是阴天吗？果然，第54天是阴天。 当被问到明天会不会是阴天，问卜者会把问题，也就是： "丙辰卜，丁巳其阴乎" 刻在牛肩胛骨上，把胛骨拿去火烤，然后再分析火烤后骨上出现的裂纹，以此推算出明天的天气。 两千年的商朝人就是这样作天气预测的。现代人固然会用复杂的偏微分方程来描述并预测天气，但是用其数学模型计算的结果也未必准确。这是因为大气动力学是混沌数学的一种。