Humanities desk
< April 14	<< Mar \| April \| May >>	April 16 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 15[edit]

Objections to death by stoning and "human rights"[edit]

Are the human-rights-based objections to death by stoning made by the same people who live in countries that do not have stoning? In the stoning article, it seems that there are Muslims from Mediterranean and Central Asian countries who support stoning to a lesser extent than Muslims from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asian countries. Then, there are the "Human Rights organizations" that oppose stoning, because they perceive it's against "human rights". But Amnesty International is based in the United Kingdom, and Human Rights Watch is based in New York. Both places have a significant amount of Christians and secular humanists who may have different values to begin with. What is "human rights" based on? And why do the opponents seem to think that the "human rights" can't be stripped away after a grave moral wrong? If human rights can be stripped away after a grave moral wrong, then wouldn't stoning for adultery be justified? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Adultery by itself is not grave enough to stone someone for. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:50, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's a cultural/Biblical/historical peculiarity that in the history of Christian nations there have been many harsh and cruel punishments, but stoning has very rarely been included among them, due to the Bible verse usually numbered John 8:7 (though there's some doubt whether it was originally located in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John -- see Jesus and the woman taken in adultery)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:13, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some points:

1) There's generally a ban on painful punishment in the West. In the US, that's covered by the "cruel" part of the ban on "cruel and unusual" punishments.

2) Sharia law, where stoning is often the punishment, seems heavily biased towards men. For example, if an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, she is assumed to be guilty of adultery, even if she claimed to be raped. Thus, they are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. Women's testimony also often counts for less than men's. Thus, stoning is a method of oppressing women.

3) Stoning may also be the punishment for apostasy, and this is a direct attack on freedom of religion. Stoning a person for voicing an objection to a religious leader is also a violation of freedom of speech and/or freedom of the press.

4) Many in the West object to any form of execution. One reason is how it can be used to silence dissent.StuRat (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same OP that talked about people "refusing to die."[1] I'm surprised an Ohioan would have such radical, anti-life views. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International oppose all forms of the death penalty. As does the Council of Europe [2], the Pope [3], the Dalai Lama [4], and basically every philosopher and moral authority more civilized than Jack the Ripper. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:24, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So, essentially, there is a clash of values between Christians, Buddhists, and secular humanists and Muslims in specific countries. And the former group believes that it is more civilized than the latter group. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 02:34, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be wrong to blame religion for horrific death penalties. Many cultures in the ancient world regularly practiced truly horrific death penalties. Cruel methods of treating criminals and just accused criminals (and basically anyone else society disliked) were common in the western world until the concept of human rights began to be established in the enlightenment, over a millennium after Christianity became the most common religion in that world. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, cruelty had nothing to do with any particular religion at all. Christians came up with hanged, drawn, and quartered and auto da fe. --Jayron 32 03:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So, people during the Enlightenment thought that cruelty cannot be applied to wrongdoers. I wonder what led to this conclusion or a shift in thinking. I mean, surely people thought differently about justice in ancient times than in modern times, didn't they? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In ancient times they also thought that the Sun circles the Earth, that thunderstorms are a sign of Zeus' displeasure, and that slavery is ok as long as it's "the others" that are enslaved. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not talking about absolute truth. I am talking about perception. Ancient people probably believed in the geocentric model of the universe, because the world just looked that way, until Copernicus observed it and proved it with sufficient evidence. Ancient people, on the other hand, had limited evidence. Hence, limited conclusions. Ancient people probably thought the thunderstorms were a sign of Zeus' displeasure, because it looked that way, until someone suggested a more natural explanation for the phenomenon of thunderstorms. Surely, people viewed the world differently than people do so today, and thus, they believed that slavery was justified. Life was tough. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You could describe it as a shifting standard (still shifting) of who deserves your empathy. Who do you consider a person? If you were an ancient Greek, other Greeks are people, at least some of them. Barbarians don't deserve any rights though, they are slaves because their kings own them. Criminals and prisoners of war don't deserve rights or empathy either, for some reason. In the antebellum south, blacks are not real people, at least not to the degree of whites, because they are mentally inferior, and you would be defective to offer them your empathy. Enlightenment thinkers were an aberration in proposing that everyone deserved empathy: men, women, children, criminals, the insane, and people of other cultures. This debate goes on today. Should you empathize with animals? All animals, or just the cute ones? Just the smart ones? Fetuses? A person who empathized with a tree would be considered delusional, and a person who empathized with no one would be considered a psychopath. The truth is that everyone is selective with who or what they empathize with, and everyone thinks they have it right, and plenty of people are kind of stunned that not everyone agrees. There are cultures today that would think you kind of batshit to feel bad about the death of a dog. But generally, society has been moving toward more inclusive degrees of empathy. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You know, you do have a point. I notice that nowadays, there are vegans who believe that all animals are sentient and should not be exploited. Though, how does one distinguish plant sentience and the sentience of a relatively simple animal, like an earthworm? Plants seem to be just as sophisticated as animals. Do they deserve empathy as well and thus killing them is wrong? Now what? Humans should photosynthesize as the ultimate way to end cruelty for all life? I think all of this is subjective, as empathy is subjective and caused by mirror neurons. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 04:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is fruit (including tomatoes), which is meant to be eaten to spread the seeds. And milking a cow doesn't harm it. Taking unfertilized eggs from a hen may also be morally acceptable. Vegetables are more of a challenge, although even Jains don't consider it immoral to eat plants: "Jains make efforts not to injure plants any more than necessary. Although they admit that plants must be destroyed for the sake of food, they accept such violence only as much as it is necessary for human survival. Strict Jains, including monastics, do not eat root vegetables such as potatoes, onions and garlic because tiny organisms are injured when the plant is pulled up, and because a bulb or tuber's ability to sprout is seen as characteristic of a living being". StuRat (talk) 13:48, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You try to persuade that view to every human on the planet. I'm sure some people will agree with that view, and some people will disagree, based on varying levels of empathy. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For once, I agree. It's a clash of values between civilisation and barbarism, not between different religions. Per Noam Chomsky: The death penalty is an abomination that should not be tolerated in civilized societies. Most religions have been used to excuse barbarism at one time or another. The Ku Klux Clan swears to "uphold Christian morality". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 03:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the "values of barbarism" are really the values of the primitive Man. Maybe ancient people were more animal-like and fought like animals. They had no concept of human rights or cruelty. They fought like animals, because they were animals. Then, something happened culturally, which made humans "civilized", whatever that's supposed to mean. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 03:27, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Enlightenment. StuRat (talk) 03:43, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There was a good deal of civilisation before the 18th century Enlightenment, and a good deal of barbarism afterwards, but it was certainly a leap forward in the right direction. Alansplodge (talk) 07:37, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the "good deal of barbarism" exists, because people extend empathy to all humans or those that are sufficiently close in the phylogenetic tree to elicit an empathetic response from their mirror neurons. If a human can photosynthesize and empathesize with plants, then he'll probably think that eating or hurting plants, like mowing the lawn, counts as "an act of barbarism". Realistically, there are psychopaths who fail to empathesize, and this characteristic has been a very maladaptive trait for them. It would be nice if everyone's mirror neurons would fire identically. That way, all humans will not disagree about moral questions anymore. 50.4.236.254 (talk) 12:45, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not to change the subject here, but I think humans still hide their capacity for cruelty and destruction behind a rather thin veneer of civilization. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have had two world wars, with the concept of total war and associated war crimes, massive destructions in the Mexican Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Turkish War of Independence, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War, and various other conflicts, internal persecutions or political, religious, sexual, and cultural minorities by numerous regimes, state terrorism operations like the Dirty War, and armed insurgencies in almost every continent. I think people are looking for an opportunity to release their inner sadist and killer, using the ideology of the day as an excuse. I sincerely doubt that humans are more civilized now or more reluctant to kill than they were a few centuries ago. Dimadick (talk) 10:01, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Modern day liberalism and social democracy[edit]

What's the difference between a liberal(in the modern sense) and a social democrat?Uncle dan is home (talk) 04:08, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see, theoretically, social democracy is based on the idea of income redistribution. Theoretically, social liberalism is not founded on the idea of redistribution of income and wealth, but that state should intervene in the fields of education and healthcare. Social liberals are fine with income inequality, they emphasize equality of opportunity. On the other hand, social democrats believe in equality of outcome, and strive to achieve an egalitarian society through income redistribution. It is the idea of income redistribution that differentiates social democracy from social liberalism. --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 06:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, social liberals sought "cooperation between big business, government and labor unions" and they currently still occupy the center position in the political spectrum. Social democrats still support capitalism, but they are more closely associated with the labour movement and trade unions. They are in support of the rights of workers to collectively negotiate for better compensation and working conditions. Whether they qualify as centrists or leftists is questionable, but they are not revolutionaries and are not looking for major changes in status quo. Dimadick (talk) 15:48, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Modern day liberals are really neoliberals whose primary political motivation is to allow rich people to amass more wealth without the need to consider whether their actions are shitty to other people, and especially without the government checking up on them to prevent them from being shitty to other people. See This article from about a year ago explaining the situation. Social democracy is really about the state acting as a guardian against non-government powers from infringing on the rights of those with less power. Liberalism, especially as practiced under "neoliberalism", is about removing the government's ability to restrict those non-government powers. --Jayron 32 15:58, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

taxi from Chicago to Louisville[edit]

Any idea how much it would cost to take a taxi from Chicago to Louisville (about 300 miles)? If you went to the cab line at O'Hare out of the blue and asked to go to Louisville, would they be at all likely to decline the trip assuming you were willing/able to pay the fare? In case it isn't obvious, I'm wondering if this strategy (with 4 taxis) might have avoided the United Airlines beatdown that's been in the news. Fwiw I knew a cab driver who once made a personal trip from Michigan to New York with the meter running (just for the hell of it--he didn't have to actually pay the fare). 50.0.136.56 (talk) 07:06, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A taxi would be a terrible way to go. For trip outside the taxi's normal range, they will typically require you to pay for both the trip there and the trip back. Arranging for 4 taxis, assuming none have to go far outside their normal operating area, would cut that price in half, but would be a huge hassle. So if you wanted to do a single taxi 300 miles, the going rate in Chicago is $2.25 a mile, you are looking at a $1350 bill that you will likely have to pay in advance. A typical private car in Chicago, however, is $66 an hour. Let's figure the same rule, they ask you to pay for the car's return, and the round trip takes 10 hours, that's $660. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:25, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That helps. Is a private car something you can flag down at the airport? In the above picture I'm presuming that the airline is paying either way, so it's more about saving drama and hassle than money. They offered everyone on the plane $800 to get off the plane and they got no takers, so they booted 4 of them (one of them screaming). $1350 doesn't sound that bad in retrospect. Why would it cut in half from 4 taxis? I expect Louisville is outside the operating area whether there's 1 or 4. The private car option is interesting and I hadn't heard of it before. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 07:56, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, when you said 4 taxis, I thought you meant some kind of daisy chain of taxis, ferrying the one passenger to his destination in four legs. Never mind that then. You typically can't flag down a private car, you just call the company and arrange one to show up. Someguy1221 (talk) 17:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They should have kept upping the offer until they got takers. This might be expensive, but it's the price of overbooking. I'm not clear on why they had too many people on the plane to seat the crew, either. Do they not count the people going in, and stop them when it's full ? Going over by 4 implies they screwed up badly. Also, the way to cure the problem of unused seats is to sell standby tickets. Those people understand they may not get on the plane. To me, overbooking regular seats is just fraud, selling more of something than you actually have. StuRat (talk) 14:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The plane wasn't overbooked: they had a seat for everyone who bought a ticket. Then they bumped 4 passengers to board 4 airline personnel who were scheduled to be part of a flight crew flying out of Louisville the next day. The obvious thing to do would have been put those airline personnel in taxis or on Greyhound, but maybe they would have gotten a union grievance over that. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 01:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would call that overbooking, in that those 4 seats should have been reserved for those 4 crew members. Not doing so was a big screw-up on the part of the airline, and their customers should not be punished for their mistakes. Also, if they didn't have room on any of their flights, they could put their crew on a competitor's plane. StuRat (talk) 15:08, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Overbooking (actual term overselling) has a specific legal meaning and there are a lot of regulations around it. It means more tickets were sold than there are seats on the plane. If this happens they are allowed to deny boarding to the excess passengers, in a legally prescribed order of priority: in particular, people with confirmed reserved seats get on first, and various other groups get in only if there are still seats left. More particularly, airline employees don't appear to have any special exemption from this and (at least according to someone on Reddit claiming to be a lawyer) the airline broke the law by booting those passengers in favor of their employees. I suppose this will be examined further in the likely forthcoming litigation. It does look to me like news reports are coming closer to this viewpoint, having started out much more like airline apologists. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 20:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An alternate option, although not guaranteed, is Greyhound; buses between Chicago and Louisville run several times per day (the route is very simple and convenient), and there's not a huge extra price for buying a ticket for "today". If you want Monday's bus from Chicago, it's about $30, but if you want the bus that leaves 2½ hours from now, it's about $40. The biggest risk is that they might be sold out already, so you wouldn't be able to get any seats. Nyttend (talk) 09:26, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If they're sold out, just tell some moonlighting cops to haul four passengers off. - Nunh-huh 04:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Better you should rent a car and drive it yourself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would have been cheaper for United to hire a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce with an on-board butler, than the gazillions of dollars they've lost through bad publicity. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Alansplodge (talk) 12:02, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A few years ago I asked a taxi in DC "how much to New York City?" (about 240 miles). He asked me where in NYC (like a 20-35 mile wide city matters that much for a mental calculation) I told him what borough, he thought for awhile then nonchalantly said 600 dollars. My curiosity abated, I took the bus home. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The location in NYC could make a disproportionate diff, as far as time spent, especially if you hit NYC during rush hour. StuRat (talk) 14:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This question is clearly about the person who was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight by a security team to make room for a flight crew that had to be in another airport for that flight to take off on time. The clear solution if not enough passengers volunteer to get off the plane is to first try offering some serious money, and if that doesn't work to put the crew in a small charter plane, of which every airport has many, ready to be hired. In fact, AA almost certainly owns a few, some of which may already be at that airport. That gets the crew exactly where you want them to be with no question about traffic jams delaying them. As for costs, UA Lost a billion dollars in market value after doing that,[5][6] and three cops are now on administrative leave.[7] --Guy Macon (talk) 19:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it seems the OP is worried about getting dragged off the plane. The victim in the recent case needed to fly to his destination in order to arrive in time for appointments. If the OP is talking about driving, he's clearly not in a big hurry, so he could take the money and run (or drive). No need to be dragged off. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:44, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also the flight that the flight crew was being flown on wasn't til the next day. The incident with the guy getting dragged off was at around 5:20pm iirc, so the crew could have travelled all sorts of ways. Taxi was just an example of something that's always available at airports if you're willing to pay enough. Fwiw, Delta just increased its max compensation for bumped passengers to around $10K, which surely would have gotten some takers on that UAL flight. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 02:57, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Remember though the crew need to not only arrive on time, but need to be sufficiently well rested in the opinion of United Airlines to function on the flight. I don't know and frankly don't really care about the details of the United Airlines case but the question will be not just whether they will make it in time, but whether United Airlines considers they will be sufficiently well rested. Traveling as passengers on aircraft seems to be accepted, as enabling sufficient rest, either before or after. Traveling ~500km on a bus or taxi, even as the sole passenger, I have no idea. Notably if the assumption was they needed to rest over night, a midnight arrival may be different from a 7pm one depending again on what time they're expected to be up the next morning. (I believe the flight concerned was delayed over the incident, so I'm not sure how this ended up affecting things.) Practically I've heard some horror stories about what pilots and other flight crew sometimes do when they're supposed to be sleeping and so how much sleep they sometimes get before they start working. But that sort of thing is hard to police unlike requirements for arrival times etc. As mentioned above there may also be contractual details about how the crew are expected to travel. Nil Einne (talk) 04:34, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They had a much easier option, which was not to stop the bidding at a paltry $1000. How much would it have cost them to cancel the Louisville–SFO flight? Divide that by the four seats they needed, and keep bidding till they got there. I bet they would have easily gotten four volunteers at $2500 a piece. --Trovatore (talk) 04:51, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's already been stated, several times. Of course as also said, these things are also only clear with the benefit of hindsight as to how wrongs things went. Nil Einne (talk) 05:16, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nil re "need to be sufficiently well rested", yeah, that was why I suggested 4 taxis (1 per person), so they could get some sleep during the trip. But for some reason until checking later, I had thought that the incident had been late at night. The idea of paying higher compensation to the passengers may have been too alien a concept to the company beancounters to think of it at the time, but surely United has enough clue about logistics to realize it had other ways to get its flight crew to its destination. And there's also the matter of the crappy organization it must have taken to not have the crew there ahead of time. There was a post someplace blaming the chaos on the layers of nested outsourced organizations that ended up with the responsibilities of moving around all the people and stuff on the ground for the airline. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 06:18, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding (from the East side of the Pond) is that the four staff weren't even employees of United Airlines, but of another company with which they had a mutual arrangement, and I too immediately wondered why they couldn't have sent them by a small chartered plane instead. Too far outside the box, I suppose.

As has emerged from media discussion about this case, many or most airlines routinely over-book seats because, statistically, about 5% of passengers don't turn up for their booked flight. Allowing for these no-shows increases economy (conversely, not doing so would result in more expensive tickets, more flights and the resulting pollution, etc.) but inevitably some flights will still have spare seats and some will have an excess of booked passengers.

Airlines' routine (escalating) offers of compensation plus a guaranteed seat on a later flight evidently mop up most of the bumped travellers without angst, but usually it involves not letting excess passengers on the plane, as 50.0.136.56 said above – UA's own regulations actually forbid bumping a correctly booked passenger once they're already in their seat, and doing so by brutal force cannot in any circumstance be acceptable. I suspect most of the world's airlines will be urgently updating their procedures to ensure this sort of clusterfuck never happens again. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.217.249.244 (talk) 02:44, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Biographies of mayors that I should use as reference?[edit]

Hi, I'm a returning contributor to Wikipedia - I used another account (User:Will Xiu) before. Anyhow, I want to update João Doria up to recent development since he became the new mayor. The portuguese one is a good start, I think, but I want some references from the en-Wikipedia too. Any suggestions? Tetizeraz (talk) 15:51, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your question! Wikipedia celebrates curiosity. We are sorry that you haven't received a reply, but these reference desks are staffed by volunteers. Apparently, none of our current staff feel they have the expertise or knowledge to answer your question.

You may find answers elsewhere. One excellent resource is a real-life reference desk, staffed by professional librarians. There may be one in your area, often at a central branch of a public library system. In addition, your national library (e.g. the British Library) may allow online reference requests. An alternative is the New York Public Library's ASK service, which operates by text-chat and telephone. Here's a news article explaining how they work, which describes them as a "human Google".

Please feel free to ask us another question in the future, or indeed to re-post your original question (perhaps re-wording it) after a week or so, as there may be a different set of volunteer editors reading the page then. We apologize for not being able to help you at this time.Carbon Caryatid (talk) 11:57, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's comprehensive information at pt:João Doria Junior. You might like to transfer some of the information over as you suggest. I doubt that you will find anything as comprehensive on this wiki. 92.13.136.102 (talk) 14:30, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Centuries[edit]

Our article 1st century, for example, says it spans AD 1-100. Similarly, 19th century, for instance, says "1 January 1801 – 31 December 1900" instead of 1 January 1901 as the century's end. Since all of these yield 99 years and not exactly a century, and considering there's no year 0, why there's no offset to compensate, so that the 1st century would span 1-101 instead of 1-100 and so on? Thanks.212.180.235.46 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:52, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You forget that the period from January 1st in year 1 to December 31st in year 101 would be a hundred and one years. Dbfirs 19:59, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"1 January 1801 – 31 December 1900" is 100 years, not 99. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:01, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically from 0 hundred hours (the midnight at the start of Jan 1) to 2400 (the midnight at the end of Dec 31). StuRat (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many otherwise intelligent people celebrated the start of the Second Millennium on 1 January 2000 instead of 1 January 2001 (okay, I was one of them, but one can't party alone). Alansplodge (talk) 22:17, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Millennia are like buses - you wait a thousand years for one, then two come along at once. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 23:09, 15 April 2017 (UTC) [reply]

True fact: The trains that stop at the world's largest museum of natural history (disputed) are BC. The AD trains rocket by, faster than the BC trains ever go. They skip stops till Columbus Circle. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See also the interesting Roman concept of a saeculum which originally meant a division of time that passed when the last person who was alive at a certain time died. We could say that with the passing of Emma Morano a saeculum has passed, and the new one will end when the last person alive the day she died passes. This word eventually became the Romance word for century in an often vague sense; French siècle, fin de siècle; Spanish siglo de oro. In English we might rather use age for these meanings, with century being more exact. μηδείς (talk) 04:16, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is of course our word "secular" which originally meant "pertaining to a century" then came to mean simply "long - term" (the meaning it still has in astronomy) and finally "non - religious". Saeculae saeculorum in the Roman liturgy is translated into English as "throughout all ages." 92.13.136.102 (talk) 14:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bit off, and one can't explain older terms based on newer uses. "Saecularis" meant "pertaining to an age, a generation, a period of time" not specifically to a century. (A century simply means 100 whatevers, and we use the word now in English as meaning a "century (like a score, e.g.) of years"

The modern contrast of secular versus ecclesiastical comes from the fact that secular powers (governments) are limited in time and space while the Church is catholic (universal) and eternal.

Also, saeculum saeculorum is a hamfisted translation of an obscure Greek phrase, and it does not mean "forever" in the Latin sense of semper. Rather, the phrase is a gloss of doxa eis tous aionas ton aionon. Aeon can be translated as "saeculum", but the original Greek is a Gnostic formulation not found in the original four Gospels or in the Lord's Prayer. Rather, the "doxology" is based on the notion of the Aion (Gnostic) which are powers that emanate from God in Gnostic cosmology. The phrase would be better translated as "the glory of the Powers of Powers" than the third hand "forever and ever".[8] See also The Other Bible for the doctrine(s) of the Aeons. μηδείς (talk) 20:22, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Doxa" (δόξα) in modern Greek still means glory, fame, renown, and praise. See the following online dictionary: https://el.glosbe.com/el/en/δόξα

Aeon (αἰών) had the meaning of lifetime or generation in the works of Homer. In modern Greek, "αιώνας" means "century". When accompanied with a number, it gives which century "Εικοστός αιώνας/20ος αιώνας" means 20th century. See: https://glosbe.com/el/en/αιώνας

The derivative term αιώνιος (aionios) means eternal, everlasting, perpetual, undying, immortal, and unending. See: http://www.wordreference.com/gren/αιώνιος

Most of the terms have additional meanings in the Greek language. Christianity and the Gnostics were borrowing older terms. Dimadick (talk) 16:25, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]