Yes, but we could have decided as a civilization to count in base 12 just as we decided to measure things in the metric system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal, so that decimal (dozenal) shifts still work conveniently.
For the last 2000 years it seems no major civilization used base 12 or 60, almost everyone has been using base 10 and even those who didn't had opted for 20 instead of 12
Moving from decimal to duodecimal would involve a complete break for no practical benefit and at the cost of making interactions with every non adopter hellish
Moving from whatever you had before to metric was a minor break with the past but it was adopted in the first place because the status quo was already hellish
And in the parts of the world that already had a standardized system which they shared with most of their partners this process was already too much and we're still talking about metrication 2½ centuries later
I doubt we could've switched to base 12
In fact when the same people pushing for metric tried to force a decimal calendar (something which was widely standardized and for which the shift added no benefits) it failed badly
Well, except the obvious example of the time for which nobody seems to seriously want to move from base 60.
I was contemplating this the other day. We coders often bang on about the joy of base 16 as pure 2s but what makes 60 so useful is it has so many factors: 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30. It means you rarely need to split a minute when you’re dividing up time for everyday use.
> Yes, but we could have decided as a civilization to count in base 12 just as we decided to measure things in the metric system
But we did not, so it’s a moot point. The metric system succeeded because it fit easily with how people measured things and had some unarguable upsides (like replacing the ~20 different units of length all called “foot”). The metric system itself was not a great step into decimalisation, it was just the recognition that the number systems in used were decimal already. That’s why it was so easily adopted.
You can see it in the units that were not accepted and then all but disappeared: the time and angle units, for which the non-decimal units had practical advantages.
It took over a half-century (<=1801 to >=1858) to get France onto the metric system, Wikipedia estimates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metric_system. The systems it replaced were forgotten, but what cannot be doubted is that those "vernacular" systems were hyper-adapted to how ordinary people used measurements in daily life. It was the demands of state taxation and international trade, not the needs of common people, that promoted the creation and adoption of the metric system by legislative fiat.
> It took over a half-century (<=1801 to >=1858) to get France onto the metric system, Wikipedia estimates
Sure, these things never happen instantly. Some units remained in the daily language, like livre, pinte, sou (respectively pound, pint, and shilling). There was no internet at that time, and France went through 3 revolutions and quite a few regime changes. It never was a priority after Napoleon, as the restored monarchs tried to leave as much of the revolution behind them. The people saw the advantages of a consistent decimal system.
> The systems it replaced were forgotten, but what cannot be doubted is that those "vernacular" systems were hyper-adapted to how ordinary people used measurements in daily life.
We can very much doubt that they were optimal, otherwise they wouldn’t have ended with hundreds of small variations of common units. They evolved in isolation at times when consistency was not very relevant at best, or a tool for price gouging at worst. You cannot have that in a modern, integrated nation state such as what France was turning into after 1789.
> It was the demands of state taxation and international trade, not the needs of common people, that promoted the creation and adoption of the metric system by legislative fiat.
That is quite far from reality. It was created as a scientific and technological toy, and the logical conclusion of some Enlightenment ideas that were brewing before the revolution.
There were some propaganda aspects when they got a bunch of funding from the Convention to do some actual measurements, and Napoleon realised how useful it could be for administrative purposes. But the metric system did not just appear one day, ready to be used by bureaucrats. It was not designed by bureaucrats either, at least before the metre convention.
The bureaucrats would have been perfectly happy with a unified system based on the old units just like in the UK.
We really goofed as a society on that one. "But humans have ten fingers!" Well, we actually have 8 3-segment fingers and 2 thumbs, meaning you can count a dozen on one hand, and a gross on two, using thumbs as a cursor.
You can also form a set of 12 symbols that is visible from farther away by doing shapes similar to ASL:
1-4: fingers held up
5-8: touching tip of finger with thumb
9-12: touching top of 2nd phalanx with thumb.
Holding down the pinky in isolation is tricky so this kinda favors starting with pinky out as 1, but you could make assorted variants of this system work.
Fractions would be so nice to work with in "dozenal metric".
No, “we” “as a civilization” could not have decided anything. The “we” that you’re referring to, let’s call it “human civilization”, has never once decided on anything as a single entity, nor could it conceivably do so. To posit that it might is so naive as to be useless. Using the term “we” to refer to humanity at large is almost never a useful abstraction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numeral_systems#By_cul...
For the last 2000 years it seems no major civilization used base 12 or 60, almost everyone has been using base 10 and even those who didn't had opted for 20 instead of 12
Moving from decimal to duodecimal would involve a complete break for no practical benefit and at the cost of making interactions with every non adopter hellish
Moving from whatever you had before to metric was a minor break with the past but it was adopted in the first place because the status quo was already hellish
And in the parts of the world that already had a standardized system which they shared with most of their partners this process was already too much and we're still talking about metrication 2½ centuries later
I doubt we could've switched to base 12
In fact when the same people pushing for metric tried to force a decimal calendar (something which was widely standardized and for which the shift added no benefits) it failed badly