We all agree that the seasons follow each other: spring comes after winter, summer after spring, then fall, then winter again. We're also familiar with a sense of uncertainty about the transitional periods. After Monday's cold weather I thought, "Fall has definitely begun." But what on earth did I mean? Fall began when the calendar said so, which is also to say with the arrival of autumnal equinox, didn't it? And if it didn't, then I was probably wrong on Monday, because Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were beautifully warm, even if leaves in striking yellows and reds were everywhere on the ground.
My question is simply whether season transform one into another or replace each other (or both). Are they sets of astronomical conditions? Atmospheric conditions? Subjective human experiences? And again strangely – from the perspective of philosophy of language – they seem to ride a line between proper nouns and common ones.
Autumn, Winter, Spring – Summer subsists on them all then lends back her warmth.
Dude ... you live in upstate New York and you are waffling in October over whether you've got fall? What is WRONG with this planet?
ReplyDelete[Insert climate change rant here]
As I am most familiar (and mulish) about Michigan weather, allow me to repeat some of my favorite weather-related aphorisms:
"In Michigan we have two seasons: Winter and Construction."
"In Michigan we don't have a Spring. We have Summer days in March and Winter days in May, but there's no Spring--just mud."
Seasons aren't astronomical conditions. They're closer to being ... feelings. Certainly people project themselves onto the seasons shamelessly. Seasons are relics, in one sense, of a time when harvests affected the daily life patterns of the general populace. In another sense, seasons may be only gaining influence on human (self-) understanding--"spring cleaning," "spring fever," "seasonal affective disorder." (Okay, maybe the former two terms *are* significantly older ...)
Fall begins when you feel the change. Or when some consensus of people around you does?