I just ran across a new use of "secular" in a physics text: secular equilibrium. I won't go into the physics, but my question is what is the fundamental meaning of the word "secular"? By the way, the complement to secular equilibrium is transient equilibrium, rather than ecclesiatical equilibrium. I suppose to achieve ecclesiatical equilibrium you would need two bishops of equal mass astride a see-saw (at equal distances from the fulcrum of course).
saeculum -i n. [a generation; the spirit of the age , the times; a hundred years, a century, an age].
Now I'm more confused than ever. What does that have to do with being different from ecclesiastical?
What does that have to do with being different from ecclesiastical?
The Church, being an adjunct of the Holy, is outside the influence of time.
Or something like that.
And that's different nor.
In reply to:
And that's different nor.
Huh?
>is outside the influence of time.
so... ectochronic?
Dear Faldage: your "different nor" would make a nice rectal suppository for you.
adj. I. Of or pertaining to the world.
1. Eccl. a. Of members of the clergy: Living ‘in the world’ and not in monastic seclusion, as distinguished from ‘regular’ and ‘religious’. secular canon: see canon n.2 secular abbot: a person not a monk, who had the title and part of the revenues, but not the functions of an abbot.
In early use frequently placed after the n., as canon secular, priest secular.
b. Of or pertaining to secular clergy.
2. a. Belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the church and religion; civil, lay, temporal. Chiefly used as a negative term, with the meaning non-ecclesiastical, non-religious, or non-sacred.
†b. transf. Of or belonging to the ‘common’ or ‘unlearned’ people. Obs.
c. Of literature, history, art (esp. music), hence of writers or artists: Not concerned with or devoted to the service of religion; not sacred; profane. Also of buildings, etc., Not dedicated to religious uses.
d. Of education, instruction; Relating to non-religious subjects. (In modern use often implying the exclusion of religious teaching from education, or from the education provided at the public expense.) Of a school: That gives secular education.
3. a. Of or belonging to the present or visible world as distinguished from the eternal or spiritual world; temporal, worldly. Also secular-minded adj.
b. Caring for the present world only; unspiritual. rare.
¶4. Used for: Pertaining to or accepting the doctrine of secularism; secularistic.
secular societies: the designation given to associations formed in various English towns from 1852 onwards to promote the spread of secularist opinions.
II. Of or belonging to an age or long period.
5. Occurring or celebrated once in an age, century, or very long period. secular games, plays, shows [L. ludi sæculares]: in ancient Rome, games continuing three days and three nights celebrated once in an ‘age’ or period of 120 years. secular poem [L. carmen sæculare], a hymn composed to be sung at the secular games.
6. Living or lasting for an age or ages. Now chiefly with reminiscence of the scientific sense 7. Also (of trees, etc., after F. séculaire), centuries old.
7. In scientific use, of processes of change: Having a period of enormous length; continuing through long ages. a. Astr. Chiefly of changes in the orbits or the periods of revolution of the planets, as in secular acceleration, equation, inequality, variation. The terms secular acceleration, secular variation were formerly also used (with reference to the sense ‘century’ of L. sæculum) for the amount of change per 100 years; similarly †secular precession (see quot. 1812). secular equation is also used more widely to designate any equation of the form |aij-bijk| = 0 (i,j = 1,2, . . ., n), in which the left-hand side is a determinant and which arises in quantum mechanics.
1801 Monthly Rev. XXXV. 537 M. De La Place+found the secular equation of the moon to be due to the action of the sun on the moon. 1812 Woodhouse Astron. ix. 63 The secular precession, that is, the accumulated precessions of 100 years. 1812–16 Playfair Nat. Phil. (1819) II. 275 In the orbit of Mars, the eccentricity is diminishing. The secular variation of the greatest equation of the centre is—37". 1834 M. Somerville Connex. Phys. Sci. iii. (1849) 16 Secular inequalities. 1862 Cayley Math. Papers (1890) III. 522 On the Secular Acceleration of the Moon's Mean Motion. 1937 E. C. Kemble Fund. Princ. Quantum Mech. x. 361 Its components must yield a nontrivial (i.e., nonvanishing) solution of the set of g equations Rn(Amn - admn)xn = 0.+ Such a solution exists only if the determinant of the coefficients vanishes, i.e., if a is a root of the so-called ‘secular’ equation det (A - aI) = +0. 1974 Gill & Willis Pericyclic Reactions i. 21 To obtain the wave functions corresponding to these energies it is necessary to solve the secular equations using the appropriate values of E.
b. Geol., Physical Geogr., Meteorol., etc.
1833 Lyell Princ. Geol. Gloss., Secular Refrigeration, the periodical cooling and consolidation of the globe, from a supposed original state of fluidity from heat. 1856 Kane Arct. Expl. I. xxiii. 308 A secular elevation of the coastline. 1861 Tyndall Fragm. Sci. xiii. (1871) 399 The earth's magnetic constituents are gradually changing their distribution. This change is very slow; it is technically called the secular change. 1867 H. Macmillan Bible Teach. xvi. (1870) 320 Those grand secular tides which have punctually recurred every ten thousand years. 1872 I True Vine v. 176 The earth has its secular seasons as well as its annual. 1880 Haughton Phys. Geog. ii. 53 The contraction of the globe due to secular cooling. 1887 Abercromby Weather 312 Annual and Secular Variations.
so... secular equilibrium is that established over a loooong time period, as opposed to transient equilibrium.
Take two ASpirin® and see me in the morning.
Dear Faldage: Since I am retired, I don't make house visits. Did you forget to take the tinfoil off the rectal suppository?
Dear Faldage: I take 80 mgm acetylsalicylic acid q AM, Allegedly reduces risk of myocardial infarction, and also cancer of colon. But I used to get adverse reaction from usual doses. Can't understand why 80 mgm does not cause symptoms. So give your assburn to someone else.
This is getting a little too serious for something as ridiculous as different nor. I'm leaving this arena while I've still got toes to get sand between.
But once you leave the arena, there is no sand to get between your toes.
Mi arena me gusta en la playa.
As a Carmelite Secular maybe I can help here. Secular means "in the world" as opposed to cloistered, "religious," etc. For instance, in my Discalced Carmelite Order, there are three memberships: the friars and nuns, both of which are "religious" and the lay, third order, or secular (all mean the same thing), which are not "religious" and do not live in community but live out the charism of the order "in the world." So in ecclesiastical language, secular means of or in the world.
Interesting aside: in the Gloria, "in saecula saeculorum" is said in the English western version as "world without end." I believe Byzantines translate it as "unto ages of ages."
what is the charism of the order in the world? How does it express itself in your life?
do you have a vocation to teach, or be a nurse? I was a catholic, but no almost nothing about the Carmelites--aside from Our Lady of Mount Carmel church (bronx)-- and that most carmelites are cloistered. (As distinct from semi cloistered order-- like the ursalines. Semi cloistered orders limit their time out of the convent, and never travel alone. and what is the term for non cloistered orders? there are orders that have fewer restrictions on movement.. and nuns can live in groups out side a convent proper.. i remember meeting some nun who where missionaries --to a school in the south bronx. they had a small apartment in the nieghborhood, and lived quietely, but not in a convent.
Did you forget to take the tinfoil off?Dr. Bill, my Dad's a pharmacist, and one of his all-time favorite stories is about a guy who came in complaining about the suppositories he just purchased, said they didn't work, and that, what's more, they were just adding
immensely to his pain and discomfort. And my Dad said, "Well, did you take the foil off?" and the guy said, "What foil?"
I'm NOT making this up!
and my colleagues who were staying in France, where normal pain killers are often supplied as suppositories as opposed to UK where they are little known. Luckily, it did their baby no harm to have them put in the wrong end. I think they only found out when a French neighbour saw them doing it.
Rod
Dear WO'N: My father had such a patient. He also had a patient who took them orally, and complained "For all the good they did me, I might just as well have shoved them up "where the sun never shines."
Speaking of patients taking medications the wrong way. One holiday when several other interns were out sick and I was ;having to cover for them, I had to see a teenage girl who was a private patient, who was being discharged with a vaginal douche of some horribly corrosive stuff. I asked her if she knew how it was to be used, and she said she did. Because I was in a hurry, I did not ask her to repeat the instructions. She went home and drank some of it. Mirabile dictu, she did not get a stricture of the esophagus. There is a special Providence.
I know 2 brothers, born a year apart, who have several siblings much older than they. Their mother and my mother are friends, and when I was older my mom confided in me that they were both prety much "mistakes," although they were much beloved mistakes. What happened was, "the pill" became available, so their parents switched to that form of birth control. Their father was on the road a lot, and their mother mistakenly thought that she only had to take the pill when her husband was in town. So she got pregnant not once, but twice, based on this misconception (what punishing humor!) about how the drug was to be used. And presumably her physician explained it to her. If not then he should have to help change the diapers.
Another birth control pill story: I have a good friend who is very bright, now a medical student but at the time a Ph D candidate in biochemistry. She was not sexually active, but she was prescribed birth control pills for severe mentrual cramps. The prescription came in packages with numbered pills in a cycle to help one keep track of the correct dose. She received her package on the 5th day of the calender month, so the first night she thought it was a good idea to take 5 pills at once so that her pill package corresponded to the calender. Well she got a whopping dose of estrogen and was sick as stink the next morning.