Theoretically Speaking

There is no theological content to this, I believe. But I was fascinated by the words used by this BBC writer.

"Theoretically the world should be divided into 24 equal time zones, in which each zone differs from the last by one hour"

Should be? That's a strange use of what I am informed is a modal auxiliary verb, whatever that means. It implies that the writer is an expert in time-zonology and has a god-like awareness of what is good for us. Which just happens to kind-of fit in with how we do things round here.

On what basis should we divide the world up like this? On the arbitrary one that we happen to have 24 hours in the day? And that our assumption is that, at the Equator, 6 am is the time the sun happens to rise and 12 is the number we use for mid-day and mid-night? I suppose this sentence may be sound, based on the "theoretically" at the front, which we could interpret to mean "in a theory". There are other alternatives, you see:

"Theoretically the world should all use Universal Time*. Then it would be the same time everywhere, and we'd all know what time it was all round the world."

"Theoretically the world should be divided in 127 randomly-sized time zones, some of which use different number bases."

"Theoretically the world should be divided into two very big time zones, one for the light side and one for the dark side."

"Theoretically the world should have 10 hours in the day, each of which has one time zone."

"Theoretically the world should have evenly graduated time zones so that 12 noon is midday - and exactly midday - wherever you happen to be."

Each of those has just as much validity as the BBC's statement. Which means that their use of the word "Theoretically" is meaningless. And their use of the word "should" is outrageous. I accuse them of cultural imperialism, for deciding how the world should divide up its time, and scientific illiteracy for assuming there is something inherent in the universe that says there should be 24 hours in the day.

I don't know why this niggles me as it does. But it's been a quiet day. I should probably get out more.