While in recent decades it's been possible to develop a credible reconstruction of the mechanism's working, open questions include exactly who built it, when, how many similar devices were made, and exactly what its function was.
In effect, it's an analog clock- and calendar-like device that predicts astronomical events with great precision. In contemporary terms, it "models" the functions of the visible universe and, among many other things, mechanically accounts for the slightly elliptical orbit of the moon.
For my purposes as a neo-Scholastic, it illustrates the ancient idea that the universe is governed by order. I read that Cicero, in De Natura Deorum, mentions what may be a similar device, something I need to investigate in greater depth.
It also occurred to me that my interest in the device was kindled on the same weekend as the US change to Daylight Saving Time, an idea first widely implemented by the Central Powers in 1916 during the First World War to increase the efficiency of war production. In more recent years, people have begun to ask exactly why we see the need to keep shifting the clocks back and forth, when the cost of doing this probably exceeds the benefits obtained.
But a bigger question for me in terms of the Antikythera Mechanism is why the government sees fit to fuss with the natural order of the hours. Whatever the cost-benefit, the actual subtext is probably more accurately expressed in saying the government can change how we see the natural order by fiat. Gain an hour in the fall, lose one in the spring because the government tells us to. "They'd change the days of the week if they could get away with it," I muttered to my wife on the way to church yesterday.'
And there are no accidents. The main enforcers of the semiannual clock changes have been the churches, who faithfully remind us of the semiannual shift in the natural order on the Sundays preceding, because they're the ones who'll lose the most if the faithful don't show up punctually just hours after the time change. There are no accidents.
But then I began to think about who benefits from chaos overall. From the standpoint of families and organizations, it's the people with hidden personal agendas who benefit from chaos. And then I began to think about Anglicanorum coetibus. By its nature, it was going to introduce some measure of chaos and unpredictability to a certain segment of generally Catholic-friendly Protestants. And the overall history of the movement, from 1977 onward, his been largely chaotic, and its grand old men, Frs Barker and Phillips, have been figures who promoted chaos at critical points.
My own experience at st Mary of the Angels was that the prospect of entering the newly erected North American ordinariate was an excruciating two years of chaos that benefited only a few people with hidden personal agendas. The development of the organization in Houston has been chaos as well, with a current sense, given the bishop's indisposition, that nobody's in charge and there's an ongoing power struggle over next to nothing.
Oder in the Church should reflect the order of the heavens. Anglicanorum coetibus hasn't done a thing to promote this.
