17-02-2017, 02:10 AM
David
I think anyone who takes the time and trouble to try understanding the imagery deserves our good wishes. Part of the problem of course is that rather than seeing such efforts as an effort to correctly understand the imagery, we tend to presume that it's a comprehensive "theory" and, dismissing what we've decided to call a "theory" we dismiss everything about it.
I don't necessarily believe that Martínez Rojas has got it right, but I'm dam' sure that Schmeh's facile and ill-informed assertions aren't backed up by much reading - not of the history of astronomy, or of medieval or earlier history, or even of the secondary writings available to us.
In fact, I could find only two of his assertions - expressed with quite remarkable self-confidence though they were - which weren't plainly and demonstrably either untrue or based on guesswork, and mostly other peoples' guesswork at that.
As example, there isn't a shred of proof for the constant assertion that the astronomical diagrams are connected with astrological ideas or calculations. This depends on a series of fairly flimsy assumptions: first that the central emblems represent a sub-set of the 12 constellations according to the habit of Latins. And it doesn't. Building on the first assumption, flawed as it is, a second - that the figures being imagined those 12 constellations, they may be termed a 'zodiac' (which they do not form), and then by an enormous failure of logic that if they represent those month-marking constellations that their purpose must relate to the superstitions and mathematics of astrology.
By comparison with the sloppy logic of that 'theory' Martínez Rojas efforts to at least read something relevant deserves respect.
(I'm thinking of changing my membership tag to senum severiorum)
I think anyone who takes the time and trouble to try understanding the imagery deserves our good wishes. Part of the problem of course is that rather than seeing such efforts as an effort to correctly understand the imagery, we tend to presume that it's a comprehensive "theory" and, dismissing what we've decided to call a "theory" we dismiss everything about it.
I don't necessarily believe that Martínez Rojas has got it right, but I'm dam' sure that Schmeh's facile and ill-informed assertions aren't backed up by much reading - not of the history of astronomy, or of medieval or earlier history, or even of the secondary writings available to us.
In fact, I could find only two of his assertions - expressed with quite remarkable self-confidence though they were - which weren't plainly and demonstrably either untrue or based on guesswork, and mostly other peoples' guesswork at that.
As example, there isn't a shred of proof for the constant assertion that the astronomical diagrams are connected with astrological ideas or calculations. This depends on a series of fairly flimsy assumptions: first that the central emblems represent a sub-set of the 12 constellations according to the habit of Latins. And it doesn't. Building on the first assumption, flawed as it is, a second - that the figures being imagined those 12 constellations, they may be termed a 'zodiac' (which they do not form), and then by an enormous failure of logic that if they represent those month-marking constellations that their purpose must relate to the superstitions and mathematics of astrology.
By comparison with the sloppy logic of that 'theory' Martínez Rojas efforts to at least read something relevant deserves respect.
(I'm thinking of changing my membership tag to senum severiorum)