The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

The Zodiac diagrams themselves are rather unusual for European astrology, because each sign i divided into 30 degrees of arc, 360 in total -- instead of 30/31 days, 365 in total.  That conception was not unknown in Europe; but what is (AFAIK) quite unusual is the division of two signs into halves of 15 degrees.  On the other hand, both of those features are familiar in Chinese astrology.

Everything we're disagreeing about funnels into the claims here, and I find this unpersuasive from three sides.

From underneath, I think it is held up by the assumption that the divisions of the Zodiac signs into halves is meant to convey a systematic "half sign". This strikes me as less than obvious. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is that the longest entries are the two that are split, coming in more than twice as long as the more "typical" entry. If we assume a meaningful text, as we both do, and that the text is the only source of meaning, as you do, this is more conservatively read as an indication that the scribe duplicated Zodiacs so as to have enough space to contain the longer entries. There would be 15 degrees in each half for the mundane reason that that is what happens if you distribute them between two diagrams. As such, I don't take the search for a 15-degree unit to be all that urgent.

But you do, and the foregoing doesn't rule out a systemic unit, so let's look at your claim that there isn't one from the European side. In fact, European astrology does have a dedicated "half sign", and it is far from obscure---it is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Sometimes the signs were fitted to the unequal hour, but the equal hour is defined such that each one passes through 15 degrees and divides each sign of the zodiac. It was well-established, having been known in Europe since Ptolemy, and had gained renewed currency and interest as clocks proliferated. It could be and was defined in a way that split a zodiac sign in two as exactly 15 degrees. A diagram of the equal hours on the ecliptic plane divides it into 15 degree wedges in the familiar way. I'm also given to understand the degrees appear like a known, named tradition of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and that the 30 degree lists find precedent there. The divided signs are odd, granted, but we can place their 30 degree totals with stars and labels in a European context.

The last point in particular is relevant to the Chinese side, where I have perhaps not expressed my hang-up with the degrees clearly enough. Wikipedia's description of the distance between solar terms is accurate, but it does not constitute a period-accurate Chinese construction. As mentioned, a circle was divided into 365.25 degrees, so a Chinese scholar attempting to advance between solar terms would not measure 15 degrees, nor would he naturally divide a previously constructed pair of solar terms into 15 natural units. In order to place or read off the Western degrees on the Voynich diagrams, they must first be intellectually constructed as Western degrees units in and of themselves. The work by Stevenson details how little impact contact with the 360-degree defintion of the circle had up to the 1600s, so it is extremely unlikely a Chinese source or informant was the one to construct them. What, in a 15th Century Chinese context, do we suppose these labels on these degrees represent? You (imo correctly) reject the natural Chinese interpretation of them as days, after all.

Look at it in the bigger picture here. The main line of evidence for solar terms is a fundamentally foreign description of solar terms, the same description natively works in Europe to describe the equal hour in the Alps in the 1420s, and the argument for searching for that unit is quite ambiguous in the first place. Likewise, the practice of associating stars with the degrees of the signs does not need a foreign explanation, and one is not forthcoming from a culture that rejected those degrees.

In short, the "problem" of a 15-degree unit seems neither urgent nor unsolvable with European tools, and considering a solar term as a 15-degree unit raises questions about how "Chinese" the proposed solution actually is.