The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

I am quite sure Etiel is misinformed here. Star charts continued to be updated after the Han and at the time he was writing Chinese astronomers had been reading Ptolemy, Kepler, and Newton for more than a century. I just checked the source of this quote, and in that book Eitel also says the Chinese Zodiac is a collection of asterisms, which is wildly incorrect, but at least explains why he thought the signs had failed to account for precession. Now, I do believe he was interviewing astrologers and trying to relay their beliefs in good faith, and if you read the quote with that in mind, I do buy that 1800s astrologers and most people you talked to in China did not have the faintest idea what precession was. (I also don't think, in that context, the quote backs Hean-Tatt's extremely heterodox argument, but that's neither here nor there)