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The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

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• The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > Today, 02:24 AM

  (Today, 12:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  Quote:the entire idea of dividing the ecliptic with 24 evenly spaced solar terms didn't exist yet

   
  You are quite wrong. The 24 solar terms were defined sometime around 100 BCE. 

  From the Wikipedia page you linked to make this point some months ago:
  

  Quote:The modern definition using ecliptic longitudes, introduced by the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., is known as dìngqì fǎ (定氣法; 'steady term method'). Under this method, the determination of solar terms is similar to the astronomical determination of the special cases of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. dates, with different ecliptic longitudes to solve for. One can start with an approximation and then perform a correction using the anomalies and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of the sun.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be used to query for exact times of solar terms.
  
  The older method, called the píngqì fǎ (平氣法; 'equal term method'), simply divides the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. into 24 equal parts.

  Shixian calendar was made in collaboration with the Jesuits and relies on Keplerian mechanics; the solar terms were still uneven in 1400. (Unironically, I think time travelling Jesuits would be really cool.)
  
  

  (Today, 12:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No, I could not find any source that claimed that people did know what that phrase meant, in 1400 CE or any time later.  Did you?

  I mean, it was written in a language every literate person in the empire knew. That doesn't preclude thorny passages, but the presumption in face of the lack of evidence to the contrary is that it was perfectly understandable. I do not understand this need to constantly mystify Classical Chinese.
  
  

  (Today, 12:15 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Scribes, scholars, and students in the Middle Ages would often copy books that they did not understand. 
  
  Archaeologists still often copy inscriptions that they do not understand.
  
  Linguists often write down stories told by natives in languages that they do not understand.
  
  Why do they do it?

  Okay, do any of these result in "bringing knowledge of Chinese medicine back to Europe" because it would not seem so to me. I don't understand why you are posing your theory to me as a riddle, either!

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > Today, 07:22 AM

  (Today, 02:24 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote='Jorge_Stolfi' pid='91546' dateline='1790032535']
  

  Quote:the entire idea of dividing the ecliptic with 24 evenly spaced solar terms didn't exist yet

   
  You are quite wrong. The 24 solar terms were defined sometime around 100 BCE. 

  From the Wikipedia page you linked to make this point some months ago:
  

  Quote:The older method, called the píngqì fǎ (平氣法; 'equal term method'), simply divides the tropical year into 24 equal parts.

• Reply to @JoJo_Jost

  Jorge_Stolfi > Today, 09:58 AM

  (Today, 06:30 AM)JoJo_Jost Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The problem, however, is that this approach allows you to retroactively label any “disturbing” form as an error. In this way, almost any finding can be dismissed.

  
  Not so much, because the errors must be plausible.  

  • Errors that were incurred by the Author while taking dictation should be mostly omission of a phoneme (glyph of diglyph), replacement of a phoneme by another with a similar sound, or undue duplication of a glyph that can be duplicated (like writing cheedy for chedy or daiiin for daiin).
    
  • Errors made by the Author when rewriting and editing his dictation notes could additionally be sequence errors like skipping a line, or omitting or repeating a string of one or more words. They could also include substitution of a letter by a letter that had a similar shape in his own handwriting (like an s by an r, or a iin by a ir) or accidental omission or truncation of a stroke (like turning y into a or o, Sh into Ch, or Ch into ee).
    
  • Errors by the Scribe when copying the Author's draft to vellum could be all of the above; but the confusion of letters with similar shape may have been be much more frequent.  The Scribe may have also omitted many spaces or inserted many bogus ones.
    
  • Errors by the Global Retracer should be mostly omission of strokes or glyphs that had completely faded away (like turning a t into a k, or a d into an s), or mutation of glyphs into other glyphs or weirdos with roughly similar shape (like turning an a into an ei, or a Ch into an Ih).
    
  • Errors by the modern transcribers should mostly be incorrect guessing of glyphs with ambiguous shapes (like halfway between r and s, or between a and o), omission of spaces, or transcription of bogus spaces.
    

  This list may seem rather large, but it is in fact a very small subset of the set of all theoretically possible errors.   For instance, it does not let the person making some claim to shrug with "dictation or scribal error" if the text has a t where his claim implies should be an o (since the word structure models strongly imply that t and o are very different phonemes), or has chedy chedy where his claim says that there should be a daiin.
  
  Here is another way of stating your objection above: Since it is possible that 5% or more of the VMS tokens and spaces are erroneous, one should not attach much significance to any statistical peculiarity that could be a consequence of those errors.
  
  

  Quote:But I do realize that these sh/ch structures I’m pointing out here at least have the theoretical potential to call your Chinese theory into question.

  
  I do not see that yet.   As I wrote, your numbers are saying that some Voynichese tokens that begin with Sh or Ch are often followed by some tokens that start with qo (more often than what would be expected if each token was chosen independently of the preceding one.)  
  
  But that is not incompatible with the Chinese Origin theory (that the text of the VMS is a phonetic transcription of a text in some East Asian monosyllabic language).  On the contrary, the COT predicts that there will be several "remote effects" like that one.
  
  I have not checked, but I am assuming that in Shakespeare's Hamlet a token that begins with "th" is often followed by one that begins with "i", more often than expected by chance.  Would that be evidence that the text of Hamlet is not in a natural language? 
  
  

  Quote:in the REVA analysis (Eva reverse), this phenomenon ... doesn’t occur at the token level here, but within words and when read backward, it sort of dissolves.

  
  I don't get it.  It you reverse the glyph order in each token, the same "remote influence" effect should still be there: namely, a token that ends with -Sh or -Ch should often be followed by a token that ends in -oq.  
  
  And if you also reverse the order of the tokens in each line or parag, you will probably find that a token that ends in -oq will often be followed by a token that ends in -Sh or -Ch. Isn't that the case?
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  eggyk > Today, 09:59 AM

  (Today, 07:22 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The older method, called the píngqì fǎ (平氣法; 'equal term method'), simply divides the tropical year into 24 equal parts.

  
  As far as I can tell from a look online, the older system did not divide the ecliptic into 24 equal parts. It divided the year into 24 parts of just over 15 days each. 
  
  But this doesn't really change that much with regards to that fact that there was a 24 * ~15 system.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > Today, 11:52 AM

  (Today, 09:59 AM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As far as I can tell from a look online, the older system did not divide the ecliptic into 24 equal parts. It divided the year into 24 parts of just over 15 days each. 
  
  But this doesn't really change that much with regards to that fact that there was a 24 * ~15 system.

  
  Exactly.  I previously retracted the claim that the VMS "things" (label+star+nymph groups) are Babylonian degrees (which would have implied a division of the Ecliptic rather than the year). 
  
  I have also suspended the claim that the Chinese explicitly divided every solar term interval into 15 parts (which would each be a 365.25/369 = ~1.01458 days, and would be the meaning of the VMS "things"), because I could not find a detailed description of the system that could have said so.  Maybe @chenxiang can help me find it?
  
  All the best, --stolfi
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