waybread
Staff member
DC80, re: your 2nd post:
Again, I think it is important to avoid a presentist interpretation of the past.
I have a lot of admiration for Otto Neugebauer, Joanne Conman's critique notwithstanding.
As a man of his era (b. 1899) with a mathematics professorship at a prestigious New England university, of course Neugebauer could not publicly embrace astrology. Academics embracing the practice of astrology (vs. its history, role in culture) even today are extremely rare (outside of the University of Wales cultural astronomy program.) But no astrology-hater is going to sift through every single ancient horoscope available, and then calculate all of the planetary positions by hand (in the days before computer programs did this,) and then conclude that ancient astrologers actually got the astronomy right.
They are not mighty in numbers, but their are/were a few astrologers who prefer the mathematical side of the discipline, not the chart interpretation. Sadly he's no longer with us, but Ed Falis, who was on the Astrodienst forum, and who was an engineer by education (at Stanford U.) was really good at the astrological mathematics, A very active publisher today is classicist Alexander Jones at NYU.
It's OK to dislike the term "parts" in preference for "lots." But both are in common usage, which will probably not change. I wonder if "parts" is a more direct translation from the Arabic, but I wouldn't know.
Just for fun (crazy, I know) I once actually calculated the Valens charts worked out by Neugebauer and Van Hoessen, and then compared them with Valens's character descriptions. One thing I learned was that Valens calculated Fortuna by sign, not by degree. I also thought Neugebauer might have been out by a day, but perhaps there was some more recent precession going on that I didn't account for.
I'm sorry you couldn't find the charts I mentioned several years ago. I'm not inclined to try to hunt them down now.
My calling this thread a Valens-Ptolemy cage match was completely tongue-in-cheek. I admire both of those ancient authors. Both tried to systematize an astrology that even 2000 years ago was a morass of disparate materials. They went about it differently; and as others have noted, it's not clear whether Valens and Ptolemy even knew one another.
Ptolemy has his share of citations. Much of what we know about Hipparchus comes from Ptolemy. Then Valens was super-critical of Petosiris, who spoke in "mystic riddles."
I don't follow your point about Valens vs. jyotish astrology, but perhaps I don't need to . My understanding ( cf. David Pingree) that a lot of Hellenistic astrology diffused to India by way of Persia, but the much older layer of lunar mansions was a Hindu contribution.
I don't see the point in calling Persian astrology "silly." My feeling is that the history of astrology is fascinating without having to make presentist condemnations about parts that bother us. I mean, speaking as a Woman Of A Certain Age, I'm bothered by a lot of the sexism written into past astrologies, but I don't see the point in insulting it.
Ptolemy did no "damage" that bothers me. If we don't like parts of his textbook, we get to ignore them For example, his material on the astrology of national character.
What the Ptolemy detractors often overlook are Ptolemy's other contributions to astrology, outside of chart interpretation. His Handy Tables were an early ephemeris. Ptolemy's Geography is a compendium of the latitude and longitude coordinates of every place in the known world. Good luck with calculating a chart by hand without an ephemeris or the known coordinates of the native's birth location.
The successful entrance of Tetrabiblos into medieval Europe was a huge reason why astrology became mainstreamed into the major (Catholic) European universities. We owe Mr. Pt something for getting astrology into the quadrivium as a required university subject.
Yes, Ptolemy made mistakes, but for Pete's sake: we're talking about the 2nd century CE.
Valens did really, really good work, but he did call his work Anthologies and it shows. For example, look up the places where he gives the thematic meanings of the houses. There are several of them in different places in the text and they're not identical.
Anyway, your vote on the winner of the Valens-Ptolemy cage match is duly noted!
Again, I think it is important to avoid a presentist interpretation of the past.
I have a lot of admiration for Otto Neugebauer, Joanne Conman's critique notwithstanding.
As a man of his era (b. 1899) with a mathematics professorship at a prestigious New England university, of course Neugebauer could not publicly embrace astrology. Academics embracing the practice of astrology (vs. its history, role in culture) even today are extremely rare (outside of the University of Wales cultural astronomy program.) But no astrology-hater is going to sift through every single ancient horoscope available, and then calculate all of the planetary positions by hand (in the days before computer programs did this,) and then conclude that ancient astrologers actually got the astronomy right.
They are not mighty in numbers, but their are/were a few astrologers who prefer the mathematical side of the discipline, not the chart interpretation. Sadly he's no longer with us, but Ed Falis, who was on the Astrodienst forum, and who was an engineer by education (at Stanford U.) was really good at the astrological mathematics, A very active publisher today is classicist Alexander Jones at NYU.
It's OK to dislike the term "parts" in preference for "lots." But both are in common usage, which will probably not change. I wonder if "parts" is a more direct translation from the Arabic, but I wouldn't know.
Just for fun (crazy, I know) I once actually calculated the Valens charts worked out by Neugebauer and Van Hoessen, and then compared them with Valens's character descriptions. One thing I learned was that Valens calculated Fortuna by sign, not by degree. I also thought Neugebauer might have been out by a day, but perhaps there was some more recent precession going on that I didn't account for.
I'm sorry you couldn't find the charts I mentioned several years ago. I'm not inclined to try to hunt them down now.
My calling this thread a Valens-Ptolemy cage match was completely tongue-in-cheek. I admire both of those ancient authors. Both tried to systematize an astrology that even 2000 years ago was a morass of disparate materials. They went about it differently; and as others have noted, it's not clear whether Valens and Ptolemy even knew one another.
Ptolemy has his share of citations. Much of what we know about Hipparchus comes from Ptolemy. Then Valens was super-critical of Petosiris, who spoke in "mystic riddles."
I don't follow your point about Valens vs. jyotish astrology, but perhaps I don't need to . My understanding ( cf. David Pingree) that a lot of Hellenistic astrology diffused to India by way of Persia, but the much older layer of lunar mansions was a Hindu contribution.
I don't see the point in calling Persian astrology "silly." My feeling is that the history of astrology is fascinating without having to make presentist condemnations about parts that bother us. I mean, speaking as a Woman Of A Certain Age, I'm bothered by a lot of the sexism written into past astrologies, but I don't see the point in insulting it.
Ptolemy did no "damage" that bothers me. If we don't like parts of his textbook, we get to ignore them For example, his material on the astrology of national character.
What the Ptolemy detractors often overlook are Ptolemy's other contributions to astrology, outside of chart interpretation. His Handy Tables were an early ephemeris. Ptolemy's Geography is a compendium of the latitude and longitude coordinates of every place in the known world. Good luck with calculating a chart by hand without an ephemeris or the known coordinates of the native's birth location.
The successful entrance of Tetrabiblos into medieval Europe was a huge reason why astrology became mainstreamed into the major (Catholic) European universities. We owe Mr. Pt something for getting astrology into the quadrivium as a required university subject.
Yes, Ptolemy made mistakes, but for Pete's sake: we're talking about the 2nd century CE.
Valens did really, really good work, but he did call his work Anthologies and it shows. For example, look up the places where he gives the thematic meanings of the houses. There are several of them in different places in the text and they're not identical.
Anyway, your vote on the winner of the Valens-Ptolemy cage match is duly noted!