Topocentric House system

"The Topocentric House System This system is a refinement of the Placidus House System. This system was not derived theoretically. It was developed in Argentina by Wendel Polich and A. P. Nelson page who studied the events in the life of a person who had a precise time of birth. This system works in all places."

http://www.serenapowers.com/westernastrology.html

I like this post by Micheal. I did some research myself on this house system. The Topocentric house system was discovered and not constructed and because of this it is held to be the most accurate system objectively. To explain with an analogy, Topocentric can be compare to gravity.
Gravity just is. It wasn't constructed or invented. It was discovered, like the topocentric house system. We know that both gravity and topocentric exist independently of experience and human beings because they can be both experienced and measured. No other house system is like this. All other systems are constructed on theories where the evidence of the house system is dependent on people who essentially made it up and can only be experienced based on it's own construction.
Topocentric house system is supported by a fundamental law and fundamental laws are held to be true based on certain accuracy. Remember objectivity.
The reason(s) one might give against this house system and what I just said will be based on personal experiences and emotions, subjectivity. Measurements cannot be based on opinions though because math is universal. For example, some guy named Ron says he likes the Koch house system because it places his Moon in the 4th house and that portrays his personality better. Ron is allowed to believe what he wants. There is nothing wrong with granting him this. But one problem is that many people do not agree with Ron. Another example and yet another problem is that Sarah likes a different system, the whole house system for the same type of reasons. And again not everyone agrees with the results.So anybody can go on a whim and pick whatever house system they want? No, because an orange in not an apple. Both house systems cannot be correct.
It isn't anyone's personal decision to choose a house system just like it isn't anyone's personal decision to choose gravity. There is a lack of possibility to be an arbitrator in this manner.
This is not an argument because it's not logically impossible to contradict. Anyone who tries to contradict this house system must not believe in gravity. Which of course is not correct.

The Equal House System The oldest and most popular system, the Equal House system, dates back to 3000 BC. The Ascendant marks the cusp (beginning) of the First House and the Descendant the cusp of the Seventh House. The rest is divided into 12 equal houses, hence the name. The beauty of this system is its mathematical simplicity. The drawback is that the cusps of the Fourth and Tenth Houses usually do not coincide with the Midheaven and the IC as in other systems.

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I notice there was no mention of whole sign, which was aruond the same time as Equal. I'm sure this will have a few on here 'hot under the collar'

jamescondor said:

This is not an argument because it's not logically impossible to contradict. Anyone who tries to contradict this house system must not believe in gravity. Which of course is not correct.
Just remember to not put all your eggs in one basket. Things are not always as they seem.

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Holy...smoke in a cloud......that looks like a Sherlock Holmes mission...you go round, and up and down and back again I agree with you I hate subjectivity. Doomed, in my opinion. On countless threads I see people cherry-picking the best light. Nope, don't trust it at all. And I'm frequently shocked to find some disparity between my self-image and how others perceive me. Thankfully their perceptions are way better than mine.

I'm still curious if not just a little confused. And I'm keen to see how this discussion goes.

OK, for clarity....unlike other house systems, the topocentric system basically measures from the surface of the earth, not the center of the earth. This small adjustment takes into account what the local observer is seeing from their perspective rather than from a geocentric perspective.

It does seem to clear up the extreme latitude problem but, is needless anywhere else since it will simply look just like most any other house system you use (i.e. Regio, Placidus, Porph, etc)

For further clarity, most all the house systems pretty much resemble each other at less than extreme latitudes so, the whole argument of what house system to use is really pointless since they all vary by only a degree or two. I did a side by side comparison for about 45 latitude here if you want numbers :
http://astrologyweekly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42622

Meridian, Equal and Whole are exceptions to this, of course.

If house system debates are pretty much pointless then why are there different house systems and why do many people use different house systems? I think and have a feeling it's do to what people want to see in their charts as opposed to what is actually the case in their charts.

Anything besides whole signs is way too much work for figuring out the relative strengths of planets.

Saying that any house system is discovered or invented is subjective. Some people I know of wouldn't even use the birth time but look for Incarnation windows. This house system is based on a dude's life experiences, and life experiences are subjective regardless. Which predictive method were they using? Transits? Solar arcs? Secondary progressions? Primary directions? Something else entirely? Different methods would also give different results.

jamescondor said:

If house system debates are pretty much pointless then why are there different house systems and why do many people use different house systems? I think and have a feeling it's do to what people want to see in their charts as opposed to what is actually the case in their charts.

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Good question. Like everything, someone always thinks (sometimes rightly so) that they can do it better or re-invent the wheel. Each house system is based on a more refined calculation or a different celestial division to produce, basically, the same results. Some house systems came about to try and solve various debates in the astrological community such as extreme latitudes or if a chart should be divided by time or space or both.

The bottom line for most of the house systems is, 'how do we divide the intermediary houses?'. In other words, the houses between the angles, the 2nd and 3rd/8th and 9th and the 5th and 6th/11th and 12th houses.

All house systems know what the ascendant and the midheaven are (though some like Meridian change this as well), the angles or the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th houses. This is, in the majority, agreed upon. It was simply the other houses that some people simply could not rest with other people dividing up the intermediary space.

Anachiel said:

All house systems know what the ascendant and the midheaven are (though some like Meridian change this as well), the angles or the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th houses. This is, in the majority, agreed upon. It was simply the other houses that some people simply could not rest with other people dividing up the intermediary space.

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There's also equal and whole signs. At first I thought Placidus was all there was, then I used equal, and now I decided equal is too complicated and whole signs are the best. My reason is based on ease of calculations, not personal experience (unless personal experience with difficult calculations counts.)

RebelU-

You should re-read my original post. Discovery is not the same as invention. For example Gravity was not invented, it was discovered. It has always been here regardless of us human beings knowing about it. The same with the topocentric house system. it was not invented, it was discovered.
Discovery is objective because its' truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.
Invention is subjective because it is dependent on a conscious entity or subject

Anachiel-

The question I asked was rhetorical. It was asked to make a point.
The topocentric house system is not based on a more refined calculation or a different celestial vision because it was discovered and not invented. Like I said in my original post.
Just because some house systems might yield the same or similar results does not mean that they came about in the same way.
The difference between the topocentric house system and all others is that people didn't try to make or construct the topocentric house system to see if they could do it better, progress or improve upon the past because topocentric was already made by nature and/or the universe.
Like gravity, it is here regardless of conscious beings perceiving it.

jamescondor said:

RebelU-

You should re-read my original post. Discovery is not the same as invention. For example Gravity was not invented, it was discovered. It has always been here regardless of us human beings knowing about it. The same with the topocentric house system. it was not invented, it was discovered.
Discovery is objective because its' truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.
Invention is subjective because it is dependent on a conscious entity or subject

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Actually, according to quantum mechanics, nothing is here without us observing it. So if a human being did not find out about the topocentric house system, then tell me which alien or superhuman race transmitted it to us. And even if some other race gave it to us, it'd still involve us having to be consciously aware of it to be able to receive it. One really could say that gravity was invented by Isaac Newton depending on how one defined the words.

So the world or the universe wasn't here before people or any conscious entity or subject? So then before I was born there wasn't a Earth? Everything must be the same age as the person perceiving it for that theory to be true. We know that the Earth was here before human beings. So....

We actually don't know that. We just know a lot about radiation and uncertain cause-and-effect relationships. You asked to argue philosophy and I'm arguing it