Re: Constellation Talk

Tony Flanders wrote in couple of different messages:
As for the Greek myths, they arose in pre-literate times.
. . . That was nearly a millennium before
Ptolemy, who codified Classical astronomy. And a very busy
millennium too, full of radical innovation. Lumping Ptolemy and
Homer together is just as valid or invalid as lumping Einstein
and Chaucer together.
<snip between posts>> And there's no reason to think that *anybody* in
Greece
considered the constellation myths to be anything more than
mnemonic devices.

About the time that Eudoxus (408-347 B.C.E.) was developing his
planetary theory, Aristotle (350 B.C.E.) was writing _On the Heavens_,
and Autolycus (320 B.C.E.) was writing _On the Revolving Spheres_,
Plato (427 B.C.E. - 347 B.C.E.) declared the divine association of
between the celestial sphere, the planets and the Greek divinities.
Plato, Ephinomis 986A-988E (Evans, 20-21 & 297).

"Now the gods-Zeus and Hera and all the rest-each man must regard
in what light he pleases, though according to the same law, and must
take this account as reliable. But as our visible gods, greatest and
most honorable and having keenest vision every way, we must count first
the order of the stars and all else that we perceive existing with
them; and after these, and next below these, the divine spirits, and
air-born race, holding the third and middle situation, cause of
interpretation, which we must surely honor with prayers for the sake of
an auspicious journey across."

Plato, Ephinomis << http://www.logoslibrary.org/plato/epinomis.html >>

About this time, the Athenian state executed Socrates (470-399 BCE), in
part for applying reason or logos to the question and deny the
existence of Greek gods, some of whom were associated with protecting
Athens. At that time, some Athenians interpreted Athens loss in the
Peloponnesian War (404 BCE) as a sign of disfavor from their gods that
they had not been sufficiently religious. (This strikes a cord in our
modern times by TV religious fundamentalists who also mistakenly
declare that the decline of United States culture is the result of
insufficient piety.)

That ancient Greek leading philosophers and scientists state that
mysterious and unseen forces reside in the stars and governmental
leaders execute one of their best thinkers based on such beliefs is
sufficient historical evidence to infer that the ancient Greeks -
including educated Greeks - thought that the celestial sphere and
planets were physical deities.

This condition of ancient Greek thinking did not change through the
time of Ptolemy (90-168 C.E.) or as a result of the rise of classical
"scientific" Greek culture.

The great legacy of Greek culture is its reliance on reason and Wisdom
(or logos) to answer questions about the natural world. However, the
ancient Greeks were also a superstitious people. Chief amongst their
superstitions and _negative_ legacies that has been transmitted to
modern western culture - and that flowed directly from their belief in
the divinity of celestial sphere and planets - is the mistaken
primitive practice of astrology. Although western astrological texts
are known before the classical Greeks, it was the classical Greeks who
turned that superstition into to the type of daily practice that we see
handed down to modern newspapers.

In western scientific thinking, Ptolemy is best remembered for his
scientific work _The Almagest_ and _The Handy Tables_. But Ptolemy's
_Tetrabiblos_, his "how-to" manual on making astrological predictions,
would have been more well-known in the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. _The
Almagest_ and _Tetrabiblos_ are two sides of the same coin. _The
Almagest_ is a scientific work for predicting the position of the
planets. _Tetrabiblos_ is manual for how to use planetary theory of
_The Almagest_ for making primitive and supersitious astrological
predictions on how the planets effect daily life on Earth. The
motivation of the ancient Greeks was in part the primitive practice of
astrology - their means logos, reason and the Socratic method applied
to the natural world. Evans pp. 343-344.

A sample of this type of misplaced thinking by Ptolemy from
_Tetrabiblos_ - which appears comical to the modern mind - includes:

"As it is next in order to recount the natures of the fixed stars with
reference to their special powers, we shall set forth their observed
characters in an exposition like that of the natures of the planets,
and in the first place those of the ones that occupy the figures in the
zodiac itself. The stars in the head of Aries, then, have an effect
like the power of Mars and Saturn, mingled; those in the mouth like
Mercury's power and moderately like Saturn's; those in the hind foot
like that of Mars, and those in the tail like that of Venus."

Online English translation of Ptolemy's _Tetrabiblos_:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Ptolemy/Tetrabiblos/home.html

In conclusion, there is a line of ancient Greek philosophical and
scientific thinking from 400 B.C.E. through Ptolemy (90-168 C.E.) that
is bound by the common thread that the Greeks thought the physical
stars and planets to actually be deities who by unseen mysterious
powers effected events on the Earth. One of the principal ancient
Greek motivations for developing planetary theory was their association
between divinity and the celestial sphere. There is evidence - sadly in
misplaced belief in the primitive practice of astrology - that common
and educated people alike thought there was connection between that
divine celestial sphere and their daily lives. Evans pp. 343-344.
There is no "break" in these ancient culture beliefs as a result of the
rise of classical "scientific" Greek culture culminating in Ptolemy's
_Amalgest_. Lumping pre-classical Greek mythology with post-classical
Greek astronomy is not invalid historical reasoning.

None of this detracts one iota from the brilliancy of Ptolemy's
planetary theory in the _Amalgest_ or the scientific reasoning of his
Greek predecessors based on their limited understanding of the natural
world at that time.

It's unlikely that the average peasant could have identified the
average second-magnitude star if you had pointed it out to him,
let alone given it a name or told you what constellation it was in.

Much of what we know about ancient Greek culture comes from what are in
effect the few school textbooks that survived the early Christian
purges. Ptolemy's _The Amalgest_ is an example; as is Geminus's
_Introduction to the Phenomena_. Evans pp. 199-201. (It's a scary
thought that if civilization falls again - as it did after Ptolemy -
our descendents might only know our time from junior high school or
high school textbooks.)

Such textbooks transmit everyday common knowledge. In Geminus's
_Introduction_ is a mnemonic device - a parapegma or table of rising
constellations.

The parapegma is used for telling time at night in absence of a
mechanical watch for telling the day of the year for planting purposes
in the absence of a uniform system of calendars. (Individual Greek
city-states and neighboring countries had their own names for the
months of the calendar.) It was the kind of common everyday knowledge
that ancient Greek and Roman children and farmers would learn - much
the way that we teach our children multiplication tables today.

The term "parapegma" has fallen into disrepute in modern astronomical
circles because the term has been hi-jacked by the superstitious
practice of astrology.

In ancient times, a parapegma, or table of rising and setting
constellations, was an indispensable reference tool for setting a
meeting at night and arriving "on time" by the method of unequal
seasonal hours. Using the table, one could decide when to plant crops
or when to meet a friend the local acropolis at an appointed time at
night in order to take in a theatre show or a sporting event, or in
Roman times to meet for a meal at the local vomitorium or a soak at the
local thermae.

The parapegma works this way. If you know the rising zodiac
constellation at sunset or the setting constellation at sunrise and the
fractional length of the day as compared to a standard equinocturnal
day at the equinox, then you can tell seasonal and rough equinocturnal
time at night. As an example, here is modern parapegma that I prepared
for Salt Lake City, Utah.

http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/observed/ALSSundial/html/ReadDial.html#Parapegma

For example, near July 1, the eastern rising constellation is Pisces
and each seasonal hour at night is 45 standard minutes long. Six
seasonal hours later (or 3/4 * 6 standard hours), Pisces will "south"
or transit. With this knowledge and visual estimates of the hour angle
of a constellation, time can be told at night.

The modern amateur astronomical equivalent would be Table 1 -
Approximate Sidereal Time in Volume One of Burnham's Celestial Handbook
(p. 59) - a table of transiting right ascensions for every two weeks
throughout the year.

Known literary parapegma include:

1) Hibeh Papyri (from Greek Egypt) (~300 B.C.E.). A line reads: "16
[day of Choiak] Arcturus rises in the evening. The enight is 12 24/45
hours, the day 11/45." Evans p. 200.

2) The Miletus stone parapegma (~400 B.C.E.) Two stone fragments were
excavated from a public theater that are thought to have been part of a
public sign visible to the passing public. The fragments are two months
of a parapegma - when the Sun is in Scorpio and in Aquarius. A line
reads "The whole Hydra sets in the morning." Each entry of the
parapegma is prefixed by a hole in the tablet. The common thinking is
someone was assigned to put a stick in the appropriate hole each day.
As the public passed this billboard as they went about their daily
business, they could quickly refer to the appropriate rising and
setting constellation for that night. Evans pp. 201-202.

3) Geminus's _Introduction to the Phenomena_ (1st century C.E.). A
line for the fall reads: "[On the 20th day that the Sun is in the
constellation Virgo] according to Eudoxus, Arcturus is visible;
beginning of autumn. The Goat, great star in the Charioteer, rises [in
the evenings] . . ." Evans p. 199.

4) Ptolemy's Phaseis (Parapegma). A line reads: "1. 14 1/2 hours [of
daylight]. The Dog sets in the morning. 15 hours [of night]: The
bright star in Perseus sets in the morning." Evans p. 203.

An online translation of Ptolemy's Phaseis (Parapegma):
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ajones/ptolgeog/Phaseis.pdf#search='Ptolemy%20Phaseis'

Another form of parapegma are inscriptional, which can be used to the
same purpose of telling time at night, as:

1) Thermae Traiani parapegma (400 C.E.). An inscription in a Roman bath
house.
See Figure 1 in
http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/imperia/md/content/philosophie/textdokumente/observation_and_prediction.pdf

In conclusion, there is some evidence that ordinary people, like
peasants, slaves and farmers, would have had a better knowledge of the
constellations and stars than their modern counterparts. Today, most
people in the developed world have easy - some would say obnoxious -
access to numerous clocks and watches. It's hard to move about one's
home or travel a kilometer in a modern city without seeing several
clocks. Having no need to know the night sky for timekeeping purposes,
most educated adult moderns have little knowledge of the
constellations.

Before the invention of the watch, common people had the motivation to
learn and retain the zodiac constellations and the major bright stars
as common assumed knowledge for the purpose of daily timekeeping.

Similarly, in an era before widespread printing of calendars when the
world was primarily agrarian, constellations of the zodiac would have
been indispensable common knowledge for the average person. In today's
modern society, to eat we drive down to the local supermarket- an
activity disconnected from the seasons. In ancient agrarian cultures,
knowing the calendar date from the celestial sphere could mean the
difference between having a good crop and eating well, or loosing a
crop and starving to death. This gave the ancients a stronger
motivation to learn and retain knowledge of constellations than we have
today.

I acknowledge that these modern interpretations of ancient Greek and
Roman documents and inscriptions have a "just-so" story quality to
them. Conversely, broadly saying there is no evidence that ancients
only used the constellations as mnemonic deivces is overreaching a bit.


This response primarily relies on -

Evans, James. 1998. The History and Practice of Ancient
Astronomy. Oxford Univ. Press. 1998hpaa.book.....E

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1998hpaa.book.....E

Above, I've included some pinpoint cites to pages in his book which may
be of interest.

That's a problematic statement [that the Greeks projected powerful deities on the
celestial sphere], because modern astronomy was forged in an era of war, disease,
and short life spans.

Copernicus and Newton are not counter-examples. Copernicus and Newton
also worked in a time in which the Catholic Church had about 1,000
years to extinguish any social discourse based on pagan symbolism. It
does not follow that popular culture of the 1500s or 1600s would turn
to pagan mythology when presented with the same environmental
stressors. Even so, Kepler's "day job" as the Imperial Mathematician in
Prague was principally to keep the royal horoscope updated. Copernicus
and Newton would not be expected to make the leap to pagan symbolism.
They were the leading advocates of the use of the scientific method in
their time. Modern historical examinations of Newton's darker side -
his penchant for mystical alchemy - indicates that even of the best of
us can fall victim to irrationality.

One thing I do not understand in terms of historical motivation is why
the Catholic Church of the Dark Ages didn't re-write the celestial
constellation map in their own image. E.g. - replacing the pagean
constellations of Scorpius, Libra and Virgo with the constellations St.
Mark, St. Peter and St. Paul. The early Christians seemed to have
stopped with the association between Pisces (the Fish) and Jesus (the
Fisherman). Today we see the remanent of that association as metal
figures on the trunks of cars.

- Peace - Canopus56

.

Quantcast