Re: Nymphs and 3-space...?

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nick Peling wrote:
 
> Sorry if this is an old observation, but it struck
> me a couple of days ago 
> that the astrological nymphs' poses seem to indicate
> three orthogonal 
> *spatial dimensions*:-
 
> facing direction	left - right
> hand relative to hip		behind - in front
> other hand relative to star	up - down
> 
> Try as I might, I haven't been able to shake this
> thought: if correct, 
> there's something unsettlingly modern about this...
> the basic 
> *Cartesian-ness* of it all.
> 
> Of course, there's always the possibility that these
> are simply binary 
> flags, and this is essentially a picture of a binary
> code... but this too 
> was only really used by Bacon (Francis, not Roger),
> IIRC. Were there binary 
> codes before Bacon? I can't recall seeing any, this
> could be the earliest.
> 
> There's something wrong here, and I can't put my
> finger on it... :-|

Well, the observation is correct, and I personally
think that these features are quite deliberate.
I also think, however, that assigning it to
Cartesian coordinates or a binary code is the 
result of thinking like a 20th Century observer.

There are perfectly good reasons for these
choices that would make sense to a late
medieval mind: North/South, rising/setting,
day/night, are but a small subset of such
possibilities, all in the astronomical domain.

Cheers, Rene

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