Re: VMs: Sheep vs. Goats

[Pamela Richards <spirlhelix@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, John!

I don't feel picked on, although it is kind of you to
be so careful of my feelings.  Smile.
To tell the truth, I think I'd rather be picked on by
someone who was responding to my arguments than find
myself in the midst of a flurry of exchanges in which
my points were completely disregarded.

Your information about languages looks good, and as an
interpreter of languages I am familiar with the "no
one-for-one correspondence for words between
languages" concept and can see that those points are
valid.  Validity does not equal applicability,
however.

Back to our presuppositions, particularly with regard
to the provenance of the VMs:  

If we think the VMs has anything to do with medical
astrology, or astrology in general, it is a matter of
utmost importance to distinguish between a sheep and a
goat.

I'm not asking you to believe in astrology or to
subscribe to it or support it in any way.  I just want
to be clear that just because we are indifferent to
the difference, or another culture is indifferent to
the difference, does not automatically mean that to
people in the time and culture of the VMs there was no
difference.

If you have spent any time studying medical astrology,
(and forgive me for pointing out that I have studied
medieval astrology, as a practicing astrologer: ergo
in more than an academic sense--I don't mean to boast,
but this would be the reason I assume I know more than
others on the list) you would understand instantly
that to distinguish between a sheep and a goat could
be a critical matter.  Not knowing the difference
would be like prescribing an analgesic for heart
failure.  Now, when a pharmacist gets an illegible
prescription from a doctor (it has been known to
happen, as medical doctors even today lead the field
in the area of informal cryptology), he knows it is
his obligation to contact the doctor and clarify
precise significance of the prescription before he
hands out the drugs.  If the doctor, like our VMs
author, were not avaiable to clarify what he had
prescribed, what good would the prescription be?

Why are there twelve signs of the Zodiac if we have no
need for a taxonomy which distinguishes them?  Why not
call Aries (sheep), Taurus (bull), Leo (lion) and
Capricorn (goat) "the beasts" and leave it at that? 
Apart from the fact that it would lump a third of the
Zodiac together, which was meant to be distinguishable
from one another.  Under other circumstances, of
course, a label or a glyph would distinguish the signs
of the Zodiac beyond doubt, regardless of confusing
resemblances; but our circumstances here preclude
lexical elements and leave us to interpret the
author's illustrations "by eye".

Warmly,

Pam



PS
I don't necessarily think that the goat represents
Capricorn, for the record; I am just extending the
logic to the use of these illustrations as signs of
the Zodiac because that is what list members for the
most part appear to agree they represent.





--- Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > [Pamela:] So, is your VMs author a person from
> another continent
> > who stayed close to home, or a European who does
> not get around
> > much? Or a well-travelled person from another
> contient who has
> > settled in Europe yet managed in his travels to
> avoid seeing any
> > sheep?
> 
> I'm not intending to pick on Pamela, so my apologies
> to her if I seem to
> be!  I just picked her comment by chance to attach
> mine to.  Sheep and
> goats are, of course, quite distinct, both
> biologically and in other ways,
> but they are also rather similar biologically and in
> terms of the way in
> which they are used and managed.  I doubt anyone
> involved regularly with
> herding them could fail to distinguish the domestic
> varieties, but being
> "pre-Modern" or "closer to nature,"  doesn't in my
> experience imply either
> (a) paying strict attention to plants and animals
> and their ways, or (b)
> using precise terminology for these.
> 
> My suspicion is that many people in mediaeval times
> were about as vague on
> sheep vs. goats as most modern folks are and might
> very well confuse them
> sufficiently to attach a picture of one for the
> other.
> 
> I don't have specific mediaeval examples, but the
> common English names for
> the wild sheep and goats are considerably shuffled,
> sheep vs. goats, and,
> more generally, Colonial Anglo-Americans instituted
> a considerable
> suffling of the terminology even for fairly common
> sorts of animals -
> granted that in some cases the first species
> encountered in various
> families had no precise equivalent in Britain of the
> 1600s.
> 
> In addition, I was surprised to learn that older
> Omaha-Ponca speakers with
> who I worked often conflated rather different
> species under single or
> similar terms, e.g., mice and weasels.  These were
> individuals who had
> been raised in rural settings.  The fact is that
> folk taxonomies often
> work along quite different lines from those adopted
> by Linnaeus.  A good
> deal of taxonomic lumping, often of Linnaean
> dissimilars, is to be
> expected in irrelevant or unfamiliar areas, and
> sometimes the salient
> taxonymic characteristics are very non-Linnaean, and
> include such factors
> as edibility, living in holes, colored shoulder
> patches, occurring in
> swarms, similar shapes, etc.
>
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=====
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing, than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."

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