Re: RE: VMs: Pleiades Occultation Further Date Refinement

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello   Rob,
   
=======  You wrote:  
>Whilst these dates are interesting, I don't feel they are particularly useful.  The 'identification' of 
the Pleiades has not resulted in a reading of the label next to them . . .

Well, the identification was not done by label, only by number of stars. Of course until you 
solve those labels  for us, we  have to use  our our assumptions, so  please hurry :-). 

>I tend to think that, like the botanical drawings, the cosmo drawings are, if not totally a work of 
the imagination, at least grossly inaccurate.  The drawings are crude - the circles rough, the 
'straight' lines crooked. 

Bad drawings are   seldom results of imaginations, actually the good ones are.  Ask 
art teachers, they know the difference.  Inaccuracy is the feature we cannot based any
 reasonable conclusion on, in most cases  it is only the result of  non-talented artist 
who cannot draw. On the other hand, it could be  Picasso :-). You are mixing together two different 
terms: is it inaccurate as a drawing but  it is imagination as an art. So what it is? 
And  of course, if you are looking for accurate 
drawings, you picked the wrong manuscript and if you look for good  imagination, 
you picked the wrong artist :-). There was already the suggestion the VM is a work of madman,
but those suggestions do not lead anywhere - we can not use the Roscharch  test on them.

The name of the game here is of course different: assuming 
the author  had in mind certain constellations, he possibly draw them the way you would draw 
out of hand say Big Dipper. We all  probably will agree it is  good enough for recognizing  it.
The question  is: can we deduce anything out of pictures in the VM?  You may say 
"no", but for instance   the pictures  of comets  are already used as valuable data.  You  may  be 
right in the end, but stating it a priori as na objection is putting  the wagon before the horse. 
And if we recognize the constellation,  the question is what next?

> Angles between the 'spokes' in the diagrams seem to have been guesstimated rather than 
carefully measured.  Drawings of the moon are invariably cosmetic rather than informative. 

If the author  intended to show the symbol of the Moon, do not  look for Mare Serenitatis. 
Do not expect too much - the VM is not  scientific book  per se, you have to take any such 
request up with the author of the  manuscript :-). The REAL question is: did the author want to 
say something by that  and what it was?  How can you expect to get exact measurements from 
drawings which apparently were not even  made to scale?  But you know all that :-). 
 With the VM, there are no easy solutions  -  Gordon Rugg took one  and look where is  he now: 
 only in old newspapers.  

>If there was any serious astronomy going on, more care would have been taken. 

Well, apparently the astronomers took the same stand - but nobody really says the VM was 
meant to be serious astronomy - I think we all  past that naive assumption :-). But as you claim, 
there "no accurate  pictures", so let's add "no serious herbal",  we do not know what the pictures 
of the "plumming"   mean   - keep on going and you end up with Gordon: 
there is no serious text either :-). 

> . . There are plenty of examples of 'astronomers' filling out the gaps on their works with 
 random stars, imaginary constellations or superabundant moons, and there's no reason to 
 assume the VMS authors did not do so too. 

There you  have a problem: tell us where are  those fillings and where they are not and we can  take it from 
there. Or if they are all imaginations, what do they really mean? Maybe we should then ask 
doctor Freud then?  

I  am really amazed with negativity lately oozing from this list, but I am surprised 
that you too joined the "rejection club". It seems that the world soon forgotten  Gordon Rugg, but 
here  his ghost is still marching on  . . .

Jan



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