Science Since Babylon Enlarged Edition



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a.d., found in t?79 the foot of the Esquiline Hill and now on the Belvedere Terrace next to the Museo Clementino at the Vatican. On it the twelve winds are named in both Latin and Greek. See James G. Wood, Theophrastus of Eresus on Winds and on Weather Signs, (London, 1894), page facing p. 89.

  • water to turn a sky disc (a star-map in projection) behind an earth grillwork net, probably lit by flames of fire and decorated with playing fountains, was all part of a symbolism of the elements.

  • Thanks to the publication of an account of the Tower of Winds written by a Turkish traveler in 1668, we are now able to confirm and extend this view on the symbolism and use it as a fixed point in the general history of this figurate mode of thought.“ The traveler, Evliya ^elebi, though full of fanciful tales and dubious interpretations, indicates quite clearly that the tower also contained some sort of zodiac ceiling, now lost, depicting the twelve constellations and, within them, representations of the planets set in various named signs. The names all agree completely with the standard convention of planetary houses given in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos 1.17. The traveler then goes on to speak of a mirror of the world that was once there but now missing, originally set on a pivot—this may well be some misunderstanding of the star-map disc of the water-clock^^—and adds that there were also 366 talismans, one for each day of the year, and a set of stones such as Yemeni alum and blue vitriol eye-stone, which were related to the black and yellow bile and other humors of the body and were thus of great effect in curing and preventing diseases.

  • We thus learn that, in addition to the octagonal element symbolism, the tower contained the twelve-sided divisions of the zodiac and a set of associations with planets, humors and lapidary talismans. Some of this theory is well attested by medieval texts; we know, for example, that conventionally in astrology the element of earth was associated with

    1. Pierre A. MacKay, American Journal of Archaeology, 73 (1969), 468-69.

    2. For the tradition of “mirrors of the world” and their identification of star maps, see F. N. Estey, “Charlemagne’s Silver Celestial Table,” Speculum, 18 (1943), 112-17.

    1. melancholic humor, fire with choler, air with blood, and water with phlegm. We know, moreover, that the zodiac cycle began with Aries and springtime and was aligned with air and blood to the south point of the compass and the corresponding wind, as well as to youth. The choice of alignments is not at all arbitrary, but certain key points are obvious choices and, these being made, the rest of the cycle falls into place naturally and uniquely determined so as to form an interlocking set of theories covering virtually all creation and comprehending cosmology, chemistry and physics, meteorology, and medicine. Such was the ambitious burden of the Tower of Winds.

    2. The method of aligning the square and octagonal symmetry of the element theory with the twelve-sided division of the zodiac has a special historical interest. It is not attested in detail by any surviving evidence at the tower nor indeed in any literary text. Nevertheless, the general method by which it must have been achieved has been preserved in the traditional forms of the horoscope diagram, this significance of them never having been noted before. All three early forms of astrological horoscope diagram are formed on the basis of a square intersected either by a cross or by another square placed diagonally over it in a manner very similar to that of the element diagram, and quite compatible with it (see Fig. 4.2) Once the general principle has been stated, it becomes quite obvious that such a diagram has been used as a basis or rationale for much of the underlying theory of astrological science, and previously obscure alignments and associations may be seen as necessary results of two cycles being aligned from other elements.

    1. For the “modern” form see Frederick H. Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics^ American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, ^954)3 PP- 20, 21 ; for ancient forms see Cramer, p. 165 and O. Neuge- bauer and H. B. Van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes, American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 156.

    1. 10









    6. Four triplidties, one for each element



    8. Three squares, each containing a set of elements

    9. It is, I believe, also significant in this figurate scheme that so much o£ the rest of astrological theory depends on the aspects, particularly those relating one sign of the zodiac to another, where the original text appears to have been illustrated with diagrams (see Fig. 4.3) that serve not so

    10. Figure 4.3

    11. much as illustrations but as figurate theories in this tradition. The figures referred to are those of the triplicities and the squares linking sets of signs distant from each other by a right angle so that they form a square, or by 120 degrees so that they form an equilateral triangle. There are necessarily four of the triangular triplicities, one cone

    12. spending to each element,^ and there are three squares where each square contains a set of elements. Again the alignments come naturally so that Aquarius, for example, must be in the watery triplicity. It seems quite plausible that much of astrological theory may rest on just such a basis of figurate rationality rather than upon empirical or special omen lore. In this sense astrology, quite apart from its utter falsity in the light of modern knowledge, developed on a very rational basis, with a figurate theory and the associated symbolism at its center.

    13. In view of the ingenuity of this matching of the twelvefold division of the zodiac and horoscope with the fourfold symmetry of the element diagram, it is especially interesting to find that among the relatively few diagrams occurring in the corpus of Old Babylonian mathematical texts we find an entire collection of squares divided in this fashion and accompanied by a text that seems quite enigmatical.*'^ Although the text is usually interpreted as pertaining to area calculations for the figures given, I think it may be more reasonably viewed as an exercise in what was peculiarly difficult for the Babylonians, an interpretation of a written text in pictorial form (see Fig. 4.4).

    14. It may also be remarked that the figurate tradition of the cross and square in element theory has also been elaborated to several other well-known and attested magical forms. The standard magic square of the third order clearly has some of the crosslike symmetry of the element diagram and

    Science Since Babylon 1

    Contents 4

    The Peculiarity of a Scientific Civilization 15

    CHAPTER 2 24

    Celestial Clockwork in Greece and China 24

    Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy 49

    46.The and <0, and Other Geometrical and 71

    47.Scientific Talismans and Symbolisms 71

    Renaissance Roots of Yankee Ingenuity 92

    26.The Dijference Between Science and Technology 116

    79.Mutations of Science 151

    172.Diseases of Science 175



    294.The Humanities of Science 197

    1. Such a diagram of four triplicities is attested in a Babylonian tablet from Uruk, see F. Thureau-Dangin, Tablettes D’Uruk, Musee du Louvre, Department of Oriental Antiquities, VI, (Paris, 1922), plate 26.

    2. H. W. F. Saggs, A Babylonian Geometrical Text, in Revue Assyrio- logique, 54 (i960), 131-46.




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