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This one's easy...

Topocentric first became known really in the early 60's, I think.

I was born in the early 60's.

I am and feel ancient.

Therefore, Topocentric is ancient.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

;)


(Hi, Fadi) I'm with ya. I support any and all actions that help get more people looking into (or even just thinking about) Topocentric houses.

7
Martin Gansten wrote:How is a topocentric perspective related to the idea of axial rotation? Incidentally, that idea did not begin with Copernicus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s ... on#History
The topocentric perspective of the earth's rotation is an idea that Polich came up with.

By taking this perspective of viewing the dynamics of the earth's rotation from the topocentre (a location on the surface of the earth) as opposed to viewing it from the centre of the earth itself, you can then see this geometry form that is called the topocentric cone.
The Polich/Page system then postulates that it creates its houses on this cone. To be clear, this "topocentric" perspective has nothing to do at all with the correction for parallax.

By taking this topocentric viewpoint, it is necessary to view the centre of the earth no longer as the centre of your model. And I see no way to conceive of that in a pre-Copernican framework.

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I never heard of that before, but then I never studied Polich's thinking in any depth either. Thanks for the elucidation.

As far as I understand the historical background, though, the Page-Polich system is based on a modification of Placidean position circles which was first suggested by André Boudineau as a solution to a problem noted by Henri Selva (namely, that the standard Placidean position circles collapse if a planet happens to be exactly on the equator). So the formulas do seem to predate the geometric model proposed, although they are certainly not ancient; and on principle they could have been proposed even in a geocentric model (although they wouldn't have been justified in the same way or called by the same name). I'm not suggesting that they were, however.
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

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I have most of my information from the articles by Michael Wackford on this site. http://skyscript.co.uk/pdf/TopocentricHouses.pdf

Maybe it is more correct to say that Polich made use of the Boudineau/Silva material to co-create his system together with Nelson Page and not that he came up with the idea by himself, as I said earlier.
I don't understand all of it, but what I understand is that the idea of modeling the system on the topocentric cone does not ultimately translate to the trigonometric formulation of the system, as it is implemented in most astrological software. There are some plot holes in that area of the theory.
The critique by Fagan and others has not satisfactorily been refuted, neither by Polich and Nelson Page, nor by Marr, or later proponents of the system.

On the other hand, Wackford's misunderstanding of the word topocentric in the conclusion of his article surprises me, as his technical analysis seems to be to the point.

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Ruud66 wrote:
Martin Gansten wrote:How is a topocentric perspective related to the idea of axial rotation? Incidentally, that idea did not begin with Copernicus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s ... on#History
The topocentric perspective of the earth's rotation is an idea that Polich came up with.

By taking this perspective of viewing the dynamics of the earth's rotation from the topocentre (a location on the surface of the earth) as opposed to viewing it from the centre of the earth itself, you can then see this geometry form that is called the topocentric cone.
The Polich/Page system then postulates that it creates its houses on this cone. To be clear, this "topocentric" perspective has nothing to do at all with the correction for parallax.

By taking this topocentric viewpoint, it is necessary to view the centre of the earth no longer as the centre of your model. And I see no way to conceive of that in a pre-Copernican framework.
I don't see any basic difficulty there. The ancients already had a good understanding of the Earth being a sphere with both a centre and a surface. However, conceptualising the horizon as a plane through Earth's centre may have made simply made sense to them, as so much of astrology is based on great circles projected onto the sky.
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Hello Michael,

The problem is that the topocentric rationalisation, as used by Polich and Nelson Page, requires that you no longer see the centre of the earth as the centre of your model.
This means that the axial rotation is modelled from the perspective of the topocentre, i.e. the location of the native at birth. Therefore, the whole earth is seen moving around the topocentric axis, including the centre of the earth. All motions remain as they are in reality: it is only the way that these motions are modelled, that is different.

It is this off-centre modelling that I don't see happening before modern times.
Last edited by Ruud66 on Tue Jan 04, 2022 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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However, ...
I do agree with Martin that this system, as it is defined mathematically, can be seen as just another variant of Placidus under the pole. And if you reframe it in this way, the system does make sense in the ancient cosmology that sees the centre of the earth as the fixed centre of the universe.
But for that idea to work, you have to throw the topocentric rationalisation out of the window.