Divinity Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
You can send evidence on some of these. A pilot is open on 55 questions in one field, Palaeography. Each says what would resolve it; send something that meets that bar, with a source anybody can check, and an editor will weigh it. Sending evidence does not guarantee the question will be resolved, and it does not have to be your field to read what is being asked. See what is open.
Grouped by the shape of the gap rather than its subject: what sort of thing is unresolved.
Filter By Specialty 99 fields, 1 selected
Showing 1 of 608 questions, filtered to 1 specialty.
attribution 1
Who said or wrote or made something, where the record is incomplete.
Zi Wei Dou Shu
Who actually devised Zi Wei Dou Shu, and does the traditional ascription to Chen Tuan hold up?
Open Zi Wei Dou Shu
Why It Is Open The system is traditionally ascribed to the Daoist adept Chen Tuan, c. 871-989, but the attribution cannot be verified against any surviving text from his lifetime, and the earliest manuscripts describing the method postdate him by centuries.
What Would Settle It A textual historical study tracing the earliest surviving Zi Wei Dou Shu manuscripts and comparing their content and terminology against securely dated Chen Tuan texts.
Expertise Needed Sinology; history of Chinese astrology; textual criticism
Question posed in
Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the Stars, Ho Peng Yoke.