Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

geospatial.netlify.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 261 posts

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#81

Post by lalaithion »

> Or did they followed some method that is today lost, possibly based on the position of a start or a constellation, resulting in an alignment on the Mercator projection?

I would not say that the method is today lost; while not aligned on a geodesic, the cathedrals are aligned on a spiral starting at the North Pole and ending at the South Pole which always travels at a constant bearing. It’s totally possible to recreate a line like this with a compass by walking such that the compass has a constant reading. Doing so over the Mediterranean, multiple mountain ranges, and bits of the Atlantic would be a bit difficult, though.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#82

Post by noduerme »

arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

I had a similar obsession for awhile. Take any 2 really famous places in the old world and draw a great circle line between them on Google Earth... and it's astonishing what falls under that line. (Try Avignon and Jerusalem, for example).

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#83

Post by smeej »

paipa wrote: post #43

He managed to get my attention starting with the cathedrals' polygons and exact bell tower positions, only to pull a "50 kilometers off, nevermind".

I didn't understand what the bell towers had to do with anything. If you're going to pick a piece of architecture that mattered to the architect in terms if "where the thing is," go with the altar.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#84

Post by viscousviolin »

SilverBirch wrote: post #32
OnACoffeeBreak wrote: post #26

Matt Parker ("Stand up Maths" channel on YouTube) gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010 titled "Clutching at Random Straws" [0], which, among other things, covered something similar. From the subtitle of the video: "Did aliens help prehistoric Britons find the ancient Woolworths civilisation?" The answer is "no". Given enough data points, you can find all sorts of patterns. 0: https://www.youtube.c…

I've got to assume that this is partly a Birthday Problem - that the probability of something unlikely being true grows rapidly as the population grows. Probability of 3 random churches lining up? Small, probability of 3 churches lining up when there are 100,000 churches in Europe? Basically 100%

That's one of the examples he goes into in his talk, at a high level anyway. I'd love to find a write-up of someone who has done the detailed calculations of how likely alignments and shape occurrences are.

Another thing that would be interesting is to look at the effect of non-uniformly distributed birthdays. For example, the day that's nine months after valentine's day or christmas might (?) have a slightly higher number of births than an average day. Then you could look at what kind of an effect this would have on the probability of a common birthday as a function of group size.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#85

Post by abrenuntio »

OnACoffeeBreak wrote: post #26

Matt Parker ("Stand up Maths" channel on YouTube) gave a very informative and entertaining lecture in 2010 titled "Clutching at Random Straws" [0], which, among other things, covered something similar. From the subtitle of the video: "Did aliens help prehistoric Britons find the ancient Woolworths civilisation?" The answer is "no". Given enough data points, you can find all sorts of patterns. 0: https://www.youtube.c…

Check it :-) Other popular saints and devotions are "Mary", "Joseph", "Paul", "Sacred Heart", ... can you easily get seven sufficiently special ones on a line for those?

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#86

Post by dfxm12 »

wolframhempel wrote: post #74
arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded t…

One Christmas homily, the priest told a story about how the candy cane was invented by persecuted Christians as a symbol for each other. The cane looked like a shepherd's staff, red for Jesus' blood, etc. If you look into the actual history of the candy cane though, none of this is true.

What I'm saying is that it didn't matter what the architect did. Someone, well after the fact, would have found a tenuous connection between their work and the Bible and claimed they were divinely inspired.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#87

Post by mensetmanusman »

wolframhempel wrote: post #74
arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded t…

Humans sacrificed animals when relations between abstract numbers and reality were discovered:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism

The practice of wonder surrounding numbers and their role in existence has been practiced by nearly every ancient civilization for many millennia.

Definitely not unique to Christianity. Definitely as natural as religious practice itself.

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#88

Post by mensetmanusman »

dfxm12 wrote: post #86
wolframhempel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded t…

One Christmas homily, the priest told a story about how the candy cane was invented by persecuted Christians as a symbol for each other. The cane looked like a shepherd's staff, red for Jesus' blood, etc. If you look into the actual history of the candy cane though, none of this is true. What I'm saying is that it didn't matter what the architect did. Someone, well after the fact, would have found a tenuous connectio…

Not the candy cane, but the fish: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_of_the_ichthys_sy....

Re: Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?

#89

Post by noduerme »

wolframhempel wrote: post #74
arethuza wrote: post #14

When I was a kid (11/12 or so) I was fascinated by finding alignments between ancient things in the landscape (of which there are many here in Scotland!) - eventually I came to the realisation that given the scale of the maps I was looking at (1:25,000) that you can find loads of meaningless alignments if you look hard enough...

I studied art history, and this always bothered me when learning about Christian symbolism. When reading about numbers related to cathedrals, such as the number of statues on a ledge or the number of archivolts (the bands around doors), so much emphasis was put on the meaning of these particular numbers by whoever authored the piece. Three related to the Holy Trinity, four represented the four Gospels, five alluded t…

Wasn't the whole point of building the thing to make physical all that symbolic stuff in the first place?
Post reply on HN