The rehabilitation of wretched subjects.

Abstract

In 1951, Otto Neugebauer published a short essay entitled The Study of Wretched Subjects, spurred by publication of a book review by George Sarton in Isis. Neugebauer was moved to explain why a serious scholar might spend years on study of wretched subjects like ancient istrology, to rebut Sarton's description of astrology as the superstitious flotsam of Near East.' Since then, there has been a good deal of important work done on wretched subject of astrology, much of it by Neugebauer himself, who contributed enormously to reassessment and rehabilitation of astrology as an appropriate area of study for historians of science.2 Yet, students and scholars may still read authoritative works which denounce astrology as a perversion. P.M. Fraser, for example, in his magisterial Ptolemaic Alexandria, published in 1972, in course of only one page of text alternately referred to astrology as a false science, a pseudo-science, a corrupt science, depraved, and a bas-