I watched 'The Lost Book of Nostradamus' on the History Channel.l And I have to tell you that this whole show was preposterous. They would actually use statements like "could be," "possible," and "maybe" all in the same sentence. When you multiply 10% times 10% you don't get 100%, you get 1% (.10 x .10 = .01). Using 'possible' and 'maybe' at the same time is going for the 1% (or less). There is no credibility to statements like that.
The show revolves around a book that was reportedly discovered in the Italian National Library and is supposed to be lost predictions by Nostradamus in the form of 80 watercolor drawings. The show takes this position and then runs with it for the first 1 hour and 45 minutes of the show before finally revealing it wasn't done by Nostradamus at all. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
This show is a perfect example of how pseudoscience works and how gullible people are suckered by it. The show claims, from beginning to end, that Nostradamus was a great prophet that accurately made numerous predictions of future events. There is never any proof of this, nor is there ever any dissenting opinion of this. It is stated as if it is as much a fact as stating the Earth is round. In fact, if you go and look for yourself, you will see that the quattrains of Nostradamus predict nothing at all. He has never predicted anything. The quattrains are so vague and convoluted that you can make them fit just about anything you want. Some people point at a particular quattrain and an event in history and make the argument that its an accurate prediction. The problem with this is that you can take that same quattrain and show that it is at least as equally valid about several other events in history. If it was a prediction of future events it would be about one event, not numerous ones. Most unbiased analysis of the quattrains shows that he was speaking vaguely of events in his own time, not the distant future.
As they described the 80 drawings and tried to claim they were predictions, the best they could do was to make statements such as 'In my opinion....,' or 'This could be.....,' or 'It is possible this is.....' These aren't predictions. All they were doing is grasping at straws with nothing to support their claims. They came to a conclusion, then went looking for something to support it. Nothing presented in the entire show supported the claim that these drawings were predictions of current world events.
The people in this show claim these drawings are predictions all the while missing the most obvious explanations. For instance, one of the drawings has a drawing of a pope with several people turning their backs on him. They claim Nostradamus accurately predicted current events concerning the Catholic church and it's current problems in this drawing. But, they ignore the most obvious explanation that the Reformation began in 1517 when Nostradamus was a young boy and the world he lived in was full of people turning their backs on the Church.
A great one was a picture of a castle tower in flames. Everyone in the show claimed this was an accurate prediction of 9/11 and the Twin Towers. They even pulled out Tarot cards showing very similar burning towers and cited this as evidence that Nostradamus was predicting the end of the world. The Tarot card, they argued, was the worst card in the Tarot deck and meant imminent disaster. By predicting the Twin Towers in this manner, Nostradamus was predicting the worst of fates for the world. What is amazing is that not a single person ever suggested that it was just a drawing of a Tarot card. If the lost book drawing of a tower was a prediction of 9/11, why weren't the Tarot deck drawings they produced? By their line of argument, every Tarot deck with a burning tower card accurately predicted 9/11.
In fact, the book consisted of 80 drawings. A standard modern Tarot deck has 78 cards, although this number changes from deck to deck and has varied over history. I'm no expert on Tarot, but I know enough to recognize several cards in the drawings they were showing. It seems to me the most obvious explanation for these drawings is that they were nothing more than drawings of a Tarot deck. Tarot cards were in wide circulation in those days and were routinely used to predict horoscopes. Nostradamus himself made his living this way.
But, it got even better.
They claimed the reason Nostradamus made these predictions as drawings instead of in quattrains is that he knew the world of today was visually oriented. Accordingly, he adjusted his communications method to have the most appeal to the people of the 21st century. But, even the Nostradamus experts agreed that Nostradamus couldn't draw. Hey! No problem! His son could draw, we'll just say his son did these. They then went through this convoluted argument about how his son made these drawings and entrusted them to the Catholic church for safe keeping, at his father's bequest. There is a real problem with this scenario. Earlier in the show they went to great lengths to show that Nostradamus was in fear of execution by the Church for his predictions. If he was convinced that the Church wanted to kill him in order to silence his predictions, why would he want to entrust his predictions to them?
Another point they made concerned a drawing of a wheel with eight spokes. This, they argued, was a prediction of the end of the world. How did they rationalize this? The idea is that the horizontal and vertical spokes represent the celestial coordinate system and the cross spokes represent the Milky Way galaxy. When the center of the Milky Way crosses the vernal equinox you will have the eight spoked wheel. This, they say, will occur in 2012. But, anyone who has ever read anything about pagan religions should immediately recognize the wheel of the year. In this wheel, the horizontal and vertical spokes represent the equinoxes and solstices, while the cross spokes represent what are known as cross-quarter days, the days mid-way between the solstices and equinoxes ( now known as Ground Hog's day, May Day, Lammas Day, and Halloween). This wheel was very commonly used in those days and is still used even today, although many people have lost the knowledge of its origin.
But, nearly at the end of the show, they finally discussed scientific analysis of the book to determine if it could have been written by Nostradamus. The first thing was that the handwriting was not his. No problem, they just claimed it was his son's. The paper, with a special watermark, was made during a period of a couple of centuries that included the period when Nostradamus lived. They then cited this as evidence that he drew them. But, that isn't what the evidence showed. It only showed that paper like that was made during Nostradamus' lifetime.
But, this is when it got really good. It was found that the ink was not available during Nostradamus' lifetime. You would think this would put the breaks on these guys, but this wasn't a problem. They simply came to the conclusion this book was so valuable that it had been copied by hand over the centuries and what they were examining was the latest version of this effort.
So, there you have it, the classic example of a pseudoscience. No amount of evidence to the contrary can disprove the claims. It is not possible to put their claims about Nostradamus to a scientific test under the scientific method because they will always wave off the facts so that they can always come to the same conclusion. Fortunately, while we can't test the people making these claims, we can test Nostradamus' quattrains and every scientific test has shown there is no validity to the claim that he predicted the future.
But, in case you are still a believer, they are claiming he predicted the world will end in 2012. Only five years to go.
I encourage you to check the schedule and watch this show to make your own decision about what they are saying. If nothing else, it is entertaining.
