insight into image, technical analysis, alchemy and haruspicy

My background is in philosophy of science and cognitional theory. I’ve decided to take on trying to better understand trading and investing in large part because I have time and money to invest and think that if I’m going to do so I might as well do it as well as I can, and that translates to gaining insight into what I’m doing and that with which I’m doing it.

I just needed a starting point. I’m reading a book called “The Art and Science of Technical Analysis.” I’m two chapters in and want to solicit responses to a few questions that popped into my head. Honest impressions.

I’m coming into this with an open mind. After all, it’s an artifact of human activity. If human activity is understandable, the artifact should be intelligible. But then I read things like this from the author: “*There is something about physically drawing lines…because of this work, I assimilated patterns quickly and developed a sense of the forces at work behind the patterns early in my development.*”

This sounds like an alchemist which makes me wonder whether whether I’m just reading something akin to an alchemist’s cookbook – phenomena, predictions, fascination with “elements of the science” and geometry, hidden powers, mysterious forces, and disclaimers that the rules might not work.

I made note of it and kept reading. Later in the same chapter, he moves from explaining how Wyckoff’s Market Cycle in terms of psychosocial behavior, but then moves into the notion that the patterns can occur fractally at smaller and larger scales? So, what…the cycle of human behaviors that constitute “the forces at work” behind patterns also occur in fractal patterns?

I’ve stopped reading for now but plan to resume. What’s up with this? Is there anything to it beyond anticipation of explanation that doesn’t yet exist, much like alchemy was the expectation for but not realization of something like a science of chemistry?