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Astrology
Austin Society to Oppose
Pseudoscience
In
its modern guise, astrology is based on the assertion that the apparent
positions of certain objects in the solar system at the time an individual is
born are somehow correlated with his or her personality, activities, preferences
and even major life events -- accidents, marriages, divorces, etc. The "stars"
(usually only the sun, the earth's moon, and the five planets known in
antiquity: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) determine the best day to
ask your boss for a raise, go to the dentist, or take a laxative. There is no
agreement whatsoever among astrologers as to how or why this can be. Nor is
there any agreement as to precisely what planetary positions lead to which
specific traits or experiences. It is almost certain that no two astrologers
will "cast" the same individual's horoscope with the same -- or even a similar
-- result. The descriptions and situations that do result are generally so vague
that they apply to nearly everyone alive on earth at present, so that meaningful
verification is an impossibility. How did such a belief get imbedded in our
so-called scientific culture?
Astrology is best understood by learning how it began. Astrology is
unquestionably the oldest and at the same time currently the most popular of all
pseudosciences. The origins of astrology can be traced back 3,000 years, to
ancient Babylonia. The existence of large cities depends on efficient and
reliable agriculture, and therefore on an accurate calendar, so that farmers
know when to plant, when to harvest, etc. The astronomical observations required
to construct a calendar and maintain its accuracy were the task of Babylonia's
priesthood. Since the observers were priests, it seems natural that their names
for the objects in the sky they found most useful for calendar purposes
corresponded to the names of the immortal gods in the Babylonian pantheon. We
still use these god-names for the planets, although our names (Mars, Venus,
Jupiter, etc.) are for the Roman counterparts of the Babylonian gods (Nergal,
Ishtar, Marduk, etc.). It was not just a matter of easy-to-remember names: the
planets, in some sense, were the gods they were named for.
This odd blend of astronomy and religion led, by about 1,000 BC, to an extensive
literature of "planetary omens." Since Nergal (Mars) was the god of wars and
bloody battle, a summer in which Nergal shown down brightly from the sky was a
good time to wage war (or a time in which risk of war was great). Since Ishtar
(Venus) was the goddess of sexual love, a spring night in which Ishtar hung high
in the west after sunset was a good time to proposition your girlfriend, chase
the new slave around the bed, etc.
By
about 600 BC the Babylonians had devised the twelve-sign zodiac: markers in the
sky along the ecliptic, the apparent path along which the sun, moon, and five
naked-eye planets -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- move in the
sky. The "horoscope," a crude chart of the positions of the planets along the
zodiac at a given moment of time, was devised soon after. The oldest known
horoscope was made for April 29, 410 BC. During the classical era dominated by
first Greece and then Rome, Babylonian astrologers (called "Chaldeans") set up
shop in most of the large urban areas throughout the civilized world. Greek
astronomers scoffed at the Chaldean cults as a ludicrous combination of
primitive astronomy and primitive religion, but to no avail -- the Greek and
later the Roman public embraced astrology as lovingly as they embraced most
of the other bizarre and barbaric cults that wandered to the Mediterranean
looking for converts. That astrology makes no sense with its Babylonian
religious underpinnings removed was apparent to thinking people from the very
first. Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote, in 44 BC, a devastating
critique of astrology, which is well worth reading today. Among the points made
by Cicero was that no one sees or expects any correlation between the weather
conditions at the time of birth of a child and the child's later personality or
fortunes. Yet clearly the weather -- extreme cold or heavy rain or harsh heat --
has far more effect on a living thing than dim lights in the night sky. And
even if all children born in December were similar in some way -- which they are
not -- how would an astrologer know that these similarities were not due
to the weather, due to all the children being born into a cold environment,
rather than to the sun being in "Sagittarius," or whatever?
However, with the coming of Christianity, the Chaldeans indeed had very hard
going. During the early Middle Ages, astrology became essentially extinct in
Europe, though kept alive by Islamic scholars. The Crusades brought the heritage
of Greek and Roman culture back to Europe and astrology tagged along,
co-existing uneasily with Christianity until the dawn of the age of science. The
explosive growth of scientific astronomy from 1600 AD onward paralleled a steady
decline in the public interest in astrology. By the end of the 19th
Century, a French encyclopedia could accurately describe astrology as a
vanishing cult with no young adherents.
But astrology made its strongest comeback in all of history in the early 1930s
when British astrologer R. H. Naylor invented the daily newspaper horoscope
column. Soon every newspaper had such a column and every town several practicing
astrologers. The paradoxical result is that the heyday of astrology was not
during the benighted Middle Ages, when the average person was sunk deep in
ignorance and superstition, and kept there by illiteracy and the rarity of
books. Rather, astrology's peak popularity comes at a time when most citizens
presumably know the basic facts of astronomy, and are well aware from
space-probe photos in the daily newspapers and on TV that the other planets are
worlds more or less similar to the earth, and not mystical god-fires in the sky.
At
the present time, at least 90% of all Americans under 30 are said to know their
"sun-sign." How many know their blood type? Or the name of the Secretary of
State? Or Newton's Three Laws of Motion?
Scientists have been quite baffled by the popularity of astrology during the 20th
Century, and dozens of careful studies have been carried out to see if there is
any actual correlation between the positions of the planets at an individual's
birth, and any attribute of the individual in later life. NO statistically valid
study has ever shown ANY connection, relation or correlation that would give ANY
support to ANY part of astrology. There is no scientific question, there is
no scientific controversy, concerning astrology -- it definitely does NOT work.
Why, then, is astrology the most popular of all the pseudosciences? Before
turning to this question, let us look more closely at the actual procedures by
which the dogmas of astrology generate individual predictions. In order to go
from an individual's horoscope, which strictly speaking is just a crude chart of
the heavens at the time of the individual's birth, to specific predictions or
statements about the individual, the astrologer must consult a table. This table
says something like, "Sun in Pisces at birth = individual is a good dancer, has
strong feminine characteristics," etc., etc., etc. Now, where did this table
come from? (Note that is such a table, not the horoscope itself, or the
procedures for drawing the horoscope chart, that is the "guts" of astrology.)
The answer is that such tables are simply made up, up whoever wrote the
particular manual of astrology being used! This is why two different astrologers
will rarely, if ever, "read" the same horoscope the same way. Of course, there
are traditional tables, but wherever the table comes from, it is an arbitrary
matching of horoscope features to individual characteristics. The predictions
are generated randomly, as much as if by throwing dice.
This kind of arbitrariness is characteristic of all pseudosciences, not just
astrology. It comes about because the origins of pseudosciences lie not in
observations of nature, which anyone can make, and which are "universal" in
character -- rather, they lie in accidental historical conventions and cultural
traditions. The ancients happened to call the second planet from the sun Venus
and the fifth planet from the sun Jupiter. Had they done it just the other way,
it would not have made the slightest difference to astronomy, which is concerned
with reality -- with the planet itself. Venus would be the big colorfully belted
planet with a red spot and many moons. Jupiter would be the nearest planet to
earth, hellishly hot. The names would be different, but nothing else, since the
names are arbitrary anyway. We could call them "Two" and "Five" if we didn't
want to keep the Babylonian-Greek-Roman tradition of gods' names. But note that
changing the names would make astrology totally different, because
astrology depends only on the names. The "lookup tables" used by astrologers are
generally based entirely on word association and suggestions from the names of
the things in the horoscope. Thus, Jupiter, chief of the gods, is a leader among
gods and men. Venus, goddess of love, rules the emotions. And so on.
Another amusing way to see this arbitrariness is to consider the zodiac, the
named divisions of the ecliptic. The Babylonian astrologers, with their heritage
of worrying about calendars, sometimes used 12 zodiac signs. But there is no
reason for any particular number. The Chinese and Hindus had 28. The Toltec
cultures of Middle America had 20. The Babylonians themselves used anywhere from
6 to 18 at various times. The arbitrariness of numbers of signs -- not to
mention names of signs -- is obvious. If a given group of stars
(unrelated except by the common name!) was given the name "Aries the Ram," this
arbitrarily assigned name then predetermines the most popular "interpretations"
that are the basis of the tables that astrologers must have … for since rams are
aggressive and assertive (in folklore anyway), so will be people born with the
sun (or something) "in Aries." How one would distinguish the aggressiveness of
the ram from that of the goat Capricorn or the scorpion Scorpio is another
problem!
A
problem with astrology which was known to Greek astronomers by 150 BC and may
have been known even earlier arises from the phenomenon known as the precession
of the equinoxes. Because the spin axis of the earth turns in a circle around a
direction perpendicular to the plane of the earth's orbit, the point on the
earth's orbit at which a given season begins changes slowly but continuously. He
problem is that the early astrologers, for whom the sun rose in Aries at the
spring equinox, defined the sun sign of Aries to be centered on the equinox. But
the equinox swings in a great circle along the zodiac and will not return to
Aries for about 26,000 years. Thus today the astrological zodiac sign Aries is
nowhere near the actual constellation Aries which gave the sign its name and
meaning! No sign matches its constellation now!
Of
course, when one has a system based on randomness and arbitrary convention, a
shuffle, mix-up or derangement of the system is unimportant, because the whole
system is just a random word generator, and it continues to generate random
words as you mix it further. The puzzle is how any conscious human being could
remain unaware of the arbitrariness of the procedure, once he understands it.
Returning to the question of the popularity of astrology, psychologists have no
trouble accounting for it. It comes from the uniquely personal aspect of
astrology. Every day you pick up the paper, turn to the astrology column, and
read about yourself! Not Ronald Reagan, not Madonna, not Elizabeth Taylor …
but you, you, you. It's all about you. It's all to do with you. The whole
infinite universe is reduced to dime-store clockwork whose sole purpose is to
tell you whether it's a good day to go shopping or not!
Psychologist shave shown over and over that customers are satisfied with
astrological predictions as long as there is some ritual of personalization. For
example, customers are all given exactly the same vague, general statement. But
half the customers are first asked many detailed questions and have to give much
personal information before getting the statement. And the other half of the
customers are asked for hardly any information at all before getting their
(identical) statement. If is invariably found that the first half rate their
statements as "very accurate," "very satisfactory," etc., while the second half
rate their statements as "all right, but not too precise," or "not as good as
some I've had," etc. All astrological readings of all types are invariably
so-called "formula readings," vague and general statements that apply to
essentially everyone alive, and are in no way specific or individual.
We
often refer to the 20th century as the age of science. Modern science
has devastated the foundations of astrology at every possible point. For
instance, the time of birth of an individual is in no way significant. The
individual is formed at conception, 9 months before birth. What are the
astrological implications of caesarian sections or induced deliveries? Modern
biology has uncovered the molecular basis of genetic inheritance, and there is
no room for astrology anywhere in the picture. Molecules don't have horoscopes.
From the standpoint of physics and astronomy, astrology is even more ludicrous
than from the standpoint of biology and genetics. The gravitational force
exerted on a newborn baby by the earth itself is more than a million times
greater than that exerted by any celestial object; the tidal stress exerted by
the mother and the hospital building are likewise a million times greater than
that exerted by any celestial body. The electromagnetic radiation falling on
the baby from the hospital room lights is a million times more intense than that
from any other celestial object except the sun itself. Most important of all,
human beings are made of atoms; everything is made of atoms. If there were any
actual phenomenon of nature underlying astrology, everything would be
affected, not just human beings. The forces of nature are universal, exerted
from atom to atom, and do not discriminate between living and nonliving matter.
In
short, there is nothing whatsoever in all of nature as we know it that gives any
credibility to any astrological idea. There is nothing whatsoever in astrology
itself that gives any credence to any astrological idea. As a belief system
astrology is arbitrary and unjustifiable, and has no connection to reality at
any point.
An
interesting experiment suggested by astronomer Derral Mulholland is to read your
newspaper (or any other) daily horoscope "reading" for a week or two,
checking it against your daily experience. Then, for the same length of time,
read a totally different and supposedly inapplicable "horoscope." You will find
no difference in the accuracy, or lack thereof, of the "readings." It seems
hardly possible that any thinking human being could take any aspect of astrology
seriously, after having had any experience with it. But one should never
underestimate the extent of human irrationality.
There are more than 10,000 practicing astrologers in the U.S., and Americans
spend more than $200 million annually consulting astrologers. In short, millions
of Americans, from Ronald Reagan to minimum wage earners, will doubtless
continue to regulate some part of their daily schedule in accord with the
arbitrary and potentially harmful "advice" generated by the mindless
random-advice generator provided by astrology. Ironically, they will therefore
continue to pay unknowing lip service to the tenets of an otherwise forgotten
religion of ancient Babylon.
For further reading
The Gemini Syndrome,
by R. B. Culver and P. A. Ianna, Prometheus, New York, 1984
Astrology: Sense or
Nonsense? by Roy A. Gallant, Doubleday, New York, 1974
"A Double-Blind Test
of Astrology," by Shawn Carlson. Nature, Vol. 318, Dec. 5, 1985, pp.
419-425.
"Does Astrology Need to be
True? Part 1: A Look at the Real Thing," by Geoffrey Dean. The Skeptical
Inquirer, Vol. 11, No. 2, Winter 1986-87, pp. 166-184; "Part 2: The Answer
is No," by Geoffrey Dean, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 11, No. 3, Spring
1987, pp. 257-273.
Acknowledgments
ASTOP -- The Austin Society
to Oppose Pseudoscience -- has prepared fact sheets on various topics for the
benefit of teachers and others interested in promoting critical thinking. Dr.
Rory Coker, Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, is the
author of this fact sheet. The International Cultic Studies Association
(formerly American Family Foundation), a professional research and educational
organization concerned about the harmful effects of cultic and related
involvements, prints and helps distribute these
fact sheets. Because ASTOP fact sheets seek to stimulate critical thinking,
rather than advance a particular point of view, opinions expressed are those of
the authors. These fact sheets may be copied for educational purposes, but
they may not be reproduced for resale.
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