Astrology
In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, fall asleep learning about Astrology. Sure, you've heard episodes on astronomy and the like, but this one takes it even further, striving to give evidence for and against astrology being a pseudoscience or not. Happy listening!
Transcript
Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,
Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster.
Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,
Astrology.
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices,
Recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century,
That claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects.
Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE,
These practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications.
Most if not all cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky,
And some,
Such as the Hindus,
Chinese,
And the Maya,
Developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations.
Western astrology,
One of the oldest astrological systems still in use,
Can trace its roots to 19th to 17th century BCE Mesopotamia,
From where it spread to ancient Greece,
Rome,
The Islamic world,
And eventually Central and Western Europe.
Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person's personality,
And predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects.
The majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.
Throughout most of its history,
Astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and was common in academic circles,
Often in close relation with astronomy,
Alchemy,
Meteorology,
And medicine.
It was present in political circles and is mentioned in various works of literature.
From Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare,
Lope de Vega,
And Calderón de la Barca.
During the Enlightenment,
However,
Astrology lost its status as an area of legitimate scholarly pursuit.
Following the end of the 19th century and the wide-scale adoption of the scientific method,
Researchers have successfully challenged astrology on both theoretical and experimental grounds and have shown it to have no scientific validity or explanatory power.
Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing in the Western world,
And common belief in it largely declined until a continuing resurgence started in the 1960s.
In India,
Belief in astrology is long-standing,
Widespread,
And continuing.
The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia,
Which derives from the Greek from astron,
Star,
And logia,
Study of,
Account of the stars.
The word entered the English language via Latin and medieval French,
And its use overlapped considerably with that of astronomy,
Derived from the Latin astronomia.
By the 17th century,
Astronomy became established as a scientific term,
With astrology referring to divinations and schemes for predicting human affairs.
Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events,
And the Indians,
Chinese,
And Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations.
A form of astrology was practiced in the Old Babylonian period of Mesopotamia,
Circa 1800 BCE.
Bodega Joista is one of the earliest known Hindu texts on astronomy and astrology.
The text is dated between 1400 BCE to final centuries BCE by various scholars according to astronomical and linguistic evidences.
Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou Dynasty.
Hellenistic astrology,
After 332 BCE,
Mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian techanic astrology in Alexandria,
Creating horoscopic astrology.
Alexander the Great's conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to ancient Greece and Rome.
In Rome,
Astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom.
After the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century,
Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars,
And Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian.
In the 12th century,
Arabic texts were imported to Europe and translated into Latin.
Major astronomers including Tycho Brahe,
Johannes Kepler,
And Galileo practiced as court astrologers.
Astrological references appear in literature in the works of poets,
Such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer,
And of playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.
Throughout most of its history,
Astrology was considered a scholarly tradition.
It was accepted in political and academic contexts,
And was connected with other studies such as astronomy,
Alchemy,
Meteorology,
And medicine.
At the end of the 17th century,
New scientific concepts in astronomy and physics,
Such as heliocentrism and Newtonian mechanics,
Called astrology into question.
Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing,
And common belief in astrology has largely declined.
Astrology in its broadest sense is the search for meaning in the sky.
Early evidence for humans making conscious attempts to measure,
Record,
And predict seasonal changes,
By reference to astronomical cycles,
Appears as markings in bones and cave walls,
Which shows that lunar cycles were being noted as early as 25,
000 years ago.
This was the first step towards recording the moon's influence upon tides and rivers,
And towards organizing a communal calendar.
Farmers addressed agricultural needs with increasing knowledge of the constellations that appear in the different seasons,
And used the rising of particular star groups to herald annual floods or seasonal activities.
By the 3rd millennium BCE,
Civilizations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles,
And may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars.
Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known astrological references are copies of texts made in the ancient world.
The Venus tablet of Emma Seduca is thought to have been compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE.
A scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler,
Gudea of Lagash.
This describes how the gods revealed to him,
In a dream,
The constellations that would be most favorable for the planned construction of a temple.
However,
There is controversy about whether these were genuinely recorded at the time,
Or merely ascribed to ancient rulers by posterity.
The oldest undisputed evidence of the use of astrology as an integrated system of knowledge is therefore attributed to the records of the First Dynasty of Mesopotamia.
This astrology had some parallels with Hellenistic Greek Western astrology,
Including the zodiac,
A norming point near nine degrees in Aries,
The trine aspect,
Planetary exaltations,
And the dodecahedron,
The twelve divisions of thirty degrees each.
The Babylonians viewed celestial events as possible signs,
Rather than as causes of physical events.
The system of Chinese astrology was elaborated during the Zhou Dynasty and flourished during the Han Dynasty,
During which all the familiar elements of traditional Chinese culture—the yin-yang philosophy,
Theory of the five elements,
Heaven and earth,
Confucian morality—were brought together to formalize the philosophical principles of Chinese medicine and divination,
Astrology and alchemy.
The ancient Arabs that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief of fatalism,
Qadar,
Alongside a fearful consideration for the sky and the stars,
Which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on earth and for the destiny of humankind.
Accordingly,
They shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena.
The Hellenistic schools of philosophical skepticism criticized the rationality of astrology.
Criticism of astrology by academic skeptics such as Cicero,
Carnetus,
Favarinus,
And Pyrrhonistus such as Sextus Empiricus have been preserved.
Carnetus argued that belief in fate denies free will and morality,
That people born at different times can all die in the same accident or battle,
And that contrary to uniform influences from the stars,
Tribes and cultures are all different.
Cicero stated the twins' objection that with close birth times,
Personal outcomes can be very different,
Later developed by Augustine.
He argued that since the other planets are much more distant from the earth than the moon,
They could have only very tiny influence compared to the moons.
He also argued that if astrology explains everything about a person's fate,
Then it wrongly ignores the visible effect of inherited ability and parenting,
Changes in health worked by medicine,
Or the effects of the weather on people.
Favarinus argued that it was absurd to imagine that stars and planets would affect human bodies in the same way as they affect the tides,
And equally absurd that small motions in the heavens cause large changes in people's fates.
Sextus Empiricus argued that it was absurd to link human attributes with myths about the signs of the zodiac,
And wrote an entire book,
Against the Astrologers,
Compiling arguments against astrology.
Against the Astrologers was the fifth section of a larger work,
Arguing against philosophical and scientific inquiry in general,
Against the professors.
Plotinus,
A Neoplatonist,
Argued that since the fixed stars are much more distant than the planets,
It is laughable to imagine the planets' effect on human affairs should depend on their position with respect to the zodiac.
He also argues that the interpretation of the moon's conjunction with a planet as good when the moon is full,
But bad when the moon is waning,
Is clearly wrong,
As,
From the moon's point of view,
Half of its surface is always in sunlight.
And from the planet's point of view,
Waning should be better,
As then the planet sees some light from the moon,
But,
When the moon is full to us,
It is dark,
And therefore bad,
On the side facing the planet in question.
In 525 BCE,
Egypt was conquered by the Persians.
The 1st century BCE Egyptian Dendera Zodiac shares two signs,
The balance and the scorpion,
With Mesopotamian astrology.
With the occupation by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE,
Egypt became Hellenistic.
The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander after the conquest,
Becoming the place where Babylonian astrology was mixed with Egyptian Decanic astrology to create Horoscopic astrology.
This contained the Babylonian Zodiac with its system of planetary exaltations,
The triplicities of the signs and the importance of eclipses.
It used the Egyptian concept of dividing the Zodiac into 36 decans of 10 degrees each,
With an emphasis on the rising decan and the Greek system of planetary gods,
Sign rulership and four elements.
2nd century BCE texts predict the positions of planets in Zodiac signs at the time of the rising of certain decans,
Particularly Sothis.
The astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy lived in Alexandria.
Ptolemy's works,
The Tetrabiblos,
Formed the basis of Western astrology and enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more.
The conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great exposed the Greeks to ideas from Syria,
Babylon,
Persia and Central Asia.
Around 280 BCE,
Perasus,
A priest of Bel from Babylon,
Moved to the Greek island of Kos,
Teaching astrology and Babylonian culture.
By the 1st century BCE,
There were two varieties of astrology,
One using horoscopes to describe the past,
Present and future,
The other,
Thorgic,
Emphasizing the soul's ascent to the stars.
Greek influence played a crucial role in the transmission of astrological theory to Rome.
The first definite reference to astrology in Rome comes from the orator Cato,
Who in 1160 BCE warned farm overseers against consulting with Chaldeans,
Who were described as Babylonian star-gazers.
Among both Greeks and Romans,
Babylonia,
Also known as Chaldea,
Became so identified with astrology that Chaldean wisdom became synonymous with divination using planets and stars.
The 2nd century Roman poet and satirist Juvenal complains about the pervasive influence of Chaldeans,
Saying,
Still more trusted are the Chaldeans.
Every word uttered by the astrologer,
They will believe,
Has come from Haman's fountain.
One of the first astrologers to bring Hermetic astrology to Rome was Thrasyllus,
Astrologer to the emperor Tiberius,
The first emperor to have had a court astrologer,
Though his predecessor Augustus had used astrology to help legitimize his imperial rites.
The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations,
Notably the Bhratparasara,
Horasastra,
And Saravali by Kilanya Navarma.
The Horasastra is a composite work of 71 chapters,
Of which the first part,
Chapters 1-51,
Dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries,
And the second part,
Chapters 52-71,
To the later 8th century.
The Saravali likewise dates to around 800 CE.
English translations of these texts were published by N.
N.
Krishna Rao and V.
B.
Chandari in 1963 and 1961,
Respectively.
Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars following the collapse of Alexandria to the Arabs in the 7th century and the founding of the Abbasid Empire in the 8th.
The second Abbasid caliph,
Al-Mansur,
Founded the city of Baghdad to act as a center of learning and included in its design a library translation center,
Known as Bayt al-Hikmah – House of Wisdom,
Which continued to receive development from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic-Persian translations of Hellenistic astrological texts.
The early translators included Mashallah,
Who helped to elect the time for the foundation of Baghdad,
And Saul ibn Bishr,
A.
K.
A.
Zayel,
Whose texts were directly influential upon later European astrologers,
Such as Guido Bonatti in the 13th century and William Lilly in the 17th century.
Much of the Arabic texts started to become imported into Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century.
In the 7th century,
Isidore of Seville argued in his etymology that astronomy described the movements of the heavens,
While astrology had two parts – one was scientific,
Describing the movements of the sun,
The moon,
And the stars,
While the other,
Making predictions,
Was theologically erroneous.
The first astrological book published in Europe was the Liber Planetis et Mundi Climatibus – Book of the Planets and Regions of the World,
Which appeared between 1010 and 1027 A.
D.
And may have been authored by Gerberd of Auerlach.
Ptolemy's 2nd century A.
D.
Tetrabiblos was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1138.
The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in proposing that the stars ruled the imperfect subliminary body while attempting to reconcile astrology with Christianity by stating that God ruled the soul.
The 13th century mathematician Campanus of Novara is said to have devised a system of astrological houses that divides the prime vertical into houses of equal 30-degree arcs,
Though the system was used earlier in the East.
The 13th century astronomer Guido Bonatti wrote a textbook,
The Liber Astronomicus,
A copy of which King Henry VII of England owned at the end of the 15th century.
In Paradiso,
The final part of the Divine Comedy,
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri referred in countless details to the astrological planets,
Though he adapted traditional astrology to suit his Christian viewpoint,
For example,
Using astrological thinking in his prophecies of the reform of Christendom.
John Gower in the 14th century defined astrology as essentially limited to the making of predictions.
The influence of the stars was in turn divided into natural astrology,
With,
For example,
Effects on tides and the growth of plants,
And judicial astrology with supposedly predictable effects on people.
The 14th century skeptic Nicolai Oresme,
However,
Included astronomy as part of astrology in his Livre des Divinations.
Oresme argued that current approaches to prediction of events such as plagues,
Wars,
And weather were inappropriate,
But that such prediction was a valid field of inquiry.
However,
He attacked the use of astrology to choose the timing of actions,
So-called interrogation and election,
As wholly false,
And rejected the determination of human action by the stars on grounds of free will.
The friar Laurence Pinion similarly rejected all forms of divination and determinism,
Including by the stars,
In his 1411 Contre les Diviners.
This was in opposition to the tradition carried by the Arab astronomer al-Bumazar,
Whose Introductorium in Astronomium and De Magnis Cognitionibus argued the view that both individual actions and larger-scale history are determined by the stars.
In the late 15th century,
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola forcefully attacked astrology in Disputationes contra astrologos,
Arguing that the heavens neither caused nor heralded earthly events.
His contemporary Pietro Pomponazzi,
A rationalistic and critical thinker,
Was much more sanguine about astrology and critical of Pico's attack.
Renaissance scholars commonly practiced astrology.
Gerolamo Cardano cast the horoscope of King Edward VI of England,
While John Dee was the personal astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Catherine de' Medici paid Michael Nostradamus in 1566 to verify the prediction of the death of her husband,
King Henry II of France,
Made by her astrologer,
Lucas Caracus.
Major astronomers who practiced as court astrologers included Tycho Brahe in the royal court of Denmark,
Ioannis Kepler to the Habsburgs,
Galileo Galilei to the Medici,
And Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600.
The distinction between astrology and astronomy was not entirely clear.
Advances in astronomy were often motivated by the desire to improve the accuracy of astrology.
Kepler,
For example,
Was driven by a belief in harmonies between earthly and celestial affairs,
Yet he disparaged the activities of most astrologers as evil-smelling tongue.
Ephemerides with complex astrological calculations and almanacs interpreting celestial events for use in medicine and for choosing times to plant crops were popular in Elizabethan England.
In 1597,
The English mathematician and physician Thomas Hood made a set of paper instruments that used revolving overlays to help students work out relationships between fixed stars or constellations,
The midheaven,
And the twelve astrological houses.
Hood's instruments also illustrated for pedagogical purposes the supposed relationships between the signs of the zodiac,
The planets,
And the parts of the human body adherents believed were governed by the planets and signs.
While Hood's presentation was innovative,
His astrological information was largely standard and was taken from Gerard Mercator's astrological disc made in 1551,
Or a source used by Mercator.
Despite its popularity,
Renaissance astrology had what historian Gabor Almasy calls elite debate,
Exemplified by the polemical letters of Swiss physician Thomas Erastus,
Who fought against astrology,
Calling it vanity and superstition.
Then,
Around the time of the new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577,
There began what Almasy called an extended epistemological reform,
Which began the process of excluding religion,
Astrology and anthropocentrism from scientific debate.
By 1679,
The yearly publication La Canaissance des Temps issued astrology as a legitimate topic.
During the Enlightenment,
Intellectual sympathy for astrology fell away,
Leaving only a popular following supported by cheap almanacs.
Roman-English almanac compiler Richard Saunders followed the spirit of the age by printing a derisive Discourse on the Invalidity of Astrology,
While in France,
Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire of 1697 stated that the subject was puerile.
The Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift ridiculed the Whig political astrologer John Partridge.
In the second half of the 17th century,
The Society of Astrologers,
A trade,
Educational and social organization,
Sought to unite London's often factious astrologers in the task of revitalizing astrology.
Following the template of the popular feasts of mathematicians,
They endeavored to defend their art in the face of growing religious criticism.
The Society hosted banquets,
Exchanged instruments and manuscripts,
Proposed research projects,
And funded the publication of sermons that depicted astrology as a legitimate biblical pursuit for Christians.
They commissioned sermons that argued astrology was divine,
Hebraic,
And scripturally supported by Bible passages about the Magi and the Sons of Seth.
According to historian Michel Pfeffer,
The Society's public relations campaign ultimately failed.
Modern historians have mostly neglected the Society of Astrologers in favor of the still extant Royal Society,
Even though both organizations initially had some of the same members.
Astrology saw a popular revival starting in the 19th century as part of a general revival of spiritualism and later New Age philosophy,
And through the influence of mass media such as newspaper horoscopes.
In the 20th century,
The psychiatrist Carl Jung developed some concepts concerning astrology,
Which led to the development of psychological astrology.
Advocates have defined astrology as a symbolic language,
An art form,
A science,
And a method of divination.
Though most cultural astrology systems share common roots in ancient philosophies that influenced each other,
Many use methods that differ from those in the West.
These include Hindu astrology,
Also known as Indian astrology,
And in modern times referred to as Vedic astrology,
And Chinese astrology,
Both of which have influenced the world's cultural history.
Western astrology is a form of divination based on the construction of a horoscope for an exact moment,
Such as a person's birth.
It uses the tropical zodiac,
Which is aligned to the equinoctial points.
Western astrology is founded on the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies such as the sun,
Moon,
And planets,
Which are analyzed by their movement through signs of the zodiac,
Twelve spatial divisions of the ecliptic,
And by their aspects,
Based on geometric angles relative to one another.
They are also considered by their placement in houses,
Twelve spatial divisions of the sky.
Astrology's modern representation in Western popular media is usually reduced to sun sign astrology,
Which considers only the zodiac sign of the sun at an individual's date of birth,
And represents only one twelfth of the total chart.
The horoscope visually expresses the set of relationships for the time and place of the chosen event.
These relationships are between the seven planets,
Signifying tendencies such as war and love,
The twelve signs of the zodiac,
And the twelve houses.
Each planet is at a particular sign and a particular house at the chosen time,
When observed from the chosen place,
Creating two kinds of relationship.
A third kind is the aspect of each planet to every other planet,
Where,
For example,
Two planets 120 degrees apart,
In trine,
Are in a harmonious relationship,
But two planets 90 degrees apart,
Square,
Are in a conflicted relationship.
Together these relationships and their interpretations are said to form the language of the heavens speaking to learned men.
Along with tarot divination,
Astrology is one of the core studies of Western esotericism,
And as such has influenced systems of magical belief not only among Western esotericists and hermeticists,
But also belief systems such as Wicca,
Which have borrowed from or been influenced by the Western esoteric tradition.
Tanya Lerman has said that all magicians know something about astrology,
And refers to a table of correspondences in Starhawk's The Spiral Dance,
Organized by Planet,
As an example of the astrological lore studied by magicians.
The earliest Vedic text on astronomy is the Vindanga Ayotisha.
Vedic thought later came to include astrology as well.
Hindu natal astrology originated with Hellenistic astrology by the 3rd century BCE,
Though incorporating the Hindu lunar mansions.
The names of the signs,
The planets,
And astrological terms in Varaha Mihira's texts are considered conclusive evidence of a Greek origin for Hindu astrology.
The Indian techniques may also have been augmented with some of the Babylonian techniques.
Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy,
Theory of the three harmonies heaven,
Earth,
And man,
And uses concepts such as yin and yang,
The five phases,
The ten celestial stems,
The twelve earthly branches,
And shishun.
The early use of Chinese astrology was mainly confined to political astrology,
The observation of unusual phenomena,
Identification of portents,
And the selection of auspicious days for events and decisions.
The constellations of the zodiac of Western Asia and Europe were not used.
Instead,
The sky is divided into three enclosures,
And twenty-eight mansions,
And twelve qi.
The Chinese zodiac of twelve animal signs is said to represent twelve different types of personality.
It is based on cycles of years,
Lunar months,
And two-hour periods of the day.
The zodiac traditionally begins with the sign of the rat,
And the cycle proceeds through eleven other animal signs,
The ox,
Tiger,
Rabbit,
Dragon,
Snake,
Horse,
Goat,
Monkey,
Rooster,
Dog,
And pig.
Complex systems of predicting fate and destiny based on one's birthday,
Birth season,
And birth hours,
Such as zhìpíng and zhìwǎidùshū,
Are still used regularly in modern-day Chinese astrology.
They do not rely on direct observations of the stars.
The Korean zodiac is identical to the Chinese one,
The Vietnamese zodiac is almost identical to the Chinese except for the second animal being the water buffalo instead of the ox,
And the fourth animal the cat instead of the rabbit.
The Japanese have,
Since 1873,
Celebrated the beginning of the new year on the first of January,
As per the Gregorian calendar.
The Thai zodiac begins not at Chinese New Year,
But either on the first day of the fifth month in the Thai lunar calendar,
Or during the Songkran festival now celebrated every 13th through 15th of April,
Depending on the purpose of the use.
Augustine believed that the determinism of astrology conflicted with the Christian doctrines of man's free will and responsibility,
And God not being the cause of evil,
But he also grounded his opposition philosophically,
Citing the failure of astrology to explain twins who behave differently,
Although conceived at the same moment and born at approximately the same time.
Some of the practices of astrology were contested on theological grounds by medieval Muslim astronomers such as Al-Farabi,
Ibn al-Haytham,
And Avicenna.
They said that the methods of astrologers conflicted with orthodox religious views of Islamic scholars by suggesting that the will of God can be known and predicted.
For example,
Avicenna's refutation against astrology argues against the practice of astrology while supporting the principle that planets may act as agents of divine causation.
Avicenna considered that the movement of the planets influenced life on earth in a deterministic way,
But argued against the possibility of determining the exact influence of the stars.
Essentially,
Avicenna did not deny the core dogma of astrology,
But denied our ability to understand it to the extent that precise and fatalistic predictions could be made from it.
Martin Luther denounced astrology in his Table Talk.
He asks why twins like Esau and Jacob had two different natures,
Yet were born at the same time.
Luther also compared astrologers to those who say their dice will always land on a certain number.
Although the dice may roll on the number a couple of times,
The predictor is silent for all the times the dice fails to land on that number.
What is done by God ought not to be ascribed to the stars.
The upright and true Christian religion opposes and confutes all such fables.
Martin Luther,
Table Talk.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains that divination,
Including predictive astrology,
Is incompatible with modern Catholic beliefs,
Such as free will.
All forms of divination are to be rejected—recourse to Satan or demons,
Conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to unveil the future.
Consulting horoscopes,
Astrology,
Palm reading,
Interpretation of omens and lots,
The phenomena of clairvoyance and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire to power over time,
History,
And in the last analysis,
Other human beings,
And as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers.
They contradict the honor,
Respect,
And loving fear that we owe to God alone.
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The scientific community rejects astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe and considers it a pseudoscience.
Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted and no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions.
There is no proposed mechanism of action by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on earth that does not contradict basic and well-understood aspects of biology and physics.
Those who have faith in astrology have been characterized by scientists,
Including Bart J.
Bach,
As doing so in spite of the fact that there is no verified scientific basis for their beliefs,
And indeed that there is strong evidence to the contrary.
Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias,
A psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology.
Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true and do not remember those that turn out false.
Another separate form of confirmation bias also plays a role,
Where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those that do not.
Thus,
There are two distinct forms of confirmation bias that are understudied with respect to astrological belief.
Under the criterion of falsifiability first proposed by the philosopher of science Karl Popper,
Astrology is a pseudoscience.
Popper regarded astrology as pseudo-empirical in that it appeals to observation and experiment,
But nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards.
In contrast to scientific disciplines,
Astrology has not responded to falsifications through experiment.
In contrast to Popper,
The philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued that it was not lack of falsifiability that makes astrology unscientific,
But rather that the process and concepts of astrology are non-empirical.
Kuhn thought that though astrologers had historically made predictions that categorically failed,
This in itself does not make astrology unscientific,
Nor do attempts by astrologers to explain away failures by claiming that creating a horoscope is very difficult.
Rather in Kuhn's eyes,
Astrology is not science because it was always more akin to medieval medicine.
Astrologers followed a sequence of rules and guidelines for a seemingly necessary field with known shortcomings,
But they did not research because the fields are not amenable to research,
And so they had no puzzles to solve and therefore no science to practice.
While an astronomer could correct for failure,
An astrologer could not.
An astrologer could not explain away failure,
But could not revise the astrological hypothesis in a meaningful way.
As such,
To Kuhn,
Even if the stars could influence the path of humans through life,
Astrology is not scientific.
The philosopher Paul Thagard asserts that astrology cannot be regarded as falsified in this sense until it has been replaced with a successor.
In the case of predicting behavior,
Psychology is the alternative.
To Thagard,
A further criterion of demarcation of science from pseudoscience is that the state of the art must progress and that the community of researchers should be attempting to compare the current theory to alternatives,
And not be selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations.
Progress is defined here as explaining new phenomena and solving existing problems,
Yet astrology has failed to progress having only changed little in nearly 2,
000 years.
To Thagard,
Astrologers are acting as though engaged in normal science,
Believing that the foundations of astrology were well established,
Despite the many unsolved problems,
And in the face of better alternative theories,
Psychology.
For these reasons,
Thagard views astrology as pseudoscience.
