Astrology
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.
|
