I think this theory is begging the question. Why would these prehistoric women see children behave in different ways and then assume the difference is due to what time of year they were born in, as opposed to some other characteristic like hair color? You’re saying that astrology originated from a common existing belief in the importance of what time of year a person was born in. Do you have any evidence that such beliefs were common?
Yes, and you’ve jumped ahead of that. The first stage of your study should be to find out of there are any set of characteristics related to what time of year a person is born. The second stage would be to find out if there is any widespread belief that such a relationship exists.
I was not even trying to go that far. I am only suggesting that some very ancient folklore about nativity omens might have been one of the inspirations for developing the genethlialogical canons, not that they influenced the way they turned out. And maybe some of those nativity omens had a basis in reality, but that probably didn’t last very long.
Perhaps “scientific basis for astrology” was a poor choice of words but it did seem to get people stirred up.
Also, I learned a new word today. Can you guess what it is?
See post #40 by KidCharlemagne.
- Note that due to precession, the astrological months are off by a month from the actual zodiac constellations. So almost few of the people born in Leo, for example, actually had the Sun in Leo at birth. Plus the cusps are all over the place and non-uniform and on and on.
When your belief system doesn’t match … your belief system, you have problems.
- I want to be absolutely clear. If a kid born in dead winter turns out to have a higher chance of having trait X the chances that the astrologers predict the kid will have trait X is virtually zero. If anyone of them were right the numbers will come out the same as the rain drop effect.
So proof of trait based on time of year has absolutely, positively nothing do with astrology.
I am a Scorpio, and we don’t believe in all that astrology shit. We are all like that.
A sign like “Leo” denotes a position on the ecliptic with the same solar position as it had thousands of years ago when the system was devised. If you have Faith you accept this. If you don’t you don’t.
Yes, this means that the water signs — Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces — are now actually occupied by the Air constellations, or rather the boundaries between Air and Earth constellations, but this is the least of the problems!
FTR, the Randi thing was what I started to post earlier. Here, however, kenobi uses it much better than I would have.
Kimstu: I think the reason we got sideways is because we have been interpreting the term “astrology” differently. I was using the term astrology very loosely to mean using the position of objects in the night sky to help explain the occurrence, and not necessarily the cause, of non-astronomical phenomena whenever used by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. You, however, appear to use the term “astrology” to specifically refer to a belief system used in ancient Mesopotamia and later adopted by the ancient Greeks that is still talked about today. Despite your allegation that almost everything I have said is “COMPLETE BULLSHIT” (I am not disputing this), I still find your responses helpful.
Thanks! Preparatory to walking that back a bit, I still maintain that there is no historically plausible way to get from specific seasonal birth predictions in some hypothesized prehistoric folklore to any specific astrological nativity system. Astrology proper had already become much more astronomically complex than mere seasonal cycles (focusing instead on planetary position relationships in zodiacal signs and “houses”, for instance) long before the concept of individual birth horoscopes was developed. The idea that such hypothetical prehistoric folklore could provide anything like a “scientific basis” for any known genethlialogical system is indeed complete bullshit.
However, you’re not wrong that the birth omen part of such genethlialogical predictions—i.e., the part where some kind of birth circumstance is associated with some specific predicted characteristic on the part of the native, such as having small eyes or liking to gamble or whatever—had to come from somewhere. It seems most likely to me that first-millennium-BCE Babylonian scribes made most of those omens up themselves, but it is also reasonable to speculate that some of them could have been part of traditional folklore that was passed down even from as far back as prehistory.
So, for example, if a Babylonian or Hellenistic horoscope says something like “Birth in the second watch of the night with Jupiter near the end of Taurus and in opposition to the moon: the child will grow small and fretful”, that is certainly not based in any “scientific” way on any prehistoric folk observations along the lines of “children born in midwinter tend to grow small and fretful”. The disconnect between the basic astronomical cycles understood by prehistoric people and the complicated artificial system of ancient mathematical astrology is simply too great to allow for any meaningful alignment between their models of predicting the future.
Nonetheless, it is quite plausible that the identification of the basic predicted characteristic or apodosis “will grow small and fretful” was originally made far back in the human past. Out of the infinite number of characteristics that a native could be identified as having in a birth prediction, there is a certain subset that’s found in nativity horoscopes, and at least part of that subset could well have become “traditional” a very long time ago.
So I’m not budging on my opinion that the system of cause and effect in the hypothesized prehistoric folk-omen tradition doesn’t in fact provide any “basis” for the system of cause and effect in early genethlialogy. But the particular set of effects that are considered important within the system of genethlialogy could in fact date back to prehistoric tradition, at least in part.
As is so often the case when reading somebody else’s wild-ass imaginings about a subject they don’t know much about, it’s easy to impatiently dismiss their main argument as obviously wrong because it is obviously wrong, and only notice afterwards that somewhere inside their main argument is a smaller point that actually makes sense and suggests a reasonable and interesting line of inquiry. So my apologies for being snappish while working my way down through your originally proposed hypothesis to your valid suggestion.
You and other people in this thread have made unwarranted assumptions about the OP’s theory and have jumped down his throat for no good reason. He simply made the case that perhaps different personality characteristics resulting from different seasons of birth (something that appears to be valid) might have sparked an interest in determining how the time of year affected someone’s “destiny.” Naturally, folk scientists might have made the perfectly reasonable assumption that the seasonally repeating patterns in the sky were predictive. Just because astrology morphed into something hideously unscientific doesn’t mean it wasn’t born from a reasonably scientific hypothesis. The person who made the leap from personality to season to stars was probably the prehistoric equivalent of an Archimedean Erickson (the sciences were integrated then ;)) and was likely every bit as rational and intelligent as modern scientists.
Instead of of having read the OP, you seem to have blindly and reflexively reacted to the word “astrology” with an impressive but largely irrelevant post-historic argument about the origins of astrology. Frankly, I think you and others owe the OP an apology.
Oh gee, here we go again. From the beginning:
A) I’ve already apologized for my snappish tone aka “jumping down the OP’s throat” in critiquing his hypothesis, so I’ll cop to that.
B) The OP described his speculation as a possible “scientific basis for astrology”. As he clarified in post #49, that was rather misleading if he wasn’t in fact claiming that his hypothesized prehistoric interest in seasonal differences in birth characteristics is what the ancient practice of nativity horoscopes was ultimately based on. Which it wasn’t. Because, as already explained, nativity horoscopes were an offshoot of a different form of astrological prediction not concerned with individual characteristics.
C) You are engaging in the same sort of vague and misleading halfassery as the OP when you speak of ancient astrology “morph[ing] into something hideously unscientific” even though it might have been “born from a reasonably scientific hypothesis” ultimately because of some “person who made the leap from personality to season to stars”.
What is it exactly that you’re trying to suggest happened in this supposed “morphing” process? Because you seem to be implying, like the OP, that the hypothesized prehistoric “season -> personal characteristics” cause-and-effect model ultimately gave rise, via somebody’s “leap” from “season to stars”, to the ancient nativity-horoscope “astronomical configuration -> personal characteristics” cause-and-effect model.
But it didn’t. Here’s the sequence of events as supported by historical data:
1) [Hypothesized prehistoric system of empirical inferences about causal connections between birth season and personal characteristics, for which there is zero actual evidence but it’s still a reasonable speculation.]
[… Passage of massive amounts of time …]
2) Early-mid 2nd millennium BCE: Cuneiform records of Old-Babylonian divinatory “protasis-and-apodosis” omen collections, inferring causal connections between all sorts of earthly events (especially the appearance of the livers of sacrificed animals) and all sorts of predicted consequences. There is AFAIK no trace of any coherent divinatory system of predicting native characteristics from birth season.
3) In the same period or a little later: Appearance of fragmentary records of celestial omens inferring causal connections between astronomical phenomena and major earthly events affecting entire regions and states. These events are considered to be divine messages from the gods associated with the astronomical bodies involved. They are Big News and not interpreted as applicable to the individual fate of just any old Joe Beles-sunu.
4) Around the end of the second millennium: First surviving complete celestial omen connections, containing entire systems of such predictions for states and regions from celestial events. This is a massive state-sponsored enterprise(s), and includes increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of astronomical phenomena and their cycles.
5) About the middle of the first millennium BCE: Increasingly accurate mathematical astronomy models integrating the cyclical motions of all the known heavenly bodies, still accompanied by detailed ominous interpretation of their phenomena. (It may seem paradoxical to us that even as Babylonian scientists of the period determined ever more mathematically predictable and non-random models for celestial motions, they continued to interpret them as omens, i.e., deliberate messages from the gods about specific state circumstances. But in practice, that just made their presumed future-predicting capabilities more impressive and influential.)
6) Mid-first millennium BCE: Achaemenid Empire conquers Babylonia and turns it into imperial satrapy. State interest in (and financial support for) interpreting “celestial messages” from Babylonian deities sharply decreases.
7) Mid- to late first millennium BCE up to first century CE: Continuing mathematical refinement of astronomical systems by temple scientists. Emergence of the practice of casting individual birth horoscopes, using many of the same astronomical models, “protasis” phenomena, and computational techniques employed for the previous state-based ominous interpretations of predicted and/or observed celestial events.
**That sequence does not describe a process of causal models of individual characteristics based on time of birth “morphing” from a “reasonably scientific hypothesis” into “something hideously unscientific”.
The direct line of descent you and the OP seem to be trying to draw, from hypothesized prehistoric reasonable “seasonal” causal inferences about individual characteristics to attested Late-Babylonian “astrological” causal inferences about individual characteristics, does not exist.**
Then how did people guess my sign from my photo? 1 out of 12 chances? How do I guess others by looking at them?
There is a tendency people have to take an idea (whether rooted in fact or not) and run with it. I have no cite for this, but this happens all the time. It’s almost as if we believe that the elaborations help justify the basic concept.
I’m only slightly familiar with traditional Chinese medicine, but I feel some of that is going on there. Western medicine gets it too. The low-fat nutrition craze comes out of that.
Children don’t “crawl about freely” in their first few months, because they don’t crawl at all.
Primitive societies all came up with similar ways to keep their babies handy. Cradle boards (often called papooses) in the Northern Hemisphere, and slings/pouches in other areas were the most common. Generally, you can expect at least two changes of season (i.e., spring to fall, winter to summer, etc.) before starts crawling.
So, you are proposing that the 27 million other people in the US who share your birth sign look sufficiently similar that it can be determined from nothing more than a photo? And that goes for each of the other 11 signs? If not, what percentage of people born under the same sun sign have such characteristics? What would be the mechanism by which people born all over the US under the same sun sign come to resemble one another? The idea is absurd on the face of it, and doesn’t withstand a moment’s consideration.
“Confirmation bias” means that your remember the occasions when people correctly guessed your sign, or you guessed theirs. Conversely, you forget when the guesses are wrong. You’re going to have to provide some actual evidence rather than anecdotes before anyone could consider this seriously.
That was what we call around here in General Questions- a “Question”.
Well, for one, Leos are obviously less talented in scientific matters, unlike those born under the the academically propitious sign of Gemini.
From here
I predict, from looking at the “stars” in this thread that this evidence will be roundly ignored by the super-skeptics who go apeshit hogwild at even the mention of the word 'astrology".
Yes, the reach from seasonal births differences to astrology is pretty damn far.
But I see by those links that the basic idea of the OP- that what season you are born in could make a discernable difference.
So, the Ops hypothesis, while likely wrong, is interesting, and perhaps worthy of further study.
What an absurd post. It seems like it was made by a newbie, rather than someone who is familiar how this board words and the standards of GQ.
If the OP didn’t mean to propose a “scientific basis for astrology,” then he shouldn’t have titled the thread that way. In fact, as he acknowledges, that’s the main thing that has sparked the degree of attention it has. And when he introduces it in the OP, and doesn’t clarify it for some time later, you can’t fault others for discussing that.
Thanks for the links to studies on personality differences in people born at different times of the year. That’s kind of interesting, but not exactly Earth-shattering. What might make it of more general interest is if there were some link to astrology, and you’re several large steps away from that. Without that link, the information becomes “so what”?
Again, you’re indulging in the same kind of speculation in the absence of evidence as the OP. “But it could happen!” or “It might be so!” is not scientific argumentation but bullshitting.