Of course! That’s why science (yes, a “human-derived model” - also what I thought you were asking about) necessarily has to simplify things, looking at one variable at a time, if it’s to get anywhere…
Do you have any single proposition that “A baby born under condition X has trait Y, thereby leading to (some “astrological” belief)?”
If your answer is “No, it’s more complicated than that” - well, yes, we knew that already.
Yes, observing one variable at a time is an excellent idea and we could do that if we were studying children in real time or studying children in the recent past for which we have lots of information. But at the moment we are just speculating about the folklore of prehistoric societies for which we have very little factual information. Our first step must be to find a way to gather additional factual information. This may be quite difficult. Once we have enough facts, then we could start looking at variables one at a time.
My whole purpose in starting this thread was to see if any posters had any factual information or had some brilliant ideas on how to obtain some factual information about prehistoric oral folklore. We have learned a lot about historical ancient Mesopotamian astrology but that has shed very little light on the possibility (or non-existence) of much earlier prehistoric oral folklore that might also be considered “astrology.”
I think that once the op typed the word “astrology” it ensured that a lot of people would think “woo”. I’m not a believer in celestial bodies light years away determining anything on the orb we call home. But I don’t rule out the time of year a person is born having some effect. Yes, it would be the opposite in the Southern hemisphere. No, it would not apply to everyone. Obtaining factual info on prehistoric oral folklore? Good luck. Unless it was written down at some point, or at least painted on the wall of a cave somewhere, you’re probably out of luck. My answer to your query? Not terribly likely, but I really dunno. That’s often a hard answer for both believers and nonbelievers to give. I tend toward agnosticism in a lot of things.
Also, I don’t think including the word “scientific” was the best idea.
If this were easy and noncontroversial, there would be no point of posting it on the SDMB would there?
That’s not really what I was looking for, but I’ll comment on it anyway.
I should have made this distinction before, but if you are using stars and constellations “only as a calendar” you are talking about astronomy, not astrology. It becomes astrology when you are using the stars to predict divine favor, good luck, or the outcome of a battle. If you are using the stars to predict what month the game will return or the right time to plant to avoid a frost, that’s astronomy. If you are using the stars to predict the success of the hunt or the size of the harvest, that’s astrology. If primitive people observed that individuals born at different times of year had different personalities, that would be based on astronomy, not astrology.
Ok, suppose we grant all of this as being possible or even plausible (despite the lack of specific evidence). As I said before, “So what?” This phenomenon only becomes of more than passing interest if it is linked to modern astrology. If it’s simply an observation specific to prehistoric hunter-gatherers it’s not particularly relevant.
Although you have tried to distance your proposal from modern astrology, it’s the fact that Western astrology links personality traits of the individual to the month of birth (although not the season) that is the entire basis for your speculation. And finding a plausible link between a phenomenon putatively observed by prehistoric hunter gatherers in high latitudes to the a system of divination developed by agriculturalists at lower latitudes is the biggest stumbling block to your idea. These cultures are distant in space and time, and the historical development of Mesopotamian/Western astrology does not suggest such a link.
**Colibri ** this is is going to be my last post because I can see this is probably going to devolve into a parsing of words into oblivion. Normally, I’m a friendly non-confrontational doper, but in this case i simply can’t avoid addressing your hypocrisy and inaccuracies, particularly in light of the smug way in which they’ve been delivered. Let me preface this by repeating that I think the OP’s theory is likely wrong and that it’d be pretty hard to find someone any more skeptical of astrology than I. Let’s start with your first post:
Usually when one prefaces statements with “I am unaware of any studies” as part of an argument there is an implication that they are generally familiar with the subject but want to be rightfully careful. Otherwise, the proper phrasing would be " I’ve never looked into this subject, have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’ll speculate based on my preconceived notions none the less." That’s neither scientific nor up to the standards of GQ (which you accused me of violating). I’m guessing you aren’t very familiar with the subject because the most cursory of Google searches reveals myriad peer-reviewed studies published in reputable scientific journals correlating personality with birth season and some correlating personality to astrological signs.
Any astrological system that developed during or after the birth of complex, state-based agrarian civilization can’t be used to draw conclusions about the potential genesis of astrology by pre-historic hunter-gatherers. They had vastly different concerns and beliefs. Any “conclusion” drawn would be speculative and assumptive and would be just as useless in disproving a hypothesis as it would be in creating one.
This is simply not true. Climate scientists believe avg winter temperatures in Ancient Mesopotamia were 48F (though significantly cooler at night and slightly north - even snow on mountains) while avg temp in summer was likely 110F. That’s a net spread of 62 degrees. Avg winter temp in January in NY is around 32.5F while avg July temp is 76.5F for a spread of 44 degrees. That’s a significant difference. I don’t know about you or where you live but that 44 degree difference feels like a pretty sharp contrast. i’m guessing a 62 degree difference is even sharper. I believe your statement about contrasting temperatures was an uninformed speculation, like those you’ve claimed have been made by me and the OP.
Now just to respond to your last post:
Yea thanks I know what a hypothesis is. First off, the OP isn’t defending a damn Phd Thesis. He came here as a curious guy wanting to hear about what people thought about his idea. Having said that, here are some definitions of hypothesis:
From Merriam Webster
From Wikipedia:
While a hypothesis can’t be a random wild speculation, it can certainly be based on a reasonable observation about how the world works. It doesn’t need hard data. Science would never progress if that were the case because you need an idea to even start the pursuit of evidence. Thank god for scientists that decided an intuitive leap was enough to start a preliminary investigation because otherwise we’d still be in the Stone Age creating astrology because Og and Zorga’s June-born baby was colicky. 
Zoinks this is a doozy. Where did I say it’s up to you to support his hypothesis? You didn’t “point out that the hypothesis lacks supporting evidence.” - which would have been absolutely correct. You said his “proposed hypothesis FAILED even the simplest analysis.” I’m guessing since you so often claim others aren’t scientific that you understand that an unsupported hypothesis is not a disproven one. Let alone when it’s “disproven” by inaccuracies, irrelevancies, and claims that amount to “I haven’t done any research but i doubt you’re right.”
To make myself clear for the last time: I’m not defending his hypothesis. I’m refuting your “debunking” of it.
I should have been more specific. My assessment that his proposal “failed” was not primarily based on the lack of evidence. My assessment was based mainly on my third point, that Mesopotamian astrology’s linkage of personality and birth date was quite different than the kind of linkage he proposed, in that it was not a seasonal pattern.
The point is that, as I’ve already said, the proposal in the OP is based on a feature of this belief system, that personality is linked to date of birth. You can’t divorce the proposal from this belief system, because that’s the “evidence” it’s based on. And even if the proposal that prehistoric peoples observed that personality differences were linked to the season of birth, this only becomes interesting if it’s the basis for the modern belief.
The OP appears to be basing his proposal on areas with even more severe contrasts in temperature, but fine.
As I said, I didn’t just point out that it lacked supporting evidence. My assessment was based on the fact that he was trying to explain a feature specific to Western astrology (which he was). But although under Western astrology there is a relationship between the month of birth and personality, that relationship has nothing to do with the environment since the birth months of people with that personality are scattered through the year. So the model proposed in the OP doesn’t explain this.
You’re also fixating on a couple of statements I made in my first post, while ignoring everything else I and others have posted on it that also debunk it.
Maybe I should start another thread that includes the words “sex”, “Trump”, “bacon”, “scientific”, “tipping”, and “astrology” in the title and see how many hits I can get.
On a more serious note, are there any SDMB people who have studied prehistoric folklore. How does one gather factual information on prehistoric folklore, including folklore not related to the OP? I’m sure somewhere in the world there is a prehistoric folklore scholar.
I’ll be interested to see how you tie all those together.
Given that by definition it couldn’t have been written down that’s going to be difficult.
However, some information on the belief systems of pre-literate peoples can be gleaned from their art, such as cave paintings, petroglyphs, ceramics, ornaments, etc. However, interpretations are necessarily speculative.
One could also look at oral traditions, although the degree to which these might represent the beliefs of ancient cultures is controversial to say the least.
You could look at the folklore of traditional cultures as recorded when they were first contacted by outsiders and draw analogies to ancient ones. However, this has the drawback that the information will have been gathered and interpreted by outsiders, perhaps influenced by their own cultural beliefs and biases.
For the record, while I am not an anthropologist/archaeologist I have been involved in archaeological projects, in particular in developing museum exhibits on Panamanian history including the renovation of Panama’s archaeological museum. In connection with this, I’ve read extensively on pre-literate cultures.
Seems like the study of the causes of specific personality traits in humans (insert your own geography, history, nationality etc.) would need to start with a fairly exhaustive list of personality traits, well enough defined that they could routinely be assigned to people by multiple trained observers in a consistent fashion. Then you would have to have a list of people with their entire personality trait list compared among each other in blind trials and sorted into personality groups. The you would have to sort the base list of personality trait groups by birth date, time, and location. Then a separate list of the same individuals sorted only into groups by birth date, time and location. The degree of similarity of the lists would demonstrate the existence or non existence of the concepts proposed for astrology.
Just so everyone knows, when I said “I’m sure somewhere in the world there is a prehistoric folklore scholar.” that that was just wild-ass speculation pulled out of my ass, also known as Arschschprechen. Also, “kittens.”
Depends on what exactly you mean by “prehistoric folklore,” but I personally know and have worked closely with several archaeologists who have written extensively on the symbology and possible beliefs of prehistoric peoples, particularly in Panama. See for example Observations on the religious content of the animal imagery of the ‘Gran Coclé’ semiotic tradition of pre-Columbian Panama, by Richard Cooke.
Talking about Vedic (Indian Hindu) astrology methods here: At its core, it is a form of divination, and therefore not scientific, though Vedic astrology uses an extensive system of knowledge about stars and constellations. Vedic astrology even knows about and uses the “shadow planets” in its predictions (which science knows as the Lagrangian points arising from the Earth-Moon system). There are thousands of variables: yogas, kalas, doshas, muhurtas… the interplay between these factors, their relative “strength” in a person’s horoscope determines a person’s nature/personality/character. A Vedic astrology horoscope is a computation-intensive task. However extremely advanced adepts can bypass the entire computational aspect of it and rely on pure divination, with or without using a material basis for their intuition.
There are many diverse schools of astrological methods and knowledge in India. One of the more esoteric ones is “Nadi” astrology. You walk in to a Nadi center, give your thumb print, and DOB, and wait. The staff search for parchments that match your print and DOB. Once located, the astrologer calls you in, and reads your life like a story, beginning with the name of your parents, siblings, paternal grand-parents, where you were born, your occupation, your spouse, your kids… everything, until the point in the parchment where it says “Siva says read no further.” At which point the reading ends, you pay and exit. It is stunningly accurate, if the parchments are genuine and the astrologer is not a charlatan.
Transmigratory karma is the absolute basis of astrology, with numerous “past life” influences clearly seen in a person’s horoscope. Hence it is not “scientific” in the conventional sense, but that does not mean it is not accurate or have its place in the vast body of human knowledge.
I don’t think those “ifs” are ever likely to be satisfied.
The title of this thread is “Scientific Basis for Astrology.” If it doesn’t have a scientific basis, then it’s not relevant as an answer in this forum.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator