For anyone who wants to look up the reseach themselves, there was an article in nature testing (natal) astrology a few years ago. Top notch test procedures, looking at just about any complaint that could be lodged against it. Astrologers were all recomended from the “National Council of Geocosmic Reseach” (evidentally a widely regarded astrologers org). Of course, the tests came up negative.
Carlson, Shawn. 1985 “A double-blind test of astrology” Nature 318: pp419-425.
Drawing on my limited contact with astrologers, they fall into two catagories. Some seem to be otherwise intelligent people, who simply trust what they are told-that it works. There are a small number of people, who belive in astrology in the face of knowedge of falsifiying reseach, simply because they want to know something “scientists couldn’t figure out.”
I have understanding for the former, and little tolerance for the latter.
One could say that that evidence shows that there are a lot of bad astrologers, not that the alignment of the stars has no effect on your personality and destiny.
Somewhat in line with what betenoir and Pythagras have said, I find astrology to be an aesthetically pleasing template on which to structure a personal mythology. This isn’t “believing” in it, in the sense that I think that planets and luminaries are in charge of what happens to me. I think most modern astrologers don’t believe that either.
From what I’ve read, the idea is more that astrology functions as a series of metaphors, an intuitive way of thinking about one’s self and the cycles one passes through in life, about the archetypes that are activated and the associations that slide across the thin edge between conscious and unconscious thought. I don’t think you have to “fool yourself”, just be aware that you are working with symbols and honest about how you apply them to yourself.
In a sense, the supposed denigration that astrology is “all written so it could apply to anybody” is perfectly justified, and part of why it holds some truth (as symbol/myth, not science). We all have the same “planets” in our horoscopes, that is, the same qualities in our lives that the planets have been made to stand for, like benevolence, aggression, desire and so forth, in varying degrees. And each aspect of them has both many negative and positive expressions. The flexibilty that makes it such a laughing-stock if you try to deal with it as a literal scientific construct (which it is not) is what makes it useful for personal reflection. If my “mars in scorpio” can be expressed this way or that, to think about it makes me aware of my own martial tendencies and good and bad ways to deal with them.
I like thinking about such things in mythological and intuitive terms and I think the ideas that come from it can have some validity. The advantage to thinking about it in this poetic fashion is that it gives a sense of a whole picture with a lot of lines of possibility running out from it. Rather the opposite of thinking one’s destiny is fixed in the stars. But difficult to express.
Carl Jung was interested in astrology. His idea was that when early humans studied the stars, because they didn’t have a scientific approach they ended up projecting their own human psychological structure onto what they were trying to understand. H
Have you looked at what these people charge? Some of those truisms are damned expensive!
It’s not science, it’s myth, which is a form of art. Myth and art will carry what you bring to them. If you bring shallow truisms that’s what you’ll get. We are the makers of meaning, not the stars.
The problem with Sparrowhawk’s comments is that they are indeed shallow truisms. The only person who might disagree with statements such as ‘It’s not science, it’s myth, which is a form of art’ or ‘We are the makers of meaning, not the stars’ is someone who (unlike anyone who has contributed so far to this thread) actually is a hardline believer in astrology. The more you speak of astrology as symbolism/metaphor/mythology/poetry, the more you empty it of any meaning at all. You are in danger of giving subjectivity a bad name.
Hey, give me a break, I had to get to class. I didn’t have time to come up with more than five.
It may be stunningly obvious to the likes of you and me that “It’s not science, we’re making the meaning” is so evident as to be a shallow truism. But the OP asked why people believe in astrology when we understand the universe according to “science”, and the poor state of scientific education and thinking is here (and elsewhere) blamed for these erroneous beliefs. The Great Cecil himself, in the link provided, debunks it according to planetary distances and geocentric fallacy and its failure to conform to scientific methods of testing. There’s some validity in kicking at the so-called science, because there are those hardline believers who try to force astrology into a scientific mold.
But presumably we all here accept my shallow truism. Well, if it isn’t science, and we all know it isn’t science, why are people objecting to it on scientific grounds? To me, that’s like saying “The story of Prometheus is wrong because that’s not how we got fire.” Or “Picasso’s Guernica doesn’t work because there isn’t any color and horses aren’t shaped like that.” You are using the wrong set of tools to measure the thing.
I think there is validity in Jung’s idea that early astrology projected the structure of the human psyche onto the observed universe . I don’t think this structure is subjective, and I’m not sure how you see working within the template of signs, houses and planets as archetypal symbols removes any meaning from them.
There’s no need to disprove it. The burden of proof is on those who claim that the future can be predicted by astrology, and/or that your personality is determined by what constellation you were supposedly “born under”.
Law and science require proof. Mystical beliefs can never be proved. I know this has come up in GD, but I never got involved. I don’t see why science and religion are incompatable. I don’t think science can disprove the existence of God. Same deal with astrology.
You would be thousands of years ago, during the times of Babaylon. But times have changed and so have the configurations of the stars, thanks to a phenomenon called precession. That says the earth’s axis isn’t fixed in the celestial sphere, but slowly draws a circle in the sky.
Same reasons they still believe stuff from the pre-dark ages.
This is a rather silly strawman. People rarely make beliefs based only on the ‘tangible, the rational, and the scientifically reproducible,’ no matter what their beliefs on spiritual matters are. Emotional aspects play a strong part in my decisions, and that has nothing at all to do with asking a big guy in the sky what to do.
Fine, but how so? What makes this a prettier than average load of bollocks?
Why are we objecting? Because it’s not interpretative, it claims to be predictive, it suggests how we should act and it commands a fee. No-one suggested Guernica’s colour or perspective was a guide for fighting fascists.
I find it slightly encouraging that there aren’t 50 people in this thread screaming about how astrology is real and has some kind of actual signifigance. Then again, the average IQ on this message board is probably a fair bit above average.
I’ve always liked mythology. Makes neat pictures, interesting stories. Alternatively, as an example, numbers don’t interest me much, so I don’t care for numerology as a load of bollocks or a symbol system and I know nothing about it.
One example of something I like would be the system of house divisions as symbols of the areas of activity that make up our lives. Since numbers bore me, the quibbling over different system calculations doesn’t interest me. I don’t care about the outdated and conflicting science, I’m interested in the imaginative construction of the organizing principles. I like the way the structure applies the symbolism from the individual gradually outward through the first six houses, then mirrors each concept back in the last six houses, relating it to others, to the individual interacting in community, closing the circle with the titillating paradox of the twelfth house representing the unconscious depths of the psyche which is both the most personal part of the individual and the most collectively shared by virtue of common humanity, no matter what our external circumstances are. Put the planets in the houses, interactions become evident and it gets more interesting.
I like the way this organization can be depicted visually, so that individual pieces and the collective whole can be taken in together. I like the way the triplicities and quadruplicities sit on the twelve signs. I guess the visual geometry appeals to me - kind of like a mandala. It seems to affect me rather like music, where you can immerse yourself in the present passage while retaining the memory and anticipation of the whole. The structure is cyclic, ordered, symmetric, complementary, reductive and comprehensive and I find that aesthetically appealing, as one would marvel at an antique clockwork, an artifact of ancient human ingenuity ticking away the same hours that our modern batteries count. This may be an idiosyncrasy of the way my brain works.
I could say something about how I also like the kind of understanding I get from mythological associations with psychological archetypes, but I don’t want to burden you, as I suspect you have little patience for this subject, having already made up your mind as to its value.
No, but I suspect it commanded quite a fee.
The question was why people were objecting to it as science if we all agreed it wasn’t in that category. If you want to object on other grounds, go right ahead. According to conventional understandings, I can share your objections. Since my interest in it led thither from mythic and psychological realms, I can also see interpretive, predictive and behavioral aspects that I’d consider reasonable within those contexts.
Getting involved in this discussion and trying to explain what I see in it gives it the appearance of looming larger in my thinking than it does, since explaining it is complicated. I certainly don’t live and die by it, and would not accept any insight or idea thus gained without other corroborative input. I have never visited an astrologer and know what little I do from reading for my own interest. It allows one way of thinking about particular things that I find interesting and attractive, that’s all.
As for why - another reason is that people are uncomfortable with the idea that an system of beliefs could be used by so many people for so many centuries and still be a load of codswallop. They like to think that ‘tried and true’ applies more often than not.
