Defending Astrology
Arghh! I can hear gasps of disbelief. He can’t really be whacko enough to believe in astrology can he? Not when he just dumped all over the Gospels. I'd rather invoke my Scottish ancestors and say "not proven."
Astrology is often trotted out by scientists and intellectuals as the archetype of stupidity and uncritical gullibility, popular nonsense at its most popular and nonsensical. “Well!” you can sense writers implying, “if you take astrology seriously, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you’d love to buy.” Withering contempt is almost built into the word.
But let me suggest an astrological proposition that, in principle, could be investigated scientifically. It is the proposition that there is some unspecified correlation between the position of the planets in the sky relative to the earth at the time and place that a person is born, and the character, interests and personality that that person develops as they grow and live their life. I would suggest nothing further. I propose no mechanism.
That seems to me testable, if formulated as a prediction open to falsification. The prediction could be something to the effect that astrology is not true, that no statistically significant correlation between, say, Venus in Taurus and musical ability, will be found. See if there is a variation from randomness. If there is, then the prediction that there won’t be is falsified, and there is a phenomenon, a problem, that needs explanation. A whole series of such propositions could be formulated and tested, as hypotheses emerge and are proposed. Something similar has in fact been done the other way round, by the Gauquelins in France, where time of birth has been universally recorded for a long time. They found correlations that were significant and clear, but had almost no similarity to traditional astrology. Their conclusion would seem to be that there is something there, but traditional astrology has it all wrong.
Some years ago in London, I attended a lecture by H. J. Eysenck arguing the scientific testability of astrology, and I was amazed at the animosity that poured forth from almost everyone there, far beyond anything justified by what I felt was a rather trivial topic. (I essentially recapitulated his argument above – it is possible to formulate astrological propositions that are objectively testable, and therefore open to scientific investigation.) But people were angry, insulted that he should even suggest such a thing. Some were truly furious. And this is the depressing part: the most common argument against him was this:
it cannot be true because it is impossible.
I found this very discouraging. People assembled to uphold the superiority of rational inquiry over blind prejudice were defending prejudice with the most infantile of arguments, easily paraphrased as "I cannot imagine an explanation, so the phenomen cannot exist."
There are many things that we cannot explain, but that does not stop them from existing. We cannot explain consciousness yet, but the LA freeways would be a real mess without conscious drivers. Scientists prefer the measurable, quite rightly, and invent calculi when needed to bring more things into the scientific fold. Newton tells us very precisely how to land a projectile on the moon, while astrology tells us that the moon makes us dreamy. This is not something that lends itself easily to mathematical analysis. However, if we should soon become able to detect ‘hope’ by some sort of brain monitoring, then great! That will make it much easier to count the sorts of things astrology talks about, such as ‘a hopeful outlook on life,’ and statistical investigation is, after all, all I am asking for.
In the meantime, poo-poo away. But astrology is a very elegant medieval system of character analysis, of great subtlety, great beauty, with as large an imprint on the world around us as, say, the tradition of painting female nudes, studies of the Madonna, gothic arches, or the rise of counterpoint. A resilient part of our culture, it may not be beyond the reach of science. What do the rationalists fear?
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Astrology is often trotted out by scientists and intellectuals as the archetype of stupidity and uncritical gullibility, popular nonsense at its most popular and nonsensical. “Well!” you can sense writers implying, “if you take astrology seriously, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you’d love to buy.” Withering contempt is almost built into the word.
But let me suggest an astrological proposition that, in principle, could be investigated scientifically. It is the proposition that there is some unspecified correlation between the position of the planets in the sky relative to the earth at the time and place that a person is born, and the character, interests and personality that that person develops as they grow and live their life. I would suggest nothing further. I propose no mechanism.
That seems to me testable, if formulated as a prediction open to falsification. The prediction could be something to the effect that astrology is not true, that no statistically significant correlation between, say, Venus in Taurus and musical ability, will be found. See if there is a variation from randomness. If there is, then the prediction that there won’t be is falsified, and there is a phenomenon, a problem, that needs explanation. A whole series of such propositions could be formulated and tested, as hypotheses emerge and are proposed. Something similar has in fact been done the other way round, by the Gauquelins in France, where time of birth has been universally recorded for a long time. They found correlations that were significant and clear, but had almost no similarity to traditional astrology. Their conclusion would seem to be that there is something there, but traditional astrology has it all wrong.
Some years ago in London, I attended a lecture by H. J. Eysenck arguing the scientific testability of astrology, and I was amazed at the animosity that poured forth from almost everyone there, far beyond anything justified by what I felt was a rather trivial topic. (I essentially recapitulated his argument above – it is possible to formulate astrological propositions that are objectively testable, and therefore open to scientific investigation.) But people were angry, insulted that he should even suggest such a thing. Some were truly furious. And this is the depressing part: the most common argument against him was this:
it cannot be true because it is impossible.
I found this very discouraging. People assembled to uphold the superiority of rational inquiry over blind prejudice were defending prejudice with the most infantile of arguments, easily paraphrased as "I cannot imagine an explanation, so the phenomen cannot exist."
There are many things that we cannot explain, but that does not stop them from existing. We cannot explain consciousness yet, but the LA freeways would be a real mess without conscious drivers. Scientists prefer the measurable, quite rightly, and invent calculi when needed to bring more things into the scientific fold. Newton tells us very precisely how to land a projectile on the moon, while astrology tells us that the moon makes us dreamy. This is not something that lends itself easily to mathematical analysis. However, if we should soon become able to detect ‘hope’ by some sort of brain monitoring, then great! That will make it much easier to count the sorts of things astrology talks about, such as ‘a hopeful outlook on life,’ and statistical investigation is, after all, all I am asking for.
In the meantime, poo-poo away. But astrology is a very elegant medieval system of character analysis, of great subtlety, great beauty, with as large an imprint on the world around us as, say, the tradition of painting female nudes, studies of the Madonna, gothic arches, or the rise of counterpoint. A resilient part of our culture, it may not be beyond the reach of science. What do the rationalists fear?
posted by Andrew Massey | Thursday, December 30, 2004
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