I agree with most of what's been posted above. I don't think the problem is science per se, but scientism and some scientists who, as fallible human beings, venture loudly into areas they haven't studied, biases intact. But this trichotemy is true of many fields, not just science.

Also, there is good and bad science, just as there is good and bad astrology, food, economics, and anything else. Beneath science, astrology, and anything else, however, are inter-personal and institutional power-relations. Just now, science and scientists have a lot more clout than do astrology and astrologers. This is one major reason to learn more about science as an institutionalized enterprise.

The intellectual advantage of science, however, is that the majority of it gets published in double-blind peer-reviewed journals, whereby erroneous ideas can get countered by other scientists who see if they can duplicate one another's results. If enough of them can't, today's hot science news becomes tomorrow's discarded mistaken conclusion. While this process is by no means simon-pure and problem-free, some comparable kind of intellectual rigour would be helpful in astrology, IMO.

And it needn't be scientific in nature. For example, humanities disciplines also have standards of good and bad research. History and law seem to me to have the best methodological comparables to the standards astrologers might develop. Critical thinking really is the key, as distinguished from broadside negativity.

I think it is important for astrologers to make more inroads into universities, where education in research procedures and (one hopes) critical thinking takes place. I think astrology is a long way from science and even from psychology, but the humanities journals and book publishers are already printing more research on astrology. It would be good to see more astrologers pursue graduate degrees. If we put the wagons in a circle with a "them vs. us" mentality, however, it only increases astrology's isolation.

So I think the challenge of these periodic dust-ups for astrology is to have something intellectually rigorous to present in return, and we are going to have to do so on on the academy's terms.

Just a quick note to add news of another blog headed ?Astrology and Ridicule? published today at http://billynojob.wordpress.com/2011/01 ... idicule-2/

I made a response myself; since it seemed to be a relatively quiet place of reasonable argument, despite the divergence of views.

I also want to make a request here ? if any of you contributed to the recent Guardian blogs under pseudonyms, or helped in some way to circulate the astrological argument, I?d love to know (in confidence) who you are. Please PM or email me at deb@skyscript.co.uk

Although some people think that these attacks are best ignored, I can?t help thinking that we should aim to correct publicly misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation wherever possible. Soon enough this matter will have flared up and died down again, but whilst astrology is receiving this negative attention, it?s important to use the opportunity to get corrective statements published too (IMO).

(PS - also agree with Waybread's last comment too.)
(PS - Plus I also agree with all the other comments that have been made in this thread!!)

For those interested, I posted a copy of my letter of complaint to the Guardian (for removing my posts which defended astrology and censoring me) here:

http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=61696

Deb wrote:Although some people think that these attacks are best ignored, I can?t help thinking that we should aim to correct publicly misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation wherever possible. Soon enough this matter will have flared up and died down again, but whilst astrology is receiving this negative attention, it?s important to use the opportunity to get corrective statements published too (IMO).

Deb

I wonder how much that would actually achieve though. For example many of the places in which these 'attacks' are made are moderated in such a way that control is handed to those who are likely skeptical in the first place. For example I made several posts on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy forum and critiqued several erroneous comments that he had made with regards astrologers aligning their zodiac with the constellations and found that those posts were never approved by the moderator, only those where I did not critique Phil Plait by name were approved. I also quickly discovered that the other posters were not interested in any true debate on the subject itself (namely the constellational zodiac vs the tropical zodiac and the use of Ophiuchus and precession in relation to that) and rather than address points I made, they instead moved on to something else (often sun sign based or 'predict the future' based) and took pot shots at that.

It was clear to me that the real draw for many of the posters was simply to find a socially acceptable medium through which to vent negativity and mockery. (with astrology just happening to be the current hook for projecting that onto, next week it'll be homeopathy, then maybe some religion or other, then back to astrology etc)

I wonder at how constructive it is to meet the argument on that playing field. It seems a more sensible attitude would be to use pre-existing resources that are not directly under the moderation of those already skeptical to make our arguments. Your article on Ophiuchus that the guardian article referenced is a great example of this. Posting on social networking sites such as twitter or facebook or wordpress also seem a sensible way to go about things as they are difficult to censor. I've become more actively involved in editing the wikipedia pages for example when such discrepancies arise. Because my knowledge is comparably much weaker than say yours, this is something I would actually give strong consideration toward were I you. I'm aware that you're disinterested to some extent in things like the internet generally but the sad fact is that quite a few people consider wiki-ing something to be research. By removing faulty information from wikipedia we can actually go some way toward preventing some of the misinformation from snowballing out into other sources.
But posting on the guardian website or on blogs such as Phil Plait's seem redundant to me now (though I'll probably continue on in vain anyway).

Hi Paul

I agree (and laughed with sympathy at your last comment)

One good thing though, is that because the attacks have been so outrageous, negative and emotive, intelligent people *are* taking notice and speaking out on some of these issues - because there is a bigger story here about how one discipline deals with another, and what constitutes informative debate (or whether the best line of attack for those who disprove of astrology is to always use insult and ridicule).

Although it is painful to experience the Guardian coverage and feedback, it may have been a very good thing, in bringing these kinds of issues to the surface where the injustice becomes more visible.

Here is an interesting link to a new report on this which was published today. Worth reading as an informative item concerning the recent history of criticisms against astrology, whilst being overall fair in pointing out that many of the condemnatory arguments actually lack weight:

What Exactly is Accomplished by Asserting ?Astrology is Rubbish??
by Darin Hayton (Philadelphia Area Centre for History of Science)

http://www.pachs.net/blogs/comments/wha ... s_rubbish/

waybread wrote:I agree with most of what's been posted above. I don't think the problem is science per se, but scientism and some scientists who, as fallible human beings, venture loudly into areas they haven't studied, biases intact. But this trichotemy is true of many fields, not just science.

Although, as any members of this forum who've followed Deb's link to my blog will know, I'm hardly a "friend" of astrology, I do have a lot of sympathy with those that are increasingly discomforted by the kind of totalitarianism which sceptics seem to be promulgating. It's one thing to disagree with another person's perspective, even profoundly, but it's very much another to suggest that there's something illegitimate in those people's attempts to express their views.

I've written about this very subject here: http://billynojob.wordpress.com/2010/04 ... w-priests/

Good articles, Deb and Stephen1!

It just occured to me that there was a very smart critic of certain scientists' extraordinary condemnation of astrology, who was Paul Feyerabend. Maybe you know about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend . One has to be a better philosopher of science than I am to follow all of his arguments, but basically he was a radical professor of philosophy who took scientists to task on their own turf. His key work was probably in showing how the scientific method actually wasn't used in a lot of break-through science, despite the widespread belief among scientists that this method distinguishes their research. To quote wikipedia on Feyerabend's anti-scientism stance:

"Feyerabend described science as being...obsessed with its own mythology, and as making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He was especially indignant about the condescending attitudes of many scientists towards alternative traditions. For example, he thought that negative opinions about astrology and the effectivity of rain dances were not justified by scientific research, and dismissed the predominantly negative attitudes of scientists towards such phenomena as elitist or racist."

To me, some of the arguments against astrology's critics are:

1. Rather than being scientific, the criticisms themselves lack a sufficiently scientific basis. I've tried to argue for what I think better statistical studies of astrology might look like on the statistics thread on the philosophy and science board. We know that most statistical studies to date do not bolster astrology's truth-claims, but one could equally invalidate the methodologies of much prior statistical work in this area.

2. A hallmark of science is keeping an open mind. How many great breakthroughs in the history of science were achieved by someone willing to question the status quo?

3. Much of the criticism of astrology is ill-informed. For example, the article in Deb's link cited criticisms of using astrology in meteorological explanation. Although planetary positions might not explain the meteorology of weather events, a lot of ancient weather astrology was not about explanation of weather patterns, but forecasting. And some of this material--like "if you can see a brown ring around the moon, expect stormy weather"--works fairly well because oftentimes there was a meteorological explanation for traditional weather lore--the "red sky at night" type-predictions.

4. The criticism of astrology is very similar to a scientistic criticism of religion. But the rub is that science can only make legitimate statements about phenomena that it actually tests. And few scientists would claim that any and all phenomena are testable according to scientific methods.

Science can neither affirm or deny the existence of God, for example, because there is no conceivable scientific experiment that would enable the "God hypothesis" to be confirmed or refuted. Similarly, there are numerous legitimate university disciplines in the humanities and fine arts that are beyond the purview of science: studio art and history would be two examples.

Astrology may have difficulty in cutting both ways--scientific and non-scientific, but the above arguments might have some merit.

But then, the reasons why astrologers need to step up to the academic plate are for a future discussion.

Stephen1 wrote:

waybread wrote:I agree with most of what's been posted above. I don't think the problem is science per se, but scientism and some scientists who, as fallible human beings, venture loudly into areas they haven't studied, biases intact. But this trichotemy is true of many fields, not just science.

Although, as any members of this forum who've followed Deb's link to my blog will know, I'm hardly a "friend" of astrology, I do have a lot of sympathy with those that are increasingly discomforted by the kind of totalitarianism which sceptics seem to be promulgating. It's one thing to disagree with another person's perspective, even profoundly, but it's very much another to suggest that there's something illegitimate in those people's attempts to express their views.

I've written about this very subject here: http://billynojob.wordpress.com/2010/04 ... w-priests/

Hello Stephen1

Sorry I didn't get round to acknowledging this sooner, I haven't had as much time on this forum this week as I would've liked.

I liked your blog entries, which I read the other day.

Thanks for making this statement about people expressing their views, and the rising 'totalitarianism' amongst sceptics. It's not something I had fully confronted until now but I can understand a lot of the reasons why it's growing, even though I don't fully understand it yet as a phenomenon.

I also want to say that as someone interested in astrology I've never stopped questioning not only astrology but myself as a human being. Usually a fair chunk of confidence is sacrificed as a result, but so what... there are lots of more important things than that.

Thanks once more for explaining your views on your blog, and a big thanks too for being willing to come here to say what you've said.

Regards

H.

Thanks once more for explaining your views on your blog, and a big thanks too for being willing to come here to say what you've said.

Thanks handn. Although I might equally say thanks to this forum for letting me come here to say what I've said! It's one of the worst aspects of "discussions" on the web: either the only contributions are from those who already agree with each other, or else those who disagree do so via flame wars that get us nowhere.

It's rare (and a refreshing thing when it happens) that you find a place where people have the confidence to allow dissent on their pages.

S

?'The Backstory of the AA's Petition; and why Twitter-Chums stick together when the Beeb makes a Boob'

Several people have asked for a clarification of the AA's complaint against the BBC, and over the last couple of weeks I have been shocked by the way that some people have urged others to suppress the petition and call upon the BBC to not consider the AA's complaint.

So this is an account of what I understand about the cause for complaint, and what I have observed of the tactics used to suppress the complaint and the petition.

http://www.astrologicalassociation.com/ ... tition.pdf

Deb wrote:http://www.astrologicalassociation.com/ ... tition.pdf

I didn't read all of it, but this somehow reminds me of Don Quichotte's fruitless fight against wind-mills.

The German astrologer Doebereiner repeatedly said: "An astrologer is an outlaw, a societally never respected person, with no status, sort of a gypsie. He even has to be like this because of his "Neptunian" profession, in order his antennae to the transcendent (supernatural) to function."

I know it hurts permanently to be pissed on. But we shouldn't expect any real reputation by the mainstream (though a correct and fair behavior of course would be nice)...

Hi Richard,

suggest you read it through so you understand that this is not at all about creating a reputation in mainstream; just requesting the correct and fair behaviour which you say would be nice. Which we are entitled to.

I don't think that astrology is a Neptunian profession myself, and have never felt that sense of displacement or disrespect that you describe for being an astrologer either. Obviously we come up against a lot of misunderstanding, much best ignored; but when it becomes deliberate, habitual and wilful misrepresentation, then I think we have a responsibility to do something about this, so that the new students aren't having to think as Doebereiner did. The report made clear that we are not looking for increased exposure though. (Maybe you realised this in the end? Sorry, I didn't read all of your post either. )

Deb