Actually, the metaphor of the marble statute of Venus is relevant to the bird analogy I gave above, as well as to the importance of Tradition.

A statute of Venus would be a statute of Venus, whether it was made of marble, concrete, wood, or aluminum. The Substance can change, but still have the same Essence! That is why the bird would still be a bird, no matter whether avian (as we understand it), mammalian, insect, or reptilian in substance! The statute of Venus is Venus first, the substance it was made from second.

With respect to Tradition, it is by Tradition that we KNOW that the statute of Venus is a statute of Venus, and not just of a pretty woman. We have learned and studied Greek and Roman mythology, and we have been told that this is what the statute is. This is also how we can recognize other statutes or images of Venus that might look different. Without Tradition, we would not be able to recognize these images.

If our knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology were lost, and if we did not have references to who these artists were depicting, we would likely mistakenly think that these different images were of different goddesses, or even that they were of people. We might even write academic papers debating the issue, without any resolution, because the authority of Tradition had been lost!

It is for this reason that I think we must be very careful and humble about making assumptions regarding our ancestors. There has been a LOT that has been lost or destroyed over the millenia. Astrology is one of the last fields where Traditional symbolism is preserved and studied, if only in remnants, which is I think why astrology really IS quite important!

I think we're moving away from the point now with regards whether or not a degree is needed to identify a science.

I appreciate people are passionate about differences in approach between what we can loosely distinguish as 'traditional' and 'modern' but I really want to discourage getting into debates about the differences between them or suggestions of superiority for one or the other. Not only is that not the subject of this title, but it seldom produces much of value that isn't subtracted by conflicts which can also arise.

I appreciate nobody is deliberately taking the conversation that way of course.

paul,

i appreciate your concern..

myriam,

if you would like to show the superiority of your approach while negating any approach which is not 'classical astrology', please feel free to do so.. i didn't pick up on it in your article while i did take what you had to say personally, in spite of your well meaning comment "I would never denigrate anyone on a *personal* level." perhaps it is difficult for you to understand how others would perceive your choice of words in an unfriendly and biased way, but it is just how i perceive them.

Myriam Hildotter wrote:
It is for this reason that I think we must be very careful and humble about making assumptions regarding our ancestors.

i think this is true for making assumptions on those in the present day as well!

Paul, I apologize for my part in taking this thread off topic.

I do think that what happened on this thread really underscores the difficulty with a formalized or standardized education in astrology. There is no agreement or consensus among astrologers as to some of the fundamentals of our practice.

Even on this rather informal thread we have very different approaches to astrology, including the basic underlying philosophy behind our practice. What would be required learning if there were a formalized education program?

Of course, the present state of the practice is rather chaotic, with many teachers and organizations providing an education. There are advantages and disadvantages to this; one of the advantages being the accomodation of all of the different philosophies and methods of practice. So, I honestly don't know the answer to the education dilemma.

varuna2 wrote: To Spock: Based on what you wrote it is clear you have almost no knowledge on the personal history of Tesla, or very little such as how to spell his name, which, incidentally, the person who mispelled the name has a type of mind which sometimes results in letters being reversed while writing. Tesla knew as much about his scientific field as any scientist in his field, and even today the understanding of that field is far from complete. Tesla also studied physics ideas that were later attributed to Einstein from the almost unknown work of Ruder Boscovic. Tesla had ways of knowing things that Edison could never know. Tesla knew things in ways that someone who does not have that capacity could never understand. I deleted most of my posts in the thread but if you look at the thread titled: 'ketu and mathematics,' maybe some of the mathematician's names are still in the posts by Ken or Stefan, which you may find it interesting to compare a particular Indian Brahmin mathematician's life story (through his own beliefs and words) and his and those other's natal charts with Tesla's life story and natal chart...

I could be mistaken but I remember reading that Tesla attended Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria but dropped out and didn't graduate. Hence he had no degree in physics and to the best of my knowledge has had no impact on that discipline. In contrast, he has had an enormous impact on technology. My point is that science and technology are separate and distinct enterprises, which isn't negated by the fact that they've interacted fruitfully since the last third of the nineteenth century, or by the fact that Tesla is called a scientist by admirers who assume, as many people do, that technology is a product of science rather than a separate enterprise that predates it. Whether Tesla had ways of knowing things that Edison could never know is irrelevant because Edison, like Tesla, wasn't a scientist. Your assertion that Tesla knew as much about "his scientific field" (physics?) as any scientist in his field is not accompanied by evidence or even a description of what he knew. Crispin Andrews, in the 16 September 2013 issue of E & T: Engineering and Technology Magazine, writes that "[W. Bernard] Carlson, whose book Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age was published last year, believes Tesla was more interested in technological innovation than whether the science underpinning his inventions was sound." In "Extraordinary Science and the Strange Legacy of Nikola Tesla," Jeff Johnson writes, "It?s easy to see why Tesla should have become the focus of an effusive subculture: He was absolutely convinced of his own genius; he promoted his own personality cult of the 'great inventor' sort; he enjoyed financial success in early life, and later in life was able to indulge in a panoply of bizarre and grandiose ideas; and he achieved considerable scientific notoriety, despite a flawed understanding of physics and other sciences. [my emphasis] I looked at the thread you cited but found nothing useful in it.

Geoffrey wrote:Astrology is about people. People are about more than just science. It follows that astrology should be about more than just science - it must be richer than that.

Psychology, developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology, political science and more are about people and are considered sciences. Astrology treats personality and life developments as things it knows about ? that is, as knowledge ? and therefore is not barred from the sciences by anything other than developmental level if correspondences between us and the heavens actually exist. (I believe they do.) Astrology at its current level of development is less than, not more than science.

waybread wrote: NikolaiTesla is irrelevant to a discussion of whether astrology today is a science. Tesla died in 1943, 70 years ago. Science today has moved on. Sience today is largely conducted by teams of researchers employed by universities, corporate, or government labs, not by lone geniuses engaging in high-risk electrical experiments.

I agree with your point but not your reasoning. Tesla is irrelevant because he wasn't really a scientist, not because science has moved on. A scientific astrology would not immediately, with no intermediate developments, function like a mature physical science with teams of researchers, etc. It would be more like other sciences when they first emerged as sciences, like the Baconian sciences in the mid-17th century and the social sciences even more recently. The aspect of the scientific revolution that produced the Baconian sciences, it should be noted, occurred outside the universities. Baconian scientists were not university professors and astrologers who succeed in creating a science of astrology probably won't be, either.

It should be noted that astrology was part of the rational science project of its day in the hands of Ptolemy and his adherants. In his day astrologers were often called "mathematicians."

Very true. Geoffrey Cornelius in The Moment of Astrology says much the same thing but seems to think that astrology has gone off the rails by pursuing that line of development. I think he has it backwards.

Hi Spock. I think a real problem for historians of science is in setting boundaries for what is "in" and what is "out." Scholars' understandings of the natural world in the past, for example, were oftentimes very different. One of my regrets (as a former grad student in environmental science) is that the whole field of natural history disappeared. It was the science of its day, but not the science of our day.

During the 19th century natural history and taxonomy/systematics generated all kinds of interest among amateur biologists. There was a huge collecting phase in Britain, for instance, where amateurs added significantly to the known flora and fauna. In a field like taxonomy (and where the universities were humanities-oriented) amateurs could actually make lasting contributions.

I can kind of put inventors like Tesla in their category, because the boundaries of science/not science were more fluid then.

Similarly, I once knew a respected and well-published biologist who switched university departments (highly unusual) because he was an ecologist in the midst of microbiologists and biochemists, who increasingly looked down upon his "soft" research. (A lot of this shift, IMO, has to do with funding from granting agencies.)

Today neither "hard" or natural scientists or political scientists would likely consider Poli Sci to be a true science, despite the "science" term applied to it back-when. This was part of the modernist project around the turn of the last century. Some political scientists are actually more in the humanities camp than in the present-day social sciences.

There is a case to be made for labeling as science branches of psychology better termed behavioural science and even neuroscience.

And this is part of the problem for astrology. From my perspective, it was so much part-and-parcel of astronomy prior to the Copernican Revolution. Yet today, too many (not all) science historians write it out of their tradition, except perhaps to disparage it. Why? Because it is so clearly not science today.

Myriam: just one question for you. By what criteria do you evaluate your truth-claims? In the sciences, there are methods by which a proposition can be confirmed or refuted. What is your evaluative template for your propositions?

Myriam Hildotter wrote:

With the social sciences, one is studying human beings, and I believe that humans are spiritual beings housed in a physical body.

When you experience a thought do you accept this is a biological phenomena, in this case a manifestation of a neural network.

Seems almost impossible these days to suggest the body hosts some kind of ethereal spiritual entity.

spock wrote: Your assertion that Tesla knew as much about "his scientific field" (physics?) as any scientist in his field is not accompanied by evidence or even a description of what he knew.

And yet it was a true assertion, but that is neither here nor there, except to use as a comparison:

spock wrote: despite a flawed understanding of physics and other sciences. [my emphasis]

And you, or that text or person you cited, would know what, or what is not, flawed in physics, since the essence of everything is understood correctly in physics today? Rhetorical question. Contemplate the difference in my truth statement above in comparison to your truth statement. Mine is provable (although I did not prove it), whereas yours is not (although you gave the appearance of proving by functioning according to academic standards).

Your truth statement cited, is like (and this is an analogy only) prior case law citation in a question on what is morality or ethics, i.e., your truth statement is meaningless in actuality as an argumentum ad auctoritatem, while giving the appearance of having substance - this is typical academia. Other expressions of this are so-called Scientism or so-called Rationalism.

spock wrote: I looked at the thread you cited but found nothing useful in it.

Thank you. Pretend you were responding to yourself and not me. I act as your mirror.

Nixx wrote: When you experience a thought do you accept this is a biological phenomena, in this case a manifestation of a neural network.

Seems almost impossible these days to suggest the body hosts some kind of ethereal spiritual entity.

And as we now know that all the planets (with the exception of the Moon and the Sun) are too far away to have any causal effect on organic systems here on earth, it seem almost impossible these days to suggest that they have the kind of powers accepted without question by astrologers.

... Yet, here you are.

Or are you a troll?

Waybread wrote:

Myriam: just one question for you. By what criteria do you evaluate your truth-claims? In the sciences, there are methods by which a proposition can be confirmed or refuted. What is your evaluative template for your propositions?

First off, these are not *my* propositions. These are things that were commonly held to be true before "the Enlightenment" in the West, and are still mostly held to be true in the East (although, I have heard that the younger generations are moving towards a more Western worldview). Aristotelian thought is still Essentialist. While nominalism opened the door to the Enlightenment, it was not widely accepted until then.

Truth is generally measured by adherence to Tradition, particularly when there is consensus between different versions of Tradition. For example, the planetary associations for days of the week are the same everywhere! Tradition has been broken, to be sure, so often it is a matter of trying to pick up broken pieces to put together. I have also had some excellent teachers, both of astrology and of metaphysics. My explanation of these things is quite humble in comparison!

Nixx wrote:

Seems almost impossible these days to suggest the body hosts some kind of ethereal spiritual entity.

Why? What can modern science really tell us about the soul!

Nixx also wrote:

When you experience a thought do you accept this is a biological phenomena, in this case a manifestation of a neural network.

On one level this may be happening. Although, modern science makes and discards new theories (even ones thought proven) quite regularly.

I think that we exist on many levels, and the physical is a reflection of the higher spheres. Even incontrovertible "proof" of a physical process occurring does not or can not tell us anything other than there is a physical process happening.

This is exactly what I mean when I say that modern science overreaches when it tries to propose a worldview. Modern science only concerns itself with the physical, so how can it say that things that are not physical do not exist. It is like putting on blinders, and then saying that all that exists is what is in front of you, because that is all you can see.