Skyscript Astrology Forum

Myriam Hildotter wrote:

Astrology is really hard to test empirically. You mention research on Saturn returns. Yet, a Saturn return will look very different for someone with Saturn in Libra in the 10th House, who has been working diligently all of her life previously than for someone with Saturn in Pisces in the 8th House who may have frittered away her twenties! It is very hard to isolate these things for a research project like that.

Why would be hard to evaluate?. Astrology is what Astrologers do, or imagine it to be, so you can quite easily assess most Astrologers claims. Here is the person in whatever form you need them to be in, this could be a hour or so chatting to you, and/or details of external events in their lives, or in my case a few months in their company and then you are given 10 charts and asked to identify theirs Most Astrologers either implicitly or explicitly claim they can attach birth data to a person after exposure to the 'right' information.

Nixx,

Actually, all that would do would be to test the ability of the individual astrologers and the techniques they use. It says nothing about whether or not there is a correlation between the movement of the planets and events and human behavior. The scientific method is quite rigorous. One must be able to be sure that one is testing what one is actually trying to test. Generally, there is some sort of control, and the results must be repeatable and statistically significant.

By the way, I am a great supporter of the scientific method, even though I am also aware of its limitations. My difficulty is with the scientific world view, which I do not think can be supported by the scientific method, even on its own terms.

The trouble with the use the scientific method on astrology is that there are too many variables, so controlling for all of the variables is well nigh impossible. There has been good information generated by tests such as the Gauguelin research; however, its scope is very limited. The test that you describe, Nixx, would be of very little value to the practice of astrology itself, except perhaps as test for individual astrologers or for an educational exercise.

A big difficulty with astrology, as it is practiced today, is that there are SO many different techniques to choose between. I would probably say a large portion of available techniques are really not all that effective. For example, Spock's description on the research of Saturn/Neptune transits. I personally give very little import to Neptune or the Outer Planets anyways, so that test is of little value to me, except to confirm what I understand about the Outers.

I wish that there were better ways available of testing various techniques we use. Sadly, a lot boils down to the individual judgment of astrologers, and to anecdotal information. We just must all do the best we can.

philosophical rigidity is definitely not a bonus for any person involved in serious inquiry into the workings of astrology. regarding the saturn/neptune combo, a very famous french astrologer - andre barbault - made an accurate prediction on the basis of the cycle of these planets 34 years in advance of the fall of the soviet union. perhaps the 'tradition' doesn't have a place for a discovery, but then what kind of tradition wouldn't allow for new discoveries like that of an outer planet 300 hundred years ago? i have it - the ostrich tradition!
http://www.andrebarbault.com/histoire_prevision_ang.htm

[b]waybread[/b] wrote:My reading of Kuhn (long ago) is restricted to his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (The original one, not the new 50th year anniversary volume!)

If I might take off from the spirit of his volume, however, it seemed to focus on science being what scientists do-- descriptive rather than prescriptive.

In "Reflections on my Critics" in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave) Kuhn claims it's both descriptive and normative. He argues that as an historian he discovered that "much scientific behaviour, including that of the very greatest scientists, persistently violated accepted methodological canons." He therefore devised a theory of the nature of science in which it makes sense that such behaviors contribute to success rather than hinder it. Structure is filled with variations on the question, How else could it be? Kuhn describes a practice, explains why it's necessary for science to flourish, and shows that the logical empiricist alternative is inadequate or even counterproductive for accomplishing the same end. Science has been spectacularly successful, so an account of its successes ipso facto includes the behaviors that have made it so, and Kuhn is at pains to spell out which behaviors are necessary and why.

I notice you're reluctant to think of the social sciences as sciences, notwithstanding the presence of 'science' in their names. Kuhn himself is ambiguous. He at first refers to "post-paradigm" fields as sciences, later amends that to mature sciences, and also amends "post-paradigm" to "the kind of paradigm that permits puzzle-solving behaviour." "Pre-paradigm" fields are called sciences sometimes and other times proto-sciences. I don't think the terms matter as much as the idea that there are three levels, pre-empirical, empirical but pre-puzzle solving, and puzzle-solving. The social sciences fall in the middle category, astrology in the first. I think there's as big a discontinuity between pre-empirical and empirical as between empirical and puzzle-solving fields, and I think an empirical astrology would be decisively better than its pre-empirical predecessor on the other side of the divide.

My other point, is that in social science work reliant upon survey research (questionnaires, interviews) there is also a split between the more traditional quantitative work, and more recent qualitative methodologies.

A clarification is needed. When Kuhn talks about quantitative versus qualitative science, or when Lord Kelvin states, "When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind," they're not talking about mathematical versus nonmathematical data, whether produced by questionnaires or other methods, but mathematical versus nonmathematical theory. A qualitative law might state that a falling body continuously moves faster as it falls, a quantitative version would state that it accelerates at the rate of 32 feet per second per second. A qualitative law might be Kepler stating that a body orbiting in an ellipse moves fastest when it's closest to the parent body and slowest when it's farthest away. The actual quantitative version more precisely states that it sweeps out equal areas in equal times.

To continue with an anthropology example, we could envision a traditional quantitative survey researcher approaching a band of First Nations people or inner-city African-Americans, and asking them to fill out a written questionnaire about something-- say, their child-rearing practices. Even with a pre-test and a lot of sophisticated number-crunching, this is a very top-down "God's eye view" type of research.

My image of anthropological research is more of the fly on the wall, the researcher living with and closely observing the tribe, than with the professor handing out questionnaires. But I'm neither for nor against questionnaires. It's more a matter of whether they serve the researcher's purposes...

From dialogues between researchers and the researched, scholars began to ask, "How do you design a study that the subjects actually want and would find useful?" Well, ask them to participate in the study design!

...and this is where the rubber meets the road. A researcher's goals wouldn't necessarily involve designing a study that the subjects want and would find useful. I think as a researcher trying to understand a group or culture I'd want to employ methods that I find useful. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in the group's concerns or wouldn't want to act on their behalf. I think researchers, whether studying scorpions, frogs, or Amazonian tribesmen, tend to be emotionally attached to their subjects and concerned about their welfare including, when it's people being studied, their felt needs and concerns. In other words the researcher often becomes an advocate for the people he studies, and I think this is admirable. But I nonetheless distinguish between advocacy and "doing science", and when it comes down to winning their cooperation or willing participation in that endeavor a tactical quid pro quo is called for. What can we do to make it worth their while? Not that I couldn't see the researcher, as a kind of halfway house between advocacy and research, doing research on something of interest to his subjects on their behalf. But their interests need not be identical to his interests as a researcher trying to understand their society. Ultimately, though, my interest is, how should we do astrological research? Similar issues might apply, but it would be easier to discover them in their natural setting.

Of course the loud cry will be "Those meanie old academics won't understand us!" However, more senior astrologers have actually returned to universities to get graduate degrees. They are building bridges, not barricades. Similarly, there are sociologists who specialize in New Age movements who might be willing to tackle opening discussions with astrologers.

The important point is we can learn from academia and use what we've learned for our purposes. My colleague Andre Donnell, with whom I've been working on a follow-up to the Gauquelin research, has been pursuing a degree in discursive psychology, and in the process has developed expertise in statistics, interview techniques and much else potentially relevant to astrological research.

Myriam Hildotter wrote:Nixx,

Actually, all that would do would be to test the ability of the individual astrologers and the techniques they use. It says nothing about whether or not there is a correlation between the movement of the planets and events and human behavior. The scientific method is quite rigorous. One must be able to be sure that one is testing what one is actually trying to test. Generally, there is some sort of control, and the results must be repeatable and statistically significant.

As a a scientist myself it seems to me testing the Astrologer's specific semantics is all that can be tested usefully or currently. Testing a 'correlation' is simply testing the meaning(s) of any given planet or mathematical point which are not exactly consensual. You might concede most people simply want to know if an Astrologer can achieve statistical significance with the notion this is your chart not anothers.

The alternative is to start with a blank slate, similar to Gauquelin, and look for patterns in nature and then seek to predict phenomena when these reappear, which was once widely assumed to be what the Hellenists did although recent thinking seems to suggest the model generated 2,000yrs or so ago was not constructed in the light of empirical data.

Spock, thanks for your detailed response.

I return to the social sciences and humanities because I think this is where astrology's best tie-ins would be found.

Just to underline an earlier point, that the social sciences run the gamut from science to the humanities. And it might be interesting to look at the rules of evidence in the humanities. Science has no corner on evidence or logical thinking related to evidence. For example, a legal scholar looking at case law can trace precedents according to what is truly on the books and how reasoning about the issues evolved over time. This research is duplicable because another scholar can return to the same cases, yet it doesn't follow a scientific methodology.

What saddens me most about the anti-science rants sometimes made my astrologers is that they seem to be missing out on what-- to me-- is a lot of the beauty and wonder that scientific study brings.

But I don't think that science thereby is necessarily the highest or best form of knowledge. Science is incredibly powerful, in large part because of the rigour of its methods. But these same rigorous methods also limit science to its own structures. It has been said that science doesn't test reality: it tests the outcomes of its hypotheses.

The works of Shakespeare, for example, are nowhere near science; but they have resonated through the ages long after "ordinary science" studies have been supplanted and forgotten. The reason is because the arts can speak more powerfully to the human condition than a lot of "ordinary science" can.

A lot of the qualitative social science work is really post-scientific. It isn't necessarily new or immature work just waiting for "real science" to ennoble it. I like to think of a collection of critical research as the "posts." Post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-structuralism. Throw in deconstruction and critical theory. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, is pretty opaque, but he was a towering figure amidst the "posts" and he took particular aim at the scientific establishment. We might more broadly classify a lot of this work as "the history of ideas" although some of the focus is contemporary.

So far as my example of qualitative research with human subjects goes, I would urge you to reconsider it; because reciprocity is crucial if you want the cooperation of research subjects-- not to mention a study that grasps the evidence as they understand it; and their understanding is usually a lot better-informed than an outsider's would be.

Quantitative behavioural science surely has its place, but it is becoming increasingly distasteful to consider the spectacle of a university professor getting a pay raise or promotion out of a study of (for example) a First Nations or immigrant group, when they obligingly provide the data and give up their time and privacy, yet get nothing in return. Other than, perhaps, some sort of pittance-- because that is all the research grant accommodates.

Participant observation is increasingly seen as not the "fly on the wall", because it is clear that the observer can change the observees' behaviour. Imagine if you had a stranger living in your home or near neighbourhood, asking all kinds of questions and following you around with a stop-watch and note-pad!

Qualitative research increasingly demands that researchers understand their intrusive role. If a quid pro quo is called for, then perhaps the researcher with an ethnic group will dedicate hours to volunteering at the local community drop-in centre or rehab center.

Perusing the "research with human subjects" ethics codes of several universities will indicate some of the abuses of the past as well as the belief that research subjects not be conceptualized as in an inferior position to the researcher. Particularly in the case of expert astrologers, they're the ones who know the field from the inside, and if they give up time to consult with a researcher, they may well be giving up time with clients and income.

spock wrote: My colleague Andre Donnell, with whom I've been working on a follow-up to the Gauquelin research, has been pursuing a degree in discursive psychology, and in the process has developed expertise in statistics, interview techniques and much else potentially relevant to astrological research.

I'd be interested in hearing more about this work, are you able to expand upon it here ?

Myriam Hildotter wrote:Thank you for starting this thread. I think that you have effectively stated the difference between a traditionalist and an evolutionist approach to astrology and to most of the natural world.

I'm pleased that you think so. I have my own orientation and opinions but in my initial explanatory paragraph I wanted, to the extent that I was capable, to state the issues without "leading the witness".

I do agree that astrology is an applied science, and that ultimately we are looking for it to be useful. My real area of disagreement is whether it is or should be a modern science or a traditional science. A modern science is completely objectively based. We are looking at what can be verified and tested. A modern science does not consider anything except what can be verified or somehow measured in the physical world. This does not mean that all modern scientists believe that there is nothing other than the physical world, but I think we will agree that this is all modern science as a discipline is concerned with.

I'm not actually as concerned with usefulness as with knowing per se, although I have a perhaps naive faith that knowledge is good and probably eventually useful. I pretty much agree with your definition of "a modern science," especially the part about excluding anything that can't be "verified or somehow measured in the physical world." I would add, however, that this includes mind, which even though nonphysical has effects in the physical world from which inferences can be drawn.

I think that from the standpoint of purely modern science, astrology can not really hold. For it to be able to hold water, we must be able to somehow explain how the movement of the planets can affect us. I know that there are studies of the Moon on hormones and tides, and there may be some use to these studies; however, I highly doubt that anyone will ever really be able to explain how astrology *works* from study of the natural world. That may happen, of course, but I highly doubt it.

We partly agree here but our agreement leads us in different directions. You state that for astrology "to hold water...from the standpoint of purely modern science...we must be able to somehow explain how the movement of the planets can affect us," and since you don't think that's possible you conclude that "astrology can not really hold." I agree with your premise but think you're too ready to throw in the towel regarding our ability to explain how astrology works "from study of the natural world."

First, it makes a difference what you're trying to explain. We've been trying to explain outcomes rather than processes. We've been trying to explain events that happen to us, events that affect us, like the death of a parent or relative,and events that just grab our attention, like lightning knocking over a tree near our house, and not just events that we cause or elicit, which is the only thing I think astrology can predict even indirectly. Explanations of why astrology works have been so elusive because we've been been trying to account for what it really predicts as well as what it can't. You can't explain what isn't so, and trying to make our explanatory umbrella broad enough to encompass the impossible has made it more difficult to see how to explain what is possible.

Assume for argument's sake, however, that astrological effects are actually motivational rhythms. Since a given motivation can lead to many different outcomes, each of which makes sense in terms of that motivation, we can't predict what will specifically happen but we can in principle predict what sorts of things we'll feel an urge to do. An astrology based on motivations can have quite a bit to say about how our lives turn out, in terms of the urges we feel and the choices we're faced with at determinate points in the life cycle (and can even explain how and why we differ from one another).

Motivations are biological effects, and chronobiologists know quite a bit about biological rhythms, including the molecular basis for circadian rhythms. In the nuclei of Drosophila cells, for instance, the genes period and time are enabled by the proteins CLOCK and CYCLE bound to each other and to the appropriate regions on the chromosome to produce messenger RNA which in the cytoplasm outside the nucleus is translated into the proteins PERIOD and TIME. PERIOD breaks down very rapidly by itself but when bound together PERIOD/TIME breaks down much more slowly. When this complex builds up sufficiently it enters the nucleus and prevents CLOCK/CYCLE from promoting more production of PERIOD and TIME. Eventually, PERIOD/TIME breaks down, production of PERIOD and TIME resumes, and the cycle begins anew. The entire cycle takes about 24 hours.

The periodicity of the sun's light, which is the temporal template that natural selection has matched to create this biological clock in the first place, enters the feedback loop itself at only one point. At daybreak opsins in the eye (that are separate from the visual system) react to the long wavelength blue light characteristic of this time of day, which is carried via a separate (from the visual system) nerve pathway to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, where any remaining PERIOD/TIME is rapidly degraded and the clock set back to zero. Hence the circadian system doesn't track the sun's position throughout the 24 hour period but is reset once a day to get back in sync with it. But the processes that follow a 24 hour schedule, such as awakeness and sleep, altertness and torpor, blood pressure and much else, aren't controlled minute by minute or hour by hour by the sun's position relative to that locality, but by the clock itself.

Now imagine that the organism "knows", via some sort of "physical" interaction with the planet's magnetic field or by some means, where Mars is, where Saturn is, etc., at least once per cycle, and resets that clock at that time. If the question is asked, why should these time-systems evolve in the first place?, consider that organisms are constituted by mutiple processes of different temporal wavelengths that interact with one another, which individually occur regularly because how else can their timings dovetail, which raises the additional question: How does the organism keep time? The answer, I suggest, is that life has used planetary periods as temporal templates around which to organize the periodicities of its constituent processes.

If we now ask, via empirical investigation, what those processes are (or at least the ones relevant to astrological concerns), the answer I think is motivations or motivational patterns, different ones for different planetary periods. Consider that the Saturn Return, which has been "seen" not only by astrologers but also by developmental psychologists, adult lifespan researchers, and writers like Gertrude Stein (Fernhurst) and Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), is more and more considered by astrologers not to correspond to any specific event but to an agenda, a mindset that can lead to any number of external developments just as any motivation predicts the urge that we need to satisfy, not the specific steps a given individual might take to satisfy it. Consider also that one of the giants of cognitive developmental psychology, L.S. Vygotsky, posited a developmental schema which includes a "Crisis at age 7" (which for astrologers corresponds to Saturn opening square its natal place) and further argued that at developmental turning points such as this one new developments occur because of the emergence of new motivations.

(to be continued)

Thank you, Spock, for your reply. I see that your post is "to be continued...", but it is long and meaty, so with your indulgence, I will take a few bits from what you have already written, with the understanding that there may be more that you have to say, which may clarify matters.

I would add, however, that this includes mind, which even though nonphysical has effects in the physical world from which inferences can be drawn.

I agree, and usually, when I talk about this, I usually include what can be derived from reason, which includes inferences. I apologize if I inadvertently failed to include that in my post.

I agree with your premise but think you're too ready to throw in the towel regarding our ability to explain how astrology works "from study of the natural world."

This is a little complicated to respond to. From my perspective, it is not "throwing in the towel," but an acknowledgement of what type of information can be derived through the study of the natural world, and what type of information can not.

An example that has been used by my teachers in these matters is that of a painting. One can learn about the painting through a study of the art of the painting or from the chemical composition of the paint. While there may be good reasons to study the chemical composition of the paint, and one can perhaps study that in great detail, down to the subatomic level, this will not give you any information on the quality or meaning of the work of art.

Perhaps one day, magnetic fields or some other physical phenomenon can be found to explain how the movements of the planets affect us. I am not denying that this may happen. Even so, I do not think it will explain the complexity and depth of astrology. As an analogy, modern science has done a great deal with the study of brain waves and synapses; however, it does not and can not explain the quality of consciousness.

While I agree that astrology has predictive value at the material level, I think that this is actually the lowest use of astrology. I think that most of the Ancients would agree with this. Many of the Ancient complaints about the use of astrology for predictive purposes were complaints not necessarily just about accuracy (although, this was an issue even then, as you have pointed out), but about using this high knowledge for worldly purposes.

There has been a bit of a Chinese Wall that has been placed between astrology and religion/spirituality. I had assumed that this happened post-Enlightenment, but I recently learned from some posts here that this Chinese Wall was actually placed in Medieval times in Europe. In order to keep from being burned at the stake as heretics, astrologers confined themselves to worldly matters, such as prediction and the like. So it seems that in the West, the understanding of the planets as physical representations of aspects of the Divine was discarded NOT for empirical reasons but for religious ones.

Yet, even this was based on a misunderstanding of Ancient Tradition, because it had already been corrupted. In the Hellenistic world, the gods and goddesses began to be seen as Titans and separate beings in their own right, rather than seen in the deeper sense as images to help our minds understand and conceive of the One Divine Source, with the complexity of that Source. Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Shintoism are not really polytheistic, but all gods and goddesses are aspects of the One, who is both God with Form and God without Form.

I am getting rather deep into these concepts, but as you can see we are talking about different things, really. Neither of these things really contradict each other, or they don't have to. They intersect, but they go in different directions. The study of art and the study of the composition of the paint both study the same painting, but neither of these studies have much impact on the other.

From my perspective (which I believe is the Ancient perspective and also the Vedic perspective), astrology "works" because humans are microcosms of the entire Cosmos, and because the movement of the planets reflects the movement of Aspects of the Divine (the Great Planetary Angels, as it were). We can predict, to a certain extent, because there is an Order and a Harmony to the Cosmos, which is reflected on the material plane. As above, so below. I do not think that we can ever be certain of anything on the material level; however, we can predict certain things as more likely than not, which is generally good enough for most purposes.

Material research is useful for an understanding of the material world, and to the extent that physical processes can be found to understand how astrology works, they are interesting, but they really can not explain WHY it works, if that makes sense.

Similarly, as I have stated before empirical research regarding various methods techniques is useful for application. We have a broken tradition in astrology, which is why there is so much disagreement even in Traditional and Classical Astrology between sources. Also, as I have said, the material world is the world of flux and change, so even with a completely solid tradition, one would still have to continually test to see what still "worked."

I have stated before that the Ancients believed that knowledge of the material world was the lowest form of knowledge, and I tend to agree with that. On the other hand, we do live in the late Kali Yuga (Age of Iron), so much of our lives are lived on the material level. To the extent that astrology can help make our lives a little easier (and hopefully, in better harmony with the Divine), I think that it is good to work to do the best we can in terms of reliable interpretation and application for the material world. To the extent empirical research can help with that, I am all for it!

Paul wrote:

spock wrote:That it has loosened so little is an indication of how little it has progressed. There is little evidence or logic supporting the idea that astrology predicts concrete external events. What it does predict, in my opinion, is psychological states of mind, specifically motivations. This better fits the evidence, dissolves the fate versus free will paradox, and renders an astrology so conceived, with a nod toward chronobiology, as something that's not after all impossible on the face of it.

Actually Spock I think it's truer to say that there's little to no evidence either way, and whilst it may be that you believe it predicts psychological states of minds, this is similarly lacking in evidence either way.

I'm not so sure. Granted, much of the evidence is second-hand, but it's consistent and compelling. Gertrude Stein in Fernhurst refers to "the twenty-ninth year the straight and narrow gate-way of maturity and life which was all uproar and confusion narrows down to form and purpose and we exchange a great dim possibility for a small hard reality." Grant Lewi in Astrology for the Millions was clearly, it seems to me, seeing much the same "thing" when he wrote that it "forces on you fundamental realizations of your capacities, your limitations and your opportunities" which "generally lead to a complete revision of ideas and plans, so that by the time the aspect is past you are a new person, living a new life with a deeper purpose, and aiming at a more thoroughly comprehended goal." Psychologist Daniel Levinson's Seasons of a Man's Life and Gail Sheehy's Passages similarly describe a late twenties period when we grow up and get our act together, and which similarly posit an internal transition expressed in the external changes that person makes.

Cognitive developmental psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, whose posthumous influence in the field is powerful and growing, posited a developmental scheme which includes a "Crisis at Age Seven." In an article by that title (in The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky; Volume 5: Child Psychology, edited by Robert W. Rieber) he points to "a loss of directness and naivete" and to "behavior that is somewhat fanciful, artificial, mannered and forced." (The child is not experienced, like adults, at presenting a public face, because he's only just now learning to do it.) The child develops self-evaluation and feels a sense of worth if he succeeds regularly, and loss of worth if he fails. He develops a self-image that he tries to live up to. Only at this time can the child hold himself to a task, because it serves his emergent self-image (i.e., his ego). Only at this time can the child lie, because his thoughts, which from age 3 to 7 were out loud, in which he didn't realize he was talking only to himself, are now recognized as his own and voiced silently in his mind. Vygotsky sees each age crisis, "at age one, three, seven, or twelve," as a change in the child's internal environment. Near the end of the article Vygotsky writes that "in the transition from age level to age level, new incentives and new motives develop in the child....The restructuring of needs and motives and the reevaluation of values are basic factors in the transition from age level to age level."

Note that the age-timed turning points Vygotsky refers to coincide in time with the first Solar Return (seen as a transition, not a pretext for a chart), Jupiter opening square its natal place, Saturn opening square its natal place, and the first Jupiter Return. Levinson's and Sheehy's works referenced above, as well as the Steinem quote, describe a development that coincides with the Saturn Return. In addition to trying to clarify and validate (if possible) known astrological effects, or discover them by our own research efforts, perhaps we should also look in the literature for well-established effects that arguably are but haven't been seen as astrological effects before now.

You mentioned earlier that astrologers:

learn to avoid prediction and instead explain what's already happened under the (mistaken) assumption that what's explainable after the fact would have been uniquely predictable before the fact. Or if they do predict it's in vague general terms that a multitude of events would fit

Well this hasn't been my experience of any professional astrologers I've gone to. I've been to one years ago before I knew much at all about astrology and he, a modern astrologer, predicted several things, quite concretely. Last year I went to a traditional astrologer who predicted a number of things, also very concretely (such as that I would return to University, which I did). The fact remains that there's little to no evidence whether an astrologer can make accurate concrete predictions, nor is there enough evidence to say that "astrologers learn to avoid prediction" - though no doubt many do learn not to, but equally, many do predict.

If, as I contend, there's a blind spot here inculcated by astrological training, it's no surprise that astrologers regularly say they don't see it, yet inferring its existence explains a lot that's otherwise inexplicable. If astrology works as obviously as most astrologers think it does, it should be easy to objectively demonstrate that it does. But it isn't, and this is a source of surprise and even consternation for many astrologers. There are lots of ways to unconsciously fudge. Readers, whether using crystal balls, tarot cards or astrological charts, are expert at picking up clues in ways they're not at all aware of themselves, nor is the client. If astrology works as obviously and unequivocally as we think it does, five competent astrologers studying a detailed history of a given person should be able to come up with the same rectified time. But this sort of thing just doesn't happen, and it would be sensational news in astrological circles if it did. Objective evaluation, and research conducted with the expectation that it will be objectively evaluated, can lead to an astrology that works obviously and can objectively be demonstrated to do so.

spock wrote: I'm not so sure. Granted, much of the evidence is second-hand, but it's consistent and compelling. Gertrude Stein in Fernhurst refers to "the twenty-ninth year the straight and narrow gate-way of maturity and life which was all uproar and confusion narrows down to form and purpose and we exchange a great dim possibility for a small hard reality."
...
Cognitive developmental psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, whose posthumous influence in the field is powerful and growing, posited a developmental scheme which includes a "Crisis at Age Seven." In an article by that title (in The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky; Volume 5: Child Psychology, edited by Robert W. Rieber) he points to "a loss of directness and naivete" and to "behavior that is somewhat fanciful, artificial, mannered and forced."

Right, but all this shows is that astrologers correlate certain time periods with planetary transits - and that these periods affect us as a race. This is really only a tiny snippet of the kind of predictions that psychological astrologers might make which is more usually nuanced and personal. What we have here isn't proof of psychological astrologer's claims with regards predictions, what this is instead is a correlation noticed between a general behavioural pattern common to all people and a planetary transit etc which coincides with it.

A similar analogy would be like trying to point out that events change around the time of the first Jupiter return, such as with puberty. This wouldn't suddenly be cited as proof toward astrological event oriented prediction. Similarly noticing that certain periods relate to emotional/psychological changes (rather than physical) and associating a planetary aspect/return with that time doesn't validate the claims of astrological prediction of psychological changes.

Of course I do believe that the Saturn return does correlate with psychological changes etc. but I do not see this as proof with regards the claims of astrologers citing psychological prediction. Remember, my point was that there's similarly no proof for the claims of psychological astrologers as there is event-oriented ones. The claims of psychological astrologers include such things as noting when something like Pluto transits a planet or point like the Moon or the ascendant. Or that a secondary progression may indicate some psychological development or change as dictated by the nature of the planets. So we do not have any proof for the claims of psychological astrological prediction - but that's okay, it's in good company with pretty much the rest of the claims by astrologers.

In addition to trying to clarify and validate (if possible) known astrological effects, or discover them by our own research efforts, perhaps we should also look in the literature for well-established effects that arguably are but haven't been seen as astrological effects before now.

I agree, that's something that may be of interest to many people - however my only point is that we should not conclude that there's proof before we do the studies.

If, as I contend, there's a blind spot here inculcated by astrological training, it's no surprise that astrologers regularly say they don't see it, yet inferring its existence explains a lot that's otherwise inexplicable. If astrology works as obviously as most astrologers think it does, it should be easy to objectively demonstrate that it does.

Wait a second, you're juxtaposing my point against something else. My point was in contradiction to your view that astrologers learn not to predict - my examples being that having only been to two professional astrologers, one modern and one traditional, I can conclude that both predicted. I am not making claims for their being able to demonstrate that their predictions were accurate or inaccurate. Just that they did make predictions, both of them - and for what it's worth both predicted physical changes as well as psychological ones.

This is stark contrast to your idea that astrologers learn not to predict or only predict in general terms. In both cases, both astrologers predicted very specific things.

spock wrote:[ If astrology works as obviously as most astrologers think it does, it should be easy to objectively demonstrate that it does. But it isn't, and this is a source of surprise and even consternation for many astrologers. There are lots of ways to unconsciously fudge. Readers, whether using crystal balls, tarot cards or astrological charts, are expert at picking up clues in ways they're not at all aware of themselves, nor is the client. If astrology works as obviously and unequivocally as we think it does, five competent astrologers studying a detailed history of a given person should be able to come up with the same rectified time. But this sort of thing just doesn't happen, and it would be sensational news in astrological circles if it did. Objective evaluation, and research conducted with the expectation that it will be objectively evaluated, can lead to an astrology that works obviously and can objectively be demonstrated to do so.

Spock, I agree with what you wrote. Criticisms of astrology's (in)accuracy have been going on for 2000 years. The "rebuttal" is often that it is such a complicated topic (which it is) that it is difficult for the non-masters to get it right.

Statistics, interestingly, would have some useful applications. A given technique doesn't expect that A has to correlate with B 100% of the time. Rather, A has to correlate with B at some pre-specified level, above random chance. With a big sample of charts, we might think we found something solid if a correlation between some astrological variables and verifiable life experience or character traits obtained, say, 75% of the time.

The problem with astrology is that we don't think statistically. Something in a cookbook is supposed to work consistently. If I get a chart reading, I'd like to think it is completely accurate, not at the level of 75%.

I'm not up on the literature about statistical tests of astrology, but I would think the number of variables to be examined simultaneously would be huge. (10 or 7 planets x 12 signs x 12 houses x 5 or 6 major aspects x .....) It's no good, further, saying Venus in Scorpio means X, if X can be trumped by some other chart factor, like the moon in Sagittarius.

We would certainly need some sort of protocol in which chart variables could be rank-ordered by importance; which is where I think advice from professional astrologers as to how they operate, would be valuable. Then perhaps a researcher could develop a model based on their methods as to how the process actually works-- for them.

There is something more at work here, which is the subjective process taking place in the mind of the astrologer.

My own belief is that someday psychologists will know a lot more about psi abilities, and how divination methods plug into them.