Skyscript Astrology Forum

Waybread wrote:Now, I am not saying that if researchers actually modeled how a seasoned astrologer judges a nativity, that a new, beefy set of statistical tests would produce meaningful results. But I would like to see one try. Afterall, Liz Greene has been doing off-the-shelf computer-generated horoscope readings for years, and she does have happy customers. (Could be the Barnum Effect, which would add another level of complexity.)

If these Liz Greene computer generated horoscopes are the same as the one used on Astrodienst, I have some doubts about it. In some threads people discussed their compute generated horoscope and I also found such texts on the internet. When I compared them I found that they were compilations of similar fragments of texts. So what the programme does is in fact adding up sentences written for several configurations, a kind of advanced cook-book analysis. I also remember threads in which sometimes people told they were shocked by the doom and gloom predictions of depressing periods through transits (remember about what I wrote yesterday on the frequency of transits). These were computer based prediction analyses. Some of these people with these problems were brushed off or even banned from that forum if they posed too critical questions. Speaking of commercialization of astrology......

Olivia wrote:See - this is the problem. I'm familiar with McCann's work. It's filled with historical inaccuracies

&

McCann's argument was that horary should work all the time for anything. It doesn't.

In that case, I may have misjudged the idea of horary, sorry for that. I don't know much about horary and I always had the impression that it must always work. I believed that McCann's view of horary as presented in the interview here on Skyscript was representative for all horary and its practitioners.

(The following quote was also part of the exchange of ideas with Deb of the other statistics thread:)

The interview with Maurice McCann wrote:Q: The thing I wonder with cases like that - does the faith, the confidence, in the mind of the astrologer have an impact on the results do you think?

No, I think it's sheer hard slog. It's not a case of, if you're in a magical mood, it'll all work for you; it won't. I'm telling you it won't! What you've got to do is, you've got to know all the components of the chart. You can't overlook a rule, or the fact that, three weeks later, there is Mercury - it's coming up to conjunct Mars, but before it gets there it goes retrograde. (..........)
And it is very mechanical. The planets are going around up in the sky in a mechanical order. They just go on, boringly doing that. Saturn is boundaries, structure, and those guys (the planets) are doing the structure all the time - until they explode or something.

So maybe it's not entirely like this? I read about the requirements that you indeed need a purified mind and the question must be honest. Does it mean that in horary there is a kind of required intuition?

In that case I can affirm the importance and untestability of intuition, dispite I make the impression to be a hard headed doubter. My father's aunt had the clairaudient gift and knew things she couldn't have known. I'm sure she wouldn't have performed under laboratory circumstances to test the gift. Another example is of a former colleague of mine who told me he once had rash and itching all over. The doctors couldn't find anything and medical treatment didn't work. He went to an acupuncturist (who was a friend of his girlfrien) and although he didn't believe in it it worked after a few treatments, without medicine. Dispite of negative statistical results, it did work in this particular case. The only problem with these things is that it doesn't always work which makes it less predictable. Another more political example is the fact that under market regulatory policy pharmacists and doctors are obliged to prescribe the cheapest medical drugs, this in the interest of the patient/consumer. However sometimes patients have more avail from the more expensive medicine although the statistics say there is hardly any difference in quality/effectiveness between the expensive and cheaper drug. Here you see the issue of "personalized medicine" as was discussed in Siegfried's article.

Realising that I now tend to spend many hours to this subject I think it's better for me to take a break for a while so here are some final thoughts for the moment being. I also have noticed that intuition is an essential part when looking at charts of people. Probably this is the untestable side of it. However this would put technique more of secondary importance and it probably won't matter whether which technique you use. But I believe it's better to stick to one direction get skilful in it and not mix too much. Although some may disagree, I've been quite convinced of outer planet transits and, like Johannes Kepler, have felt contended using aspects as most essential issue. The main doubts about astrology that pop up in my mind every now and then are rather related to the idea that not every aspect in life should be directed/explained by astrology. This easily turns astrology in an obsession.

Not meaning to feed your obsession, but yes, if you're interpreting a horary, you do have to go strictly by the rules.

As to asking, have a look at this (if you like): http://www.skyscript.co.uk/horary_questions.html

Thanks anyway. I printed that article and will read it this weekend.

edit: since I was curious, I just read the article and it's clarifying. I used to think that a question should be asked as soon as possible after it came into your mind. When I look at Deb's examples of questions-not-to-ask, I only can say that I'm glad that I'm not a horary astrologer. I would get very tired of receiving improper, trivial or pointless questions. Hopefully this doesn't happen too often to you horary astrologers.

Some interesting thoughts on this thread.
Waybread on December 2nd wrote:
[quote]A computer should be capable of picking up most of what a human astrologer would do to judge a horoscope, but this process would have to be modeled correctly. So far as I know, the statistical tests didn't rank-order very much, nor add in a lot of non-horoscopic variables of the kind Ibn Ezra addressed. [/quote]
In fact there are several multivariate model-building statistical methods, for example stepwise multiple regression and also various methods of tree analysis, that have no problems coping simultaneously with both the rank ordering and the presence or absence of specific attributes of the type Olivia quotes Ibn Ezra as addressing.
Cheers.

37CENNED--I am glad you joined the conversation. Can you share how you might run a statistical test of astrology's truth claims, in a way that gets beyond the disappointing (to astrologers) results to date?

It just seems to me that researchers could do a better job of modeling how an experienced and gifted astrologer would actually read a chart for a client.

The results of more sophisticated studies might still show no significant correlations, and they would still beg the question of how outliers in the data are to be explained, but I think it would put the whole project on a better footing.

Eddy, come back soon. BTW, I am not a fan of Liz Greene's or anyone's computer-generated chart readings but I merely wanted to note them as a precedent.

Of course, a statistical study presupposes certain things about how the universe functions: just maybe, some kind of "vulgar empiricism" at work. The `a priori assumptions of a piece of research always need to be stated or unpacked. So if there is some different explanation for why astrology works (if it does). we need to understand it better. Some astrologers support the idea of the divination "moment" in astrology, others do not. But one could also test for this hypothesis by comparing chart reading success rates for times when the astrologer thought he was "on" vs. "not on."

Just possibly horoscope interpretation is really an art, just as playing the piano is an art. Not every piano student will be very good at it, not every piano teacher will be effective: only a few students will go on to reach the concert stage.

Waybread wrote:

[quote]Can you share how you might run a statistical test of astrology's truth claims, in a way that gets beyond the disappointing (to astrologers) results to date? [/quote]

Your use of the word 'test' bothers me. It suggests an approach akin to identifying whether something is better than something else, than a control. Such methodology, which might be used to test the efficacy of a new pharmaceutical, doesn't seem appropriate in the astrology situation.

Instead my approach would be to analyze past happenings to identify as many meaningful astrological characteristics as I could find that related to these happenings, and then to combine those different variables (astrological characteristics) that did not have high intercorrelations in such a way that they could be used to predict the required happenings in the future. This is statistical model building.

The form of any model, statistical or other, depends very much on what it is required to explain or predict.

Three examples can be seen at www.freeconsiderations.com.

In Considerations VII:1 "Identifying Election Winners" uses multiple regression with astrological variables to identify the winners of United States presidential elections.

In Considerations VII:2 "Close, but No Cigar", the same object is carried out using a simple tree analysis. This article was designed for easy visual understanding.

In Considerations XIX:2 "Predicting the Dow" applies harmonically transformed variables, of the type John Addey researched in the 1960s, in a multiple regression model to forecast the weekly percent change in the Dow Jones Index using some 100-plus years of weekly observations.

In each of the above examples what is predicted/explained is closely defined and the necessary steps to generating a model follow from this. Each of these models has held up against subsequent activity over the years since it was created.

Cheers

Thanks for the references! I look forward to reading them.

Just one further thought is that part of the problem with statistics applications to individuals' natal charts so far might be that the data bytes themselves are subject to multiple interpretations. The moon in a birth chart is any and all of the following--and then some, for example. The moon might indicate one's needs, emotions/feelings, mother, subconscious, or home. Then the 4th house has some overlap of meaning here. If the interpretation of a data point is a shifting target, this might create some difficulties in trying to show a relationship between the horoscope and outcomes in people's lives.

Waybread - how would your practise of astrology change if statistics showed astrology worthless? If by some freak of circumstance it showed astrology useful?

Do you not believe that astrologers competent at their trade would do more for the reputation of astrology than statistical analysis?

I'm still trying to get my head around why people think that 'proving' astrology by statistics matters. To whom is it important? It isn't to me (granted, I don't believe it can be done, and would just be a red herring and a waste of time and money). It isn't to my clients. Are your clients clamouring for statistical studies proving the validity of astrology? Are you? If so, why?

To what standard is astrology to be held compared to other client-based professions? Sometimes doctors are wrong. Sometimes lawyers are wrong. Sometimes even those in the hard sciences, ones that aren't client-based, like chemistry, are wrong.

That doesn't invalidate the practise of medicine, law, or even chemistry. Or does it?

I just don't understand why trying to prove astrology by using a scientific model it doesn't fit into is important, or to whom it would be important. Help me out here. To whom would these studies make a difference, and why?

Hi Olivia--Just a few responses to your thoughtful question. I note that I am an amateur astrologer and that the root of "amateur" is "to love" one's subject. To me personally, astrology dwells more in the spiritual than in the material, so I cannot see my way towards charging money for my services. So to me, the issue on this thread is not what my non-existent clients or very actual and existent Internet correspondents might want, but what I see as a more panoramic issue for astrology.

I spent over 30 years in a university career in major research universities, where the very concept of astrology was an anathema. Prejudice? No doubt. But the last I noticed, scientists and engineers (amongst whom I worked) call a lot more shots than astrologers do; and deployed far more rigorous standards for their knowledge base than I have seen in 20 years of studying astrology; traditional astrology's meticulous delineations notwithstanding.

1. We are all aware of the common view, especially among highly educated people, that astrology is worthless: that its practitioners are either misguided or actually cheats.

This criticism has gone on for centuries, and has not abated. Astrologers have had enough highly publicized failures of prediction over the centuries so that all of us need to think carefully about the accuracy of our truth-claims. Proponents of astrology point to the successes (the glass as half-empty or half-full problem,) but scarcely anybody argues that astrology's glass is always full.

Basing the reputation of astrology on "astrologers competent at their trade" hardly helps matters. Mistakes abound among the mighty, ranging from C. E. O. Carter's failure to predict WW II to John Frawley's admitted misses in predicting the outcomes of sports matches.

2. Except in a very few fields like theology, truth-claims gain legitimacy with respect to objective, external validation.

A major example of external validation would be in a court of law, where an accusation requires either the "preponderance of evidence" or evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" indepently of the claims made by the prosecutor. Another example would be in the writing of history, where the historian uses internal and external criticism to ensure that the documents she studies are not forgeries, that purported eye-witnesses actually saw the events they recorded, and that multiple sources (when available) converge on the same version of events.

3. Statistics are not the only way that astrology's truth-claims could be affirmed or rebutted, but it is certainly one important way. For one thing, unless one subscribes to a spiritual, holistic, or divinatory explanation of astrology, we are still in a Ptolemaic cause-and-effect model. Insofar as I understand the applicability of statistics (admittedly, not far) this strikes me as exactly the kind of subject that should be amenable to statistical testing.

If statistical studies so far have shown no significant relationships, I am less inclined, personally, to think of astrology as worthless than to wonder how better research might be designed.

4. Doctors and lawyers are sometimes wrong. But I do not subscribe to the "two wrongs make a right" school of debate. A lawyer making a mistake is by no stretch of the imagination a validation of astrology.

But their professions require undergraduate university degrees, graduate programs, and practical apprenticeships (internships, residences, clerking, &c.) These people have to pass stiff board exams before they are licensed to practice; and they cannot practice without a license. If they make significant mistakes they can be removed from their professions or even jailed.

The training for astrologers, even those who complete exams through the AFA or some other certification body, does not even come close to these standards. I just had surgery last week, incidentally, and the idea that even a senior astrologer has training on the level of a specialist surgeon simply does not hold up.

In the past, before the medical profession required such extensive training and screening, medicine had serious problems with incompetant and fraudulent practitioners. I fear this is similar to the state of astrology today. Anyone can "hang out a shingle" and claim to be an astrologer with no education in it whatsoever. Believe me, I have seen such people on another astrology forum.

As I am sure you are aware, Olivia, applied astrology got turfed out of European universities, with just a couple of exceptions, by 1800; while medicine and law expanded. Part of the reason was that these fields could demonstrate successes that astrology could not match.

Rather than defending their astrological turf through exceptionalist arguments, I would rather see astrologers asking themselves the hard questions.

First, astrology was largely gone from European universities by the late 1500s, not the 1800s. Through the Protestant Reformation (primarily) and some other mechanisms, time had been secularised, and a new worldview was starting to take shape, one within which astrology (at least of the traditionalist variety) cannot make sense.

I didn't ask why an incompetent attorney or physician would prove astrology right. I stated that there are incompetent attorneys and physicians, even incompetent chemists, yet their errors do not call into question the entire edifices upon which they practise.

I have a genetic physical illness that was misdiagnosed (mostly as a psychiatric disorder) by no less than 37 physicians. Pretty big number. I didn't sue any of them, even the ones who prescribed harmful treatment; life's too short. Do physicians routinely misdiagnose illnesses to a far higher degree than is generally believed? Based on the literature, as well as my own experience, I'd have to say yes. Yet I don't believe medicine as a whole is invalidated because of that. Do you? I do think it could do with a serious look at how doctors view their patients, though. Even still, would you expect one physician, over the course of a career, to have a diagnostic success rate of 100%? That seems equally unrealistic, even for a very good one.

Are you claiming that all it takes is one or two astrologers to make a mistake to make the entire edifice of astrology worthless? Forgive me if I state that that's an impossible standard, and an unfair one.

I'll also mention, as you well know, that astrology is neither as ubiquitous nor as socially or politically powerful as any of those other-mentioned fields.

You say you ascribe astrology to a primarily spiritual model, and later you go on to say that spiritual models do not need to have their truth claims verified. And then you say that astrology operates by some cause-and-effect model that is amenable to statistical study.

Which is it? Or have I completely misunderstood you? Because I am quite sincerely confused over what you've written.

I agree with the most things you said there Waybread. Some self-reflection by astrologers would do no harm.

Waybread wrote: If statistical studies so far have shown no significant relationships, I am less inclined, personally, to think of astrology as worthless than to wonder how better research might be designed.

Better/or rather say other research has been designed though. If astrology itself, as most astrologers claim, cannot be tested then sooner the astrologers themselves should be tested, researchers say. These tests have been performed and astrologers turned out to perform no better than chance.

Olivia wrote: ? how would your practise of astrology change if statistics showed astrology worthless?

Although the question was not directed to me, I?d like to say some of my thoughts.

Since I don?t want to beat around the bush and be as fickle as a politician, I should say that while I always had a researching attitude towards astrology, my belief has decreased in the last year. Last Christmas-holidays I read the entire astrology-and-science website about researches and when I read Peter Niehenke?s researches about aspects (the main thing I applied and about few tests had been made) did?t give the expected results, this certainly affected my view/practice (as an amateur) of astrology. I started to doubt my observed ?experiences? of transits and if these would turn out to be not true either, this would mean that I had been following an illusion for years. That is quite a disillusion, not only because of the waste of time one might conclude it to be but especially from a moral point of view. I think I?m not alone in believing that almost every practitioner, whether professional or amateur, considers astrology an important guidance in life. Losing this can be a strong disenchantment. Here is it where astrology may touch the spiritual.

On the other side though, I?ve always felt the incompatibility of the spiritual side and the pure mechanical-physical side which forms the base of every calculation in astrology. Sun Moon and planets are nothing more than huge spheres, of gasses, rock and/or ice to be eternally subject to the laws of physics. Somewhere deep inside I felt it would be more ?spiritual? to search for life detached from astrology (another one of the reasons I wouldn?t observe my transits or any astrology for a while).

I think somewhere here lays the main objection against of most astrologers against statistical research. Astrology gives life ?meaning?, like a religion does. Just like a religion doesn?t need to be provable astrology wouldn?t be either. Here you see the objective versus subjective, fact vs. meaning tension that always pops up. This tension should be well taken into account attentively in discussions, otherwise we find ourselves discussing different things and as a consequence usually endlessly.

I believe making the comparison of the mistakes in astrology with those in medicine and other fields of science is an unfortunate one. First, most medical scientists agree about essential issues (how the heart works, how bones grow in childhood and when things go wrong), whilst astrologers don?t (like in sidereal vs. tropical). Second, mistakes occur but not that frequently as in astrology. Even if 5% in medicine is a mistake, it?s many times better than the majority of mistakes in astrology. Third, the reactions in medicine about negative results are usually not one of strong resistance. It urges scientists to develop new methods which do work. This is something that doesn?t seem to happen in astrology, otherwise there might have been changes and developments in astrology, like in science.

Research and statistics were not developed to be a pain in the neck to practitioners. They are used as a mean to verify if what they believe to work really does. If not then other causes may be at stake (like the effects in psychology). And indeed, scientists submit themselves to more rigid standards than astrologers do. I believe because of the amagamate nature of astrology serves itself to be researched by scientific models because part of astrology is based upon sheer facts. A birth time is a fact and the corresponding planetary positions are facts too. This can be verified by observation. In astrology, meanings are given to these factual positions and therefore these can be checked as a science, just like medical meaning can be given to a red spot on the body. Contrary to meaning in medical cases, meaning in astrology is based not upon research but on analogy. This served well in a community (like the Babylonian omens) that didn?t understand its environment but later proved to be wrong in most cases. Analogy isn?t accepted anymore and can even be contradictory. The mediaeval doctrine of signatures proved to be wrong and if we would advise black coffee to an insomniac simply because of the analogy; coffee = black = dark = night = sleep, then sure we would be at the wrong track here. So some research is required to test the assertions which were based upon analogy, which have their roots in Babylonian religion, otherwise we will never be sure what works and what doesn?t.

I?m glad that in modern society testing is required, it serves to find the truth. Although medicine still has no answers to many diseases, I?m glad that a doctor?s reply to my question if something works would not be something like: ?Well, many people disagree with me and all tests have been negative but it works for me and I have happy clients.?.

I'll also mention, as you well know, that astrology is neither as ubiquitous nor as socially or politically powerful as any of those other-mentioned fields.

Thank goodness this isn?t the case anymore. Read Keith Thomas? Religion and the decline of magic, in the astrology chapters he illustrates the disastrous impact which erroneous predictions had on society.

So yes, I have my doubts about astrology, and I might face some opposition. However, my remarks are not meant to take a p? on astrologers, and I don't have the intention to torment people who believe in elements of astrology I don't believe in. I thought it would be better to tell where I stand at the moment. If I might have a change in ideas I will tell. Since I started astrology with the Keplerian belief that most things in astrology don?t work, I was left with only planet/angles positions and transits to them. The last few years I had the increasing idea that transits are very unreliable of indicating of what is happening and much less about what will happen in a few months or years from the moment, on the mental level (not to mention the materiel one). This somewhat made astrology less meaningful and here may be another indication why I never felt the inhibitions about researches, especially when the results were negative. In the years after the tests it seems that astrology went different directions. Some left astrology. Others in first instance as a result, escaped the factual level and got more and more psychologically with the accompanying unverifiable vagueness. Further I have the impression that as a reaction to this vagueness, astrologers returned to the basis of astrology in the more concrete traditional direction. Maybe others have stood on the same crossing of dissatisfaction as where I stand now, and chose for the more richly detailed of classical technique, but I don't think I will go that direction either. On the other side, in case if the results were/will be positive, my resistance against the idea of mental matters being related or subject to just material cyclical events, might even be stronger. If in such case I would abandon astrology, I would do because it works not because parts of it don?t.

Olivia wrote:Which is it? Or have I completely misunderstood you? Because I am quite sincerely confused over what you've written.

Yes, Olivia. Apparently you have misunderstood me, and I regret that I did not explain myself more clearly.

Eddy has explained things much better than I could, so I'll simply support his post.

Just a few corrections: (1) I am aware that astrology disappeared from most universities prior to the 1800s: this was a generous "benefit of the doubt." Since many universities dismissing astrology were in Catholic countries with minimal Protestant intrusion, however, something other than the Protestant relationship to time was afoot. (2)Your argument about astrology vis `a vis medicine and law sounds similar to one made by astrology's apologists in the past. It doesn't wash. I would like astrology to stand on its strengths, not on the possibility that its mistakes are excusable in comparison to law or medicine, or on par with them. While medicine cannot cure everyone and law cannot ensure equal justice, these fields' successes in western democracies clearly outscore their failures. (3) No, I am not "...claiming that all it takes is one or two astrologers to make a mistake to make the entire edifice of astrology worthless." (4) Your paragraph on spiritual astrology misinterprets what I wrote.

I am sorry that your health and experience with the medical profession have been so difficult. Best wishes for an improvement in your health; and optimally, a cure.