I really applaud the last two posts - to which I also entirely agree. I have often felt that astrology?s ?placement? or ?definition? presents an unresolvable dilemma but you two have nailed the problem so precisely I now wonder if there is a new way forward. Is it not possible that a small group of well informed, experienced astrologers, who understand the scientific angles and have sensitivity to the cultural problems, could now work on creating a new definition ? one that allows for an astrologer to give a ?correct reading on the wrong chart? without necessarily making a mockery of what astrology claims to be, and which explains that all generic systems of astrology have inbuilt flaws but can still be useful as an integrated system. I suppose I?m suggesting that a small group (like Bill and Juan and maybe one or two others they know) could come up with a sort of statement as to what astrologers as a collective consider themselves to be. If this could be circulated for approval around various societies, maybe we could create a new reference point which media and scientific representation would need to adhere, in order to treat out subject with the due respect.
I?m guessing this is probably just a crazy thought but I do think that this could and should happen at some time. We are all a little lost as to how to define astrology; it is a word that has 1001 different expectations, with many members of the public immediately associating it with the horoscope columns in women?s magazines. So I think this is a great idea ? but its not something I would want to get involved in myself at any level !

But anyway, thanks to you both, Bill and Juan, for the credibility that you lend to the subject.
Deb

I am completely blown away by your post, Bill.
I don't think that I can add anything to what deb has already said but I will say that, if I had bought a book and found your post in it, I'd think: "It was money well spent!".

It is hard to believe that such amazing discussions and even complete articles can be found on an internet forum.

It is a real pleasure to read yours and Juan's comments, honestly!

However, your messages provide an opportunity for me to speak to others reading this thread about these kinds of issues, which are important ones. So thanks for that.

And we're grateful for that!

Cheers!

They may learn about the limitations of science, it?s a priori assumptions or beliefs, and discover that it has nothing to say about the most important aspects of human experience (e.g. love, family, relationships, justice, artistic creativity, the applied imagination, and so on).

I disagree on that and will try to explain why (I don't fear your ability to understand but my ability to express my opinion in english).
That Bill, is if we accept science as a mere tool, deprived of any philosophy, ripped apart of essence as a whole. If science is seen in its broader sense, it seizes being a mere tool with limited application.
Perhaps the use of another language may be more descriptive of what I am saying. ???????? is the Hellenic word for science. It means to supervise (attend and observe) but also to "stand above/on top" and derivatively one stands upon sciences, based on them to further attempt to acquire knowledge of the whole.
I understand "science" with the limitations of my language if you wish, as somebody else is limited by the use of his language. As such though, I find sciences to be not a dim-witted tool with no further implications of true wisdom, but to have roots and branches in philosophy and therefore wider abilities.
I don't see science as the crippled, narrow minded, maths plagued, deprived of any philosophy, subject they teach in every school of any degree.
Today's science is a most potent child that is imprisoned unable to be what it is. A stallion tied in a ground for wheat, forced to accommodate human needs beneath its ability. My definition (that derives of what science means in my language and not on any personal whims) is that science is one of the foundations, has philosophy and connections to the divine as much as astrology. Sciences try to map and unravel the divine/unknown, pretty much like occultism and religion but by using different means and roots.
I argue with what is said based on this reasoning. I see astrology having connection with science and both of them being connected to philosophy.
Always based on my language, astrology is a scientific - to some extend - Art (T????, from ?????-give birth; creation). A science of/about creation if you like.

I do not expect anyone to agree and I don't mind. Bill's post impacted me as much as everyone else. Shuttered so many things, it was an alchemical death of sorts: It killed to give rebirth.
I expected contradicting simplistic science (and win) but never expected an astrologer to be so thorough and accurate and actually managing to make almost my whole system collapse. Congratulations Bill, it was really a pleasure. And I saved your post for future reference. ^^

I am set that astrology can be explained, verified and therefore validated, through sciences, to a certain degree. If we consider science as we accept it today, in its small poor definition, as such, even if we could prove any relation, it would just be pulling astrology down to the level of today's science. A very low level indeed (low not in achievements but in essence).

Does science has limitations? Certainly. The same limitations astrology and cooking and religion and driving have. They are all human. They derive from humans and therefore are bound to the limitations as well as abilities the humans have.
- Wait what? Gravity exists irrelevantly from humans!
- Probably, however the conceptualizing and explanation about it, is entirely human and therefore subject to the limitation aforementioned.

If we reenact science in its classical meaning, raise it above the level it is given today, re-attribute its connection to philosophy, then a possible parallel or connection to astrology (if it is found to exist), will not be diminishing.
Both have sets of rules, both have certain tools and theories in use, both are human devices and both try to investigate the possible connection between the physical world and the human, as well the human itself.

Bill wrote: First of all you claim there is rock solid scientific evidence for astrology, but will not explain what it is.

It is not something that I claim as if it were a belief, it is in fact a fact. A scientific fact, but then you an other "astrologers" can choice to see the moon at night or deny its existence. Everyone is free in their choice of how they perceive reality, and if this reality deeply question their beliefs and even their "rock-solid self-built knowledge" then sometimes can be wiser not to see reality at all, so they don't need to rebuild their perception of the world once again, something hard to do as we go older.

The whole problem here is not astrology per se, but the concept that many of you have of science. I personally see the beautiful mythological drama presented by the movement of the heavens as wonderfully scientific and real.

Once the fundamentals of Astrology have been scientifically proven as it happened (even if you negate it, it is a fact of reality that it has been proven, but you choice to not see it, what is your choice, not the reality), then all the rest of the art acquire a new real scientific dimension never experienced before, this is logical and make perfect sense, even when it is needed to improve scientific methodology still a lot to achieve a modern explanation of the world from a new dimension.

There is not measurable scientific evidence for Gravity but it exists, to put a quick and simple example.

Sonia

There is not measurable scientific evidence for Gravity but it exists, to put a quick and simple example.

I would suggest this thread to be locked. It have received several good contributions for posterity, but I don?t see the point of the thread being constantly kidnapped by someone who obviously aren?t reading the contribution of others, don?t care to really answer any of the important questions asked on the thread by Bill and Juan, and it is also obviously changing definions (if she has anyone) every two paragraphs. And that, probably, should do a crash course of "Introduction to Science" before shoving to every one?s troats her definitions of science.

The problem with these discussions is thaty they almost always seem to lead to the discussion of sobjective versus objective, fact versus meaning. Unawareness of this leads to endless discussions.

It's like two people discussing a painting in which the first person says that it's a gouache. The second opposes this and says: "No, it's a beautiful picture with a lot of symbols". The first one says: "No it isn't an aquarelle but really a gouache, just have a look at the structure of the paint". The second says: "No, you are absolutely wrong, what you describe is not a painting, just have a look at these red colours, this surely discribes war". And on and on the discussion at cross-purposes continues.

Just note that the thread started about the discovery of a 'clock gene', and it turned into a thread about how astrology is to be considered. Anything physical in relation to astrology seems to make quite a stir.

Deb wrote:I suppose I?m suggesting that a small group (...) could come up with a sort of statement as to what astrologers as a collective consider themselves to be.

My first thought on this is, heaven forbid, that the same thing would happen as in the history of the Christian church. If one reads about the history of the church one finds that already in the first centuries CE there were many disagreements among the early christians; did Jesus only have divine nature (monophysitism) or both divine and human (like the Nestorians believed) or none of then, and what about the filioque question? Several times there were oecomenical councils in which several bishops determined what christianity was supposed to be. Disagreeing groups were excommunicated or even persecuted. Many people have been killed because of such disputes. However this is about religion, but where the astrology discussion turns to be about the meaning/subjectivism, similar things as discribed above seem to occur.

If we again take Jesus for example. The general story is that he was born out of a virgin, healed people and got crucified, to arise from the dead again and be taken up into heaven a while later. One could discuss if all this is possible in a scientific way or even as whether the man existed at all. Believing this would be utter nonsense from a strictly materialistic scientific point of view, there is namely no evidence and noone has been seen doing similar miracles. On the other side one could go entirely symbolical. There are christians to whom it doesn't matter if the stories aren't real or who believe that the stories have an allegoric meaning. Others see Jesus as the first socialist, drawing attention to the poor. However there is also a large amount of people who believe something in the middle between fact and meaning. Even the scientific oriented people among these still believe in the (physical) Resurrection, virgin birth and healings etc. To these people an entirely symbolic view ('of what use would a Jesus be that cannot physically heal') would rip away the foundation of their belief and shatter their hope and belief to pieces.

To these last people, the unexplainability is not really a problem and not even the issue. Perhaps this is where fact and meaning meet. And it also illustrates that nobody in the world can impose on others what true Christianity implies. The same applies to astrology.

May I say please, I agree, astrology is not science, for the precise, elegant, and eloquent reasons and questions raised by both Bill and Juan. Thank you.

Yes, astrology is an unknown, deep, poetical mystery. However this insight does not make astrology a science.

Fascinated by this thread -- Have been an astrologer for 40 years, and still am perplexed by its acuity. How is it that the mathematics of movement and life are so eloquently expressed through astrology? How did this ever become to be so?

TC wrote:Have been an astrologer for 40 years, and still am perplexed by its acuity. How is it that the mathematics of movement and life are so eloquently expressed through astrology? How did this ever become to be so?

The answer --to me-- is in the ordering provided by the mechanics of celestial motions. Because celestial motions are precisely ordered and predictable, they can be used to construct --given the necessary protocols-- concise analytical models of any human or natural phenomenon.

If we are able to answer "why do models in the physical and social sciences work?" "How do models operate?" "How are models evaluated?", we would understand how and why astrology works. It is essential that we understand how astrological models (e.g. charts) are built, and how they work.

Every time astrologers base their work on charts or horoscopes(inceptional, natal, horary...) their practice is no longer tied to the physical world, but to these charts.

Astrological charts are based on a principle that is the negation of the physical and spiritual experience of the sky, i.e., the artificial freezing of time. They represent a frozen time in the past that is used to chart the actual flow of duration in the physical world, but they are (including directions, transits, and progressions) completely asynchronous with natural phenomena.

Thanks to a series of cultural conventions derived largely from the metaphor of a seed, horoscopes are used AS IF they were symbolical entities (a question, a country, a person...), but most of what is represented in them is not natural or physical phenomena.

For example: the sections of equal 30-degrees, the elements and qualities, the specific characteristics of each sign, the intermediary houses and all house specific meanings, all rulerships, terms, directions and progressions, and transits. Additionally, in 60% of the cases where an exact Moon/Venus conjunction appears in a radix or in the ephemeris, they are separated physically by a minimum of 3 degrees, reaching a minimum of 4 degrees in 40% of the cases (that is a minimum of 8 full-moon disks in the sky).

The mathematical basis of these devices is derived from celestial motions, but their characteristics as astrological tokens are not found in the physical world. When they become operational during an astrological analysis, they are used as a classification system through a mental procedure known as componential analysis: the astrologer assigns each element of reality to each of the astrological categories, according to principles that are provided aprioristically by the chart itself.

So what all astrologers do when working with charts or any other astrological model is to classify reality and reduce it to a small number of components, and examine the dynamical structural interactions between these components. Astrologers manipulate and make use of celestial motions as one would use a pencil to draw simplified diagrams with which to qualify, give meaning to, and have a limited control of, any specific reality that comes under their scrutiny.

Juan

Juan wrote: Every time astrologers base their work on charts or horoscopes (inceptional, natal, horary...) their practice is no longer tied to the physical world, but to these charts.

Following your same reasoning then when a doctor takes a X-Ray of a patient's part of the body, his or her practice is no longer tied to the physical reality of the patient's body, but to the X-Ray.

I find many of your and Bill's ideas to be really bizarre, not mention the questions you made me, they are even more bizarre, and I sense a feeling of panic about astrology being seen as a science, to what I ask WHY? Why is so menacing this? Why negate and hide scientific proof?

Of course there is not full scientific validation for the whole astrology but we have very strong scientific evidence of its fundamentals, which means that "something is scientific REAL within Astrology", in the own words of the five skeptic researchers interviewed by Phillipson in the book Astrology in the Year Zero.

A birth chart is more than the sum of its parts: the interpretive schema and the interaction with clients produces something that can not be studied in the way science generally studies things, by reducing the object of scrutiny to bits and fragments that are weighed, measured and analyzed. Consecuently, science need to develop much more complex methods of analysis for complex natural sciences as Astrology it is. But until that day arrives we cannot say that astrology is not scientific, to say that it would be a completely non-scientific statement by the way.

99% of the so-called "astrologers" today are not accredited astrologers and this is another problem in order to build up a good academic level of astrology. Many of the finest astrologers in the world (quite a lot) are self-taught and they made excellent contributions to the science, but if we look to the future, then we need to set up a more standard academic level.

My sister used to work as journalist in the U.S. for a long time and she has a grade in Journalism but she is used to continually deal with everyone who call themselves "journalists" because just they wrote a blog on the internet, this so low-level intrusion into the professions makes very hard for true astrologers or true journalists to make a living or just being taking seriously by the rest of professionals, I don't mean to say that only accredited astrologers are true astrologers but unfortunately 99 per cent of them are only just charlatans and a professional accreditation is needed and today more than never before, so we have reason to protest for this and even sound arrogant about it, because this whole mess affects us, our professions and our personal image and lifes.

Why is Kepler College closing?

Why not University in the world offers a degree in Astrology?

Why most students of astrology are women in their mid-forties?

Do people really understand what Astrology is?

Do astrologers really understand what Astrology is?


There are many issues to raise here into serious consideration.

Sonia H., D.F.Astrol.S

soniah wrote:Following your same reasoning then when a doctor takes a X-Ray of a patient's part of the body, his or her practice is no longer tied to the physical reality of this patient's body, but to the X-Ray.

An x-ray is an interesting analogy. If we were using x-rays as we use birth charts, it would have to be something like this:

We take an x-ray of the little newborn's body at the exact moment of birth, and throughout his life keep referring to what appears in it. If at the age of 30 as an adult he comes crying because his wife and children left him, we take this x-ray of the moment he was born 30 years ago, do some strange math with it, and say to ourselves: "here is him, now I can see why his wife left him".

We look at the x-ray and say: the left arm is his father, the right arm is his mother, the heart is the place of his love life, his head is his personality, that backbone is his friends, the left leg his profession, the right leg is family life, his feet is work environment. Additionally the x-ray is divided into superimposing symmetrical and colored sectors that have nothing to do with anatomy, one sector is fire, the other water, etc.

The funny thing about this bizarre x-ray is that many of the things that appear in it cannot be traced back to the body of the newborn. For example, the liver is on the wrong side (differing positions due to ignoring celestial latitude), or the heart may appear too large (partile aspects that are mere artifacts of the x-ray). But we ignore all these discrepancies with physical reality and say something that has nothing to do with physics such as: "you are incredibly loving and generous".

So no, the moment we work with astrological charts we are no longer dealing with the physical world except marginally or indirectly.

Juan

I have to disagree once again.

A birth chart reflects the heaven of a precise moment (a Unit of Time) as seen from a specific place, it reflects the physical world in a similar way as a X-Ray reflects a specific physical reality of an adult part of the body.

Then what kind of elements are of astrological interest in the chart this is another completely different issue, is an issue of selectiveness, as with any other kind of analitical tools used by other natural sciences.


Sonia H., D.F.Astrol.S

Eddy wrote:

Soniah wrote:It's standard astronomy knowledge that planets aren't source of energy.

Before Newton came up with gravity theory, Galileo dismissed the idea of the Moon causing the tides as occult superstition. Science will never be completed. So perhaps a similar thing would count for astrology.

Perhaps, Eddy, perhaps...

But in the meantime, Could you explain me how planets can have direct influences on the psychological trends of entire groups of people and nations?, or in other words, How can we apply this fantastic superstition of the "planetary influences" to explain Mundane Astrology?


Sonia H., D.F.Astrol.S