Martin Lewicki wrote:
Astrologers should get over themselves and quit all this special pleading - if no scientific evidence that astrology works is produced.
I'm not sure what you mean by special pleading, Martin, but I think we're probably looking at it from different angles. There are two distinct issues: on the one hand there is the problem of astrology's acceptance by a wider public, and there, I completely agree with you - without objective evidence, there is no point in trying to convince anyone who is not naturally inclined to accept it, and making vague analogies only makes us look foolish.
On the other hand there is the essentially personal issue of our confidence in our own experience, and that's the angle I've been writing from. Anyone who is concerned about the integrity of their own beliefs has to recognise the possibility of self-deception, so if scientists suggest that what we believe is incompatible with the way the physical world works, we have to deal with that in some way. For many, that means retreating from the idea that there is any physical basis to it - but that means giving up any hope of objective evidence (and my instinct is that it also means giving up part of the potential of the subject). Personally, as I said in my last post, I can't see that there's even a case to answer. But then, thinking about it, all I've actually seen is statements that astrologers can't explain how astrology works (which implies that it is somehow contrary to the laws of physics, but doesn't say it explicitly).
At least cosmologists have actual observations to follow up on theories and to modify if required.
When you can't see the wood, making ever more detailed observations of more and more trees doesn't have that much value. To my mind it's a fundamental requirement that the conclusions of a theory should not contradict the assumptions it's based on. When a chain of reasoning which is only made possible by the assumption that the same laws apply everywhere arrives at a point where those laws cannot be true ... as far as I'm concerned it's a classic case of
reductio ad absurdum; calling it a Singularity and carrying on regardless merely takes them into fantasy.
On that note: one of the assumptions behind that theory is that we don't occupy a privileged position in the universe; totally reasonable at the highest level, but you only have to consider a nursery to realise that it's not safe to apply it at the level that we see. If Earth is the cradle of an infant god, perhaps the endeavours of the cosmologists will turn out to be like the time, when I was very young, when I lay in bed puzzling over the significance of the pictures of picnicking teddy bears that were repeated at regular intervals round the walls of my bedroom. If only my parents had hung over my bed a mobile programmed to reveal the secrets of the universe ....
