Skyscript Astrology Forum

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varuna2 wrote:

Firstly, I am amazed and disgusted by the treatment of a certain Ms. Soniah, by some fellow forum members (not necessarily Juan), in the 5210 thread titled Chronobiology.
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Soniah was way out of her epistemological depth and was interacted with - here - quite resonably by most posters.

varuna2 wrote: Firstly, I am amazed and disgusted by the treatment of a certain Ms. Soniah, by some fellow forum members (not necessarily Juan), in the 5210 thread titled Chronobiology.
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I see that Juan's views are shared by many here, judging by how everyone attacked the one who spoke out about this on the 5210 thread cited in the first post.

I've not read the 5304 thread yet, but I have to say I'm amazed at the patience that posters showed Soniah who, to my mind, was nothing but rude to those with whom she disagreed. The other posters were, for the most part, nothing but courteous to her. I do not see where Soniah was attacked, the closest was when Bill seemed to lose patience with her. On the contrary Soniah repeatedly behaved patronisingly and sometimes insultingly toward others.

And it is a start at refuting the notion that because science cannot explain the effects of the planets and the stars, therefore astrology is not a natural science. This argument by appealing to the current lack of knowledge of science is very weak, it reminds me of the weak argument for the 'God of the Gaps' in the field of theology.

How do you define a natural science? I don't recall Juan (we can assume this is to whom you are referring) stating that the reason it is not a natural science is because science cannot explain the effects of planets. In fact when you made a similar argument in the other thread I thought he summed up his rationale quite well - page 2 at 4.24pm - "Astrology is better tied to the social sciences because of its subject matter, its methodology, and the nature of the tools it uses". I'm not sure how he could have made his position clearer.

Also, I'm not sure what the photographs regarding Jupiter's magnetic field were meant to convey - you never actually said. You just posted them and left them there with no context. Is there some implication that you were attempting to point toward with the post? What do these photographs demonstrate in regards the argument that astrology is a science?

Contemporary scientists still know almost nothing about the laws of the universe.

I think we're forced into agnosticism on that issue. It would take someone who knows all the laws of the universe to judge how much or how little a scientists know. No such person appears to be available to tell us. What we do know is that science (by which I mean the body of contemporary scientists) does not know everything. That science does not know everything does not simply mean that we fill the gaps with notions of our own - oddly this is more like the 'god of the gaps' scenario that only moments ago you criticised.

Transits are a picture of the astronomical sky from a geocentric perspective and the idea that they do not represent the movement of the heavens is one of the strangest things I have had the misfortune to hear from an astrologer (with all due respect to Juan and everyone here who finds these notions to be satisfying).

What Juan is referring to here, clear from the context he gives and the explanations which follow, is the transits to a birth chart. Astronomy is used as a tool with which to draw the diagrams but the referencing of one diagram (planetary positions at birth) to another (planetary positions today) is not astronomy or any other natural science.

Progressions and directions will be explained in a rational way, by myself later when there is time, however both of them certainly do represent the movement of the heavens, from a geocentric perspective.

They are a representation as you say - but that is all. A metaphor, an analogy - all the kinds of things you might use in a social science.

I think before going any further it would be better to stop and put down what the distinction is between a social science and a natural science because I suspect that much of the problem is assumptions regarding nomenclature. I suspect that not everyone is reading from the same page when it comes to defining a natural science as distinct from a social science.

It appears to me that astrologers have chosen these positions to try and avoid and appease the hostility towards astrology by so-called educated contemporary persons, whom we are trained to consider their (scientists, psychologists, sociologists, statisticians, etc.) views as tantamount to the Gospel. Sorry, I do not drink that water, and my own mental realm of Lemuria is more satisfying to me.

This is strange, because I was actually thinking similar things, only the other way around.

I was wondering why the necessity to project astrology into the category of natural science (when to my mind it so clearly is not). I suspect the problem is actually one to do with insecurity and devaluing astrology on its own merits. To put it another way - who cares whether someone labels it a natural science or not? Will this somehow strengthen astrology or weaken it? Is astrology and by proxy astrologers incapable of standing on their own merits rather than needing these props? I think that a part of the problem here is that science and a post newtonian scientific paradigm of cause and effect is the most popular philosophy right now. It actually sits right in the playground of a materialistic approach to consider that astrology need to be a natural science with the physical planets by way of some force causing astrological phenomena.

Of course that may be what is happening - there may be some force as of yet undiscovered. But until such time as this force is discovered or some model put forward to explain it, we cannot in good faith consider it a natural science. Not yet at least.

Returning to your argument here, it would seem more likely that those who wish to consider astrology a natural science may likely do so for the very reasons you are accusing those who disagree may do it for. Namely to appease the materialist-scientist philosophy (as Gospel). In fact it predisposes the idea that this paradigm is a better one than a social science - who says? If anything the likes of Juan who are clearly astrologers and who clearly value astrology and place it as a social science are simply making the distinction that things of value (like astrology) can be placed as a social science and in doing so in no way devalues what astrology has to offer - because surely what it has to offer it will do so on its own steam regardless of its classification.

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Good morning,

Those who prone dogmatic, sceptical materialism prefer to ignore or even negate formal and final causes. Those who consider astrology as a 'mantic art' prefer to ignore or negate material and efficient causes. Many or most of both apparently have never studied causality in philosophy and in spite of such lack of basic knowledge obtain academic degrees in today's world.

Thus i concur with Mr Varuna II that much if not most of what today proudly parades as 'astrology' is an excellent example of the vertiginous descent of humanity in the current Iron Age (Hermetic tradition) or Kali Yuga (Hindu tradition). Traditional understandings of cycles of development are mostly the opposite of theosophistical ones purported in various 'New Age' beliefs. Those particularly interested in such topics might profit by reading English translations of the renowned 20th century French metaphysician Ren? Gu?non's works The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times.

Those who opine that there are no possible 'scientific' underpinnings of astrology might like to read Professor Dr Percy Seymour's (he is an astrophysicist) excellent book The Third Level of Reality: A Unified Theory of the Paranormal and / or his books explicitly concerning astrology. Specific reference is made to physical phenomena of plasma, resonance and magnetism.

Best regards,

lihin