I recently had a date with someone who believes in astrology—not the first time this has happened, but maybe this time I was a bit too outspoken in expressing the derision in which I hold astrology. I say I may have been too outspoken; that is, at least as far as my interest in securing a second date was concerned.
The man in the street often is not clear as to the difference between astronomy and astrology. (I've worked with the astronomical community and have had ample evidence of this.) One big difference: astronomy is a science, and modern; astrology is a pseudo-science, and ancient.
Astrology is to astronomy what alchemy is to chemistry—an ancestor, you could say. Try making modern medicines or plastics with alchemy instead of chemistry and you'll appreciate the difference between a modern science and an ancient superstition.
Astrology is based on the assumption that the stars and planets influence our lives here on earth—that the configuration of the heavens at the time of our birth—in other words our "sign"--establishes certain traits we will have throughout our lives; and then from day to day, the motions of the planets in the skies determine, for example, what kind of day we will have, what actions we should avoid, and so on. Astrology says the stars spell our destiny.
Astrologers may draw up elaborate and impressive-looking charts. But astronomers, who are the genuine scientists, keep trying to tell the public that this is all nonsense. Astronomers point out that the stars and planets are too far from Earth to exert any influence on Earth, and on us who dwell on Earth.
Also, here is another fallacy of astrology: Everything is now about one sign off. Let me try to explain that. According to astrology, at any one date, we are in a certain "sign"; that is, the Sun is in one of the zodiacal constellations, meaning the background of stars against which the Sun is seen.
The trouble is, astrology is very ancient, and since the zodiacal signs were determined, things have shifted so that, according to the facts of astronomy, the Sun is actually about one sign away from where astrology says it is. So, your real sign is not what astrology says it is!
The implication of all this is, even if the position of the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic—that is, what sign the Sun is in—had any meaning, what astrology tells us for one particular sign should actually apply to a different sign.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Carl Sagan devoted considerable attention to the distinctions between Astrology and Astronomy in his book Cosmos. According to Sagan "We seek a connection with the Cosmos. We want to count in the grand scheme of things. And it turns out we are connected-not in the personal, small-scale unimaginative fashion that the astrologers pretend, but in the deepest ways, involving the origin of matter, the habitability of the Earth, the evolution and destiny of the human species, themes to which we weill return" (p50)
ReplyDelete