Is Astrology a science?

Are ypu sure you dont mean Astronomy?

Phred said:

This is simple enough. We all know biology and chemistry and geology are fields of scientific endeavor. But what about Astrology? Do you consider that Astrology is a science?

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Absolutely and irrevocably not.

• No experimental evidence supports the astrological claims.
  
• No plausible mechanism has been proposed to explain the purported relationships between astronomical patterns and human character.
  
• Astrological predictions are deliberately phrased in such a way to seem specific, yet to have a broad application.
  
• The field is replete with con artists (reprehensible) and entertainers (amusing for some).

All that said we should recognise the blending of astrology and astronomy at the birth of modern science. Alchemy and chemistry had a similar relationship.

GirdYourLoins said:

Are ypu sure you dont mean Astronomy?

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Why would you think that? Astronomy is, surely recognised as a science by just about everyone; astrology is welcomed by some segments of the population who lack an education in science, but rejected almost totally by those who do have such an education.

Astrology is useful as a catalog of human traits, motivations, domains of life experience, and the various ways they interact. A lot of thought has gone into that aspect of the endeavor.

But I dont for a second think the motion of various bodies in space correlates with human personality. Except maybe the moon keeps people awake and makes them cranky.

No.

(Got any hard questions?)

I do not know about any Presidents, but some wives of U.S. Presidents did tinker with astrology. As for myself, I have never had any interest in the subject.

No

Basil the Great said:

I do not know about any Presidents, but some wives of U.S. Presidents did tinker with astrology. As for myself, I have never had any interest in the subject.

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I think Nancy Reagan did more than tinker.

Is there a reasonable test based upon the supposed merits of astrology that could possibly refute it? If not then it is not science.

Phred said:

Wouldn't fortune cookies then also be useful as catalog of human traits?

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No. Not even close. Youd only think that if your experience with astrology is the daily one line newspaper horoscope, which is basically a fortune cookie.

I know enough about it to know I'm a Gemini. Other than that, it's just a pseudoscience.

Phred said:

This is simple enough. We all know biology and chemistry and geology are fields of scientific endeavor. But what about Astrology? Do you consider that Astrology is a science?

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No, we Virgo's don't get taken in by that nonsense. It's a mess of Barnum statements and flim-flam. Far better to toss the bones with the Book of Changes (I-Ching).

Phred said:

This is simple enough. We all know biology and chemistry and geology are fields of scientific endeavor. But what about Astrology? Do you consider that Astrology is a science?

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Not quite even a soft science.

Phred said:

This is simple enough. We all know biology and chemistry and geology are fields of scientific endeavor. But what about Astrology? Do you consider that Astrology is a science?

Click to expand...

Astrology is an intuitive kind of thing. It is not science.

Phred said:

Do you consider that Astrology is a science?

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Negative.

Modern astrology certainly is not, as it does not follow any form of scientific method. Old style Astrology of the Renaissance and early modern period, that is a different story. Our modern distinction between Astronomy and Astrology did not really exist at that stage, and much of the former was done under the aegis of the latter to our thinking. Copernicus' pupil Rheticus even drew experimental horoscopes and then tried to check them against known horoscopes and biographies. We can think of that astrology as a discarded model, like Phlogiston or the Four Elements or Galenic physiology.

Anyway, the basic premise of Astrology, that by studying the stars you can predict future events or temperaments, is a different matter. If you assume Determinism as some do, then these things should be predictable if you have sufficient knowledge of the current state of particles and how they generally act, as the assumption being that particles will act in predictable ways regardless. If events only occur by a cascade of matter, that events are in a sense fated from the interactions of matter from the Big Bang onward, then Astrology in this sense is still live as a potential scientific discipline. After all, Astronomy is one of the best ways to see how matter has acted in the past.

A rare poll where everyone is in agreement.

Even Aquarians.

Quid est Veritas? said:

....Anyway, the basic premise of Astrology, that by studying the stars you can predict future events or temperaments, is a different matter. If you assume Determinism as some do, then these things should be predictable if you have sufficient knowledge of the current state of particles and how they generally act, as the assumption being that particles will act in predictable ways regardless. If events only occur by a cascade of matter, that events are in a sense fated from the interactions of matter from the Big Bang onward, then Astrology in this sense is still live as a potential scientific discipline. After all, Astronomy is one of the best ways to see how matter has acted in the past.

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Can you explain how determinism would lead us to a correlation between celestial affairs and human affairs? Even if both are "fated", that wouldnt necessarily provide us with relationship between the two, as far as I can tell.

That proposed relationship forms the essence of astrology. Without it there's no sense in which it could be a science.

(I say this as a person who's paid good money to have my birth chart read.)