Astrology and Science

Introduction

Before the onset of the third millennium, there was a lot of talk about the end of times and the change of eras. Someone filmed disaster films, someone frightened people with decryptions of prophecies about the end of the world, someone encouraged others not to throw hysteria, someone enjoyed postmodernism, revealed at the turn of the century in all its glory.

Meanwhile, the musicians recorded songs and albums, the titles of which featured the exciting and mysterious word millennium. A new thousand was to appear on the counter of the years that have passed since the birth of Christ. The atmosphere of expectation of the new millennium has developed on the basis of ideas about the coming of the Age of Aquarius (New Age). It was mystical, but at the same time, it was ironic in a postmodern way. This mood was expressed by the British singer Robbie Williams in a song called “Millennium”, released in 1998, just at the peak of the wave of millennial anticipation.

Williams sang about his cynical friends, about life “for liposuction,” about making money from the very cradle. In a perky video for this song, Williams, with a grin, encroached on the “holy of holies”: he parodied the great hero-spy of all Great Britain – James Bond.

But what does this have to do with astrology, you ask? It’s all about the chorus repeating from the very beginning of the song:

We’ve got stars directing our fate

And we’re praying it’s not too late

Millennium…

Robbie Williams has clearly caught the zeitgeist. 20 years after the song was released, articles with headlines like “Why Do So Many Millennials Believe in Horoscopes?” (The Independent, 02/19/2017) or “Why Are Millennials So Into Astrology?” (The Atlantic, 01/16/2018) began to appear in serious publications, in which the authors asked how it happened that “58 percent of 18–24-year-old Americans believe astrology is scientific”.

Millennials are those who were born after 1981, that is, relatively speaking, those who met the beginning of the third millennium at a young age and, presumably, to the sound of a song by Robbie Williams, singing about how the stars rule our destinies.

“The study also revealed that skepticism of astrology is decreasing, and indeed you don’t have to look far online to find the strong community of young, cool, perfectly normal people who obsess over their zodiac signs”.

If you look not only at millennials, then the attitude towards astrology in the countries of the Western world (in the East it is traditionally positive) at the beginning of the 21st century was as follows:¹

– According to a 2008 study, 22% of Britons believe in astrology and 15% believe in fortune-telling or Tarot. These results, in comparison with the results of the 1951 poll, were "especially striking", because, in 1951, only 7% of the respondents said that they believe in prediction by cards and 6% – by stars.²

– According to the US National Science Foundation, at least a quarter of the US population in 2004 believed in astrology. 32% of Americans believed that "some numbers are particularly lucky for some people."³

– In Europe, belief in astrology is more widespread than in the United States. According to the 2001 European Commission, 53% of Europeans believe that astrology is “rather scientific”. At the same time, only 42% consider economics to be scientific, 65% – psychology, 33% – history. 46% of Europeans believe that "some numbers are particularly lucky for some people."⁴

– A 2009 survey found that nearly half of Australians surveyed believe in supernatural powers such as extrasensory perception, and 41% of Australians believe in astrology.⁵

– According to a survey carried out by the Levada Center in 2013, 28% of Russians believe in astrological predictions. More than half of Russians (52%) believe in omens, and 43% believe in prophetic dreams.⁶

***

How did it happen that despite scientific progress, including space flights, and the fact that worried scientists with great zeal and PR noise disown astrology and blaspheme it, the ancient doctrine of the influence of planets and stars on earthly life is winning its place in the minds of people again?

Some scientific skeptics tend to see in the modern craze for astrology a "boom of obscurantism" characteristic of "crisis moments of social development, for periods of socio-cultural timelessness."⁷ However, those scientists who are more conscientious tend to look critically not at astrology, but science. Thus, researcher Paul Woolley, commenting on the results of a British survey on attitudes towards astrology, noted that "the enlightenment optimism in the ability of science and reason to explain everything ended decades ago."⁸

However, one should not exaggerate the possibilities of astrology. A good share of healthy skepticism should always be present, and not only in matters of astrology (where a lot of extraneous noise and very little academicism have accumulated over the millennia).

The authors of the Great Russian Encyclopedia say the following:⁹

"Developed systems of astrology existed in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, in the countries of Hellenistic culture (including Egypt), India, and China. In the Middle Ages, astrology was especially popular in the countries of Islam and Western Europe. Astrological teachings were closely related to magic and alchemy. Astrology was one of the sciences up to the Renaissance, but the achievements of modern science brought astrology beyond the limits of the scientific activity itself."

So where exactly have the achievements of science "brought astrology", and how are the relations between astrology and science developing in the third millennium? Let's try to figure it out.

Were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Ptolemy against astrology?

References to ancient authorities in defense of astrology are very much disliked by some modern scientists who are very worried about the purity of science and are trying to retroactively “cleanse” the ancient thinkers, astronomers, and mathematicians of their interest in astrology. Most of the protests and indignation among the zealots of science are caused by the interest in astrology on the part of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and even Claudius Ptolemy. Let's figure out whether the great minds of the past studied and practiced astrology or were against it.

Nicolaus Copernicus and Astrology

The Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, who discovered the heliocentric system of the world, was born on February 19, 1473.

There is no doubt that Copernicus studied astrology at the University of Padua, where he studied medicine. But whether Copernicus practiced astrology is unknown.¹⁰ However, Professor Frank Robbins, who translated and commented on Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, attributed Copernicus to the eminent astronomers of the Renaissance who "either practised astrology themselves or countenanced its practice."¹¹

The main work of Copernicus ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres") was perceived by many contemporaries as an opportunity to improve the quality of astrological predictions due to a more accurate determination of the positions of the planets in the sky. It is also known that Copernicus dedicated his work to Pope Paul III, who highly appreciated astrology and promoted the astrologer Luca Gaurico, who twice predicted the election of the pope, to a cardinal.¹²

The heliocentric model on the ninth page of Copernicus's work "On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"

Copernicus, with his discovery of the heliocentric system, overturned the ancient ideas about the Cosmos and marked the beginning of a scientific revolution. However, this did not lead to a change in astrological rules. Astrological ideas remained the same, having withstood the "blow" from the emerging science.

It is noteworthy that Georg Rheticus, a student of Copernicus, who most of all contributed to the spread and recognition of the heliocentric model, was an active practitioner of astrology and considered the heliocentric theory useful for astrologers.¹³

Nicolaus Copernicus with Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Laplace

Galileo Galilei's Horoscope, Cast by Himself

Galileo Galilei, the great Italian mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, practiced astrology throughout his entire or almost his entire career. For the 17th century, practicing astrology was common among educated people.¹⁴ The zealots of science often try to ignore this fact from the biography of Galileo, for example, through the assertion that he built horoscopes solely for the sake of money and denied the possibility of forecasting.¹⁵

However, the claims that Galileo denied the predictive power of astrology do not agree well with how carefully and in detail he built his own horoscope and the horoscopes of his daughters, for which he hardly received any money.¹⁶ Galileo's own horoscopes for February 16, 1564, 15:30, and 16:30 were published by the National Library of Florence in 1980.

The first interesting point in these horoscopes is the date of birth. Galileo's birthday is usually considered February 15 (according to the Julian calendar), but Galileo's horoscopes, which are "the sole source of evidence concerning his birthdate",¹⁷ indicate February 16.

The second feature of Galileo's horoscopes is that to the left of the charts, he wrote out the data required to calculate the primary directions, which are used to view the horoscope in dynamics and predict the course of life. This suggests that Galileo was quite serious about astrology and its predictive capabilities.

Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)

Johannes Kepler and the True Genealogy of Astrology

Kepler did not decry astrology but loved it.

It gave him the strength to know and be able to.

E.M.

Johannes Kepler, a scientific romantic, astrologer, and astronomer, one of the greatest learned men wrote in his book "Tertius Interveniens" ("Third-party Interventions", 1610)¹⁸ a paragraph that became one of his most famous quotes:

“Now, this Astrology is a foolish daughter. But dear Lord, what would happen to her mother, the highly reasonable Astronomy, if she did not have this foolish daughter. The world, after all, is much more foolish, indeed is so foolish, that this old sensible mother, Astronomy, is talked into things and lied to as a result of her daughter's foolish pranks… The mathematician's pay would be so low, that the mother would starve, if the daughter did not earn anything¹⁹.”

Kepler's quote about the "foolish daughter of astronomy" has been reproduced many times in his biographies and in articles blaspheming astrology. However, the meaning of the quote is not as simple as it may seem at first glance.

Johannes Kepler

Researcher Kenneth G. Negus has done a lot to restore the truth about Kepler's attitude to astrology. In his translation of excerpts from Kepler's books into English, he gave the following comment on the above excerpt from the "Tertius Interveniens":²⁰

“It is important to note here that Kepler is referring to a particular kind of astrology ["this astrology"] and not all of astrology.”

To be convincing, the Negus lacked only a small touch – the words of Kepler himself about different kinds of astrology.

Indeed, Kepler distinguished popular astrology from genuine, as he called it. This is what Kepler wrote in 1627 in the preface to his famous "Rudolphine Tables", tables of planetary motions (ephemerides), compiled by him on the basis of Tycho Brahe's observations and the discovered laws of planetary motion:²¹

“Astronomy is the daughter of Astrology, and this modern astrology again is the daughter of Astronomy, bearing something of the lineaments of her grandmother; and, as I have already said, this foolish daughter, astrology, supports her wise but needy mother, Astronomy, from the profits of a profession not generally considered creditable.”

In the original text of the "Rudolphine Tables," the word Astrologia (the one that is "the mother of astronomy") is beautifully printed, with highlighted first and last letters. As for astrology which is "the foolish daughter of astronomy", it is written simply and plainly.

Kepler's biographer Max Caspar commented on this passage from the "Rudolphine Tables" as follows:²²

“…the elderly mother (astrology) was not supposed to permit herself to complain of becoming abandoned and scorned by her thankless daughter (astronomy)”

In “Die Astrologie” Johannes Kepler wrote:²³

“Philosophy, and therefore genuine astrology, is a testimony of God’s works and is therefore holy. It is by no means a frivolous thing. And I, for my part, do not wish to dishonor it.”

Kepler viewed the world as a manifestation of Divine harmony.²⁴ At the heart of all his scientific work was the search for the harmony of the world – a pre-established order put into creation by the Lord God. Kepler set forth his own, very different from the generally accepted, astrology in the fourth book of his work "The Harmony of the World".²⁵