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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: The Earth-Centered Universe
Message-ID: <5517@unc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Jul-83 13:48:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5517
Posted: Thu Jul  7 13:48:06 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Jul-83 01:11:36 EDT
References: ihuxx.470
Lines: 61


            [I] snagged on the woebegone complaint from the
        astrologer: "You don't know how HARD it is to
        calculate the celestial positions, especially because
        of the retrograde motions of the planets..." Followed
        a conversation very much like the following:

            Me: You calculate everything using RETROGRADE
        motions, like, with the Ptolemaic system???

            Astrologer: Of course; that's the way the universe
        works.

            Me: Far be it for [sic] me; I'm a mere machine-
        twiddling CS jock.  But you admit that, even if you
	don't believe in the Copernican system, that the
	numbers work out if you use it?

            Astrologer: Well, yes, they do.

            Me: Then wouldn't it be easier to convert a
        client's planetary configuration to a Copernican one,
        then calculate the relevant whatevers, then convert
        back to your Ptolemaic system?  Maybe using a soulless
        computer? ...*snicker*...

            Astrologer: Why...I never dreamed...you're RIGHT!!
        I'll find a computer service *immediately!*  OH, THANK
        YOU!!! *kiss*

    Now, hold on a minute.  Far be it from me to defend astrologers,
but something is wrong about this story.  From my own former
experience with making horoscopes, I know that you do not calculate
the positions of the planets yourself.  You look in an ephemeris and
do some VERY simple arithmetic.  (The only complication is that you
have to use base 60 because you use hours, minutes, and seconds.)
Your story is no doubt true, but could you provide a little more
detail so that I can make sense of it?

    About the Ptolemaic system -- what is important to astrologers is
the positions of the planets relative to an observer on a particular
point on the Earth.  It should therefore come as no surprise that
retrograde motions and other phenomena which would not be noted by
an observer above the plane of the ecliptic are important.  In addition,
using retrograde motion makes the calculations from the ephemeris much
simpler.  There are reasons to deride astrology, but that is not one
of them.

    By the way, the fact that there is no scientific explanation for
astrological phenomena is also no evidence against astrology.  In
science, observation precedes explanation, not the other way around.
I am amazed at how many reputable scientists, such as Carl Sagan, use
this argument.  They really should know better.  That is the same
reasoning the Church used to avoid looking through Galileo's telescope.

______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill