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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: Re: Astrology as science.
Message-ID: <516@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 12:36:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.516
Posted: Fri Aug  9 12:36:47 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 20:40:49 EDT
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Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
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[Topher Cooper]
>First off, (and this may surprise some readers of net.physics), I do not
>believe in astrology.  That said --

Actually, I am not surprised.  I found your article on statistical
errors made by parapsychologists to be very informative.  You
don't appear to be an unreasonable person.

>1. Astrology is a scientific theory: it makes testible predictions about
>physical reality.

But there is more to being a scientific theory than the ability of a
theory, in the abstract, to make testable predictions.  Science is
first and foremost a human enterprise; it is in fact, what scientists
(defined as those who follow the rules of science) do!  The real 
test of whether or not a discipline is science is the behavior
of those *who claim to be expert in the discipline*.  As Gauquelin's
work shows, it is possible to approach astrology as science, and to
test its predictions.  Gauquelin's work is unquestionably *science*.  
But Gauquelin is a rare exception; it is hard to find many other 
examples of astrological research, particularly by those who claim 
to be astrologers, that are recognizable as science.  Most of the
support for astrology that I have seen is anecdotal, and that hardly
qualifies as scientific in today's world.

Even Gauquelin's work is misused by astrologers to support their case.
Gauquelin's research did not support traditional sun-sign astrology;
quite the contrary, he found no correlations of the type that traditional
astrological systems predict.  The correlations he did find were
quite unlike traditional astrology, and in my view it is questionable
that they are astrological at all.  Yet I once had a conversation 
with an astrologer who referred to Gauquelin's work to support his
traditional sun-sign astrology.  He was unaware of the failed attempts
at replication by others.  I call this attempt by him to put a scientific 
face on Astrology "pseudoscience".

So I would claim, that despite the *theoretical* possiblity of testing
astrological assertions scientifically, for the most part, astrologers
who claim to be scientists are in fact classic examples of 
pseudoscientists.

>4. Every system of belief which is not "science" (in the modern sense of the
>word) is NOT religion.  For the most part, belief in astrology is not based
>on faith (not that this basis automatically equates to religion) but on
>personal observations.  I believe that the patterns seen by believers in
>astrology are created by the inaccuracy of peoples intuitive concept of
>probability and the human facility to generate pattern where none exists.
>The failing is natural, human, and something which we are all prone to.  Until
>the invention of modern statistics in the first part of this century, it was
>all ANY science had to go on.  The believers in astrology have made
>observations and have found a theory which seems to explain those
>observations; there is nothing wrong with that.

I disagree that belief in astrology is not based on faith.  For the
vast majority of believers, it is.  And, since those few studies that
have been made using modern statistical and sampling theory have
uniformly failed to confirm the predictions of any classical astrological
theory, I would have to say that *today*, continued belief in astrology
is no different in nature from religious belief.  At least, I can't see
any difference between the personal experiences that confirm people's
belief in, say, Christianity, and those that confirm their belief in
astrology!

Whether astrology is a form of religion for most of its adherents is
probably a semantic question.  There seem to me to be many similarities.

>6. To the best of my knowledge, all attempts, with one outstanding exception,
>to test the truth of astrology's predictions have failed.  Gauquelin, who
>produced the exception, denies the relevance of his results to traditional
>astrology, but there seems to be more resemblance than he is willing to admit.
>Attempts to replicate his work have failed, but the accuracy of the attempted
>replications is questionable, so the status of this work must still be
>considered very much unsettled.

There are problems with Gauquelin's study as well.  I agree that the
status of his work is unsettled; but if I had to predict, I would
guess that when it is done right, the correlations Gauquelin
found will not be confirmed.  I disagree with your assertions concerning
the resemblance of Gauquelin's results to traditional astrology (as
should be obvious from what I wrote above)!  I think that the connection
is tenuous at best.  But that is a point on which reasonable people can
disagree.

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
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