Do you believe in horoscopes?

I see, I'm glad we seem to agree on many points. But,

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

For example - someone I know very well was approached - out of the blue in a busy Indian street - was told a few things which demonstrated some kind of knowledge of her life, and then given some predictions. She wasn't paying, and is naturally sceptical of anyone purporting to know such things - especially as in India there are commercial horoscope makers who harass tourists on busy streets. Yet everything she was told was relevant. Do I know this person well enough to accept this? Absolutely. Did she see this person who gave her this information again? No, and had not known them or seen them before.

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Let's make a thought experiment:
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that 1 in 500 Indians likes, for whatever reason, to have fun messing with tourists by telling them things he/she 'knows' about their lives. Now, if each of these jokesters during their lifetime hit up 5 tourists, this means that as many tourists are approached as the population of India divided by 100. And that's 10 million.

So we have 10 million predictions. This means, that 1 million predictions will correct for things as unlikely as 1 in 10 odds. That could for instance be guessing one's star sign right (odds: 1 in 12). By the same reasoning, there will be 1000 predictions with likelihood of 1 in 10'000 of being right. This is like coin flipping 14 times and always getting heads -- pretty impressive, right?

And there will, by mere statistics, be likely one correct prediction with a 1 in 10 million likelihood of being true. That's like flipping coins 22 times and ALWAYS getting heads. This would probably translate to correctly guessing one's birthday (not even figuring into the possibility that the Indian could already have spied and found that out) and phone number / some 6 digit number.

As you see, there's a good reason why its problematic to infer whether a method works by mere anecdotal evidence. Even if you happen to be impressed by 20 consecutive head tosses with a non-fake coin, beware that this will happen to about 4 people by chance anyway (given our assumptions, which are rather conservative actually), and you could well be one of these four.

If all our jokesters would only guess birthdays, more than 20'000 tourists would have their birthdays guessed correctly. The other 9 million 880 thousand tourists where it was wrong wouldn't think much about it and forget the instance, while of the 20'000 where it happened by accident, many will probably be greatly impressed and believe something supernatural might be going on. In fact, the 40'000 people where the date was just 1 day off might well think that there's something magical too. And the 600'000 people where the guesser hit the right month/starsign might well think the same thing -- after all, wasn't it uncannily close to the actual date?

People's notions of probability are often wrong, our sense of statistics evolved for a world where our ancestors lived in groups with maybe 30 individuals. When the amount of individuals involved goes up in the millions, our gut-feeling fools us.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

All I'm saying is that if there is no room in our minds for extra possibilities - mysteries, then there is a likelihood that we might miss out on something. Of course scepticism is healthy. We all know people who will believe lots of daft things, but having an open mind does not mean that you will drink in every crackpot idea.

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By all means, be open minded. Yet that doesn't mean one should blindly accept things without (valid) evidence!

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I've just had another thought. The science worldview is dominant now for very good reasons - it is the commonly accepted measure. But it is not the only worldview, and just as people in an earlier age couldn't imagine a non-religious worldview becoming dominant, we can't perhaps imagine this worldview being challenged or marginalised. I'm not suggesting that pseudo-science or astrology will surmount it - I can't imagine what might become the underpinning worldviews of the future as I have no crystal ball. Perhaps it could be an eco-Gaia construct. Who knows. The only thing that's certain is that things - including attitudes and underpinning worldviews - will change.

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This thought makes no sense to me. Science is dominant because of its track record. Science produces results. We've been to the moon, we've found particles smaller than nuclei by smashing protons together in an underground 26-kilometer ring at nearly the speed of light. Can astrology, or Gaia, do that?

The whole reason behind science's suggest is that it's evidence based, and ready to discard wrong hypotheses in favor of new ones. Why on earth would we go back to non evidence based methods? Examples would be belief in authority (whatever my teacher/parents/pastor/Mr. President says is certainly right), revelation (whatever the next prophet says is certainly right, even if it's another Hitler) or simple economics, where propositions are true when people pay money to read about them (i.e. homeopathy, astrology etc)...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CRtMt721qA...vsreligion.png

'Faith' can stand for any non evidence based method. Clearly, there's no way around science. By the way, even Gaia theorists think that they're relying on science. Even creationists (with some tragic exceptions) think (or at least pretend) to have evidence for their claims.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

Let's make a thought experiment:
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that 1 in 500 Indians likes, for whatever reason, to have fun messing with tourists by telling them things he/she 'knows' about their lives. Now, if each of these jokesters during their lifetime hit up 5 tourists, this means that as many tourists are approached as the population of India divided by 100. And that's 10 million.

So we have 10 million predictions. This means, that 1 million predictions will correct for things as unlikely as 1 in 10 odds. That could for instance be guessing one's star sign right (odds: 1 in 12). By the same reasoning, there will be 1000 predictions with likelihood of 1 in 10'000 of being right. This is like coin flipping 14 times and always getting heads -- pretty impressive, right?

And there will, by mere statistics, be likely one correct prediction with a 1 in 10 million likelihood of being true. That's like flipping coins 22 times and ALWAYS getting heads. This would probably translate to correctly guessing one's birthday (not even figuring into the possibility that the Indian could already have spied and found that out) and phone number / some 6 digit number.

As you see, there's a good reason why its problematic to infer whether a method works by mere anecdotal evidence. Even if you happen to be impressed by 20 consecutive head tosses with a non-fake coin, beware that this will happen to about 4 people by chance anyway (given our assumptions, which are rather conservative actually), and you could well be one of these four.

If all our jokesters would only guess birthdays, more than 20'000 tourists would have their birthdays guessed correctly. The other 9 million 880 thousand tourists where it was wrong wouldn't think much about it and forget the instance, while of the 20'000 where it happened by accident, many will probably be greatly impressed and believe something supernatural might be going on. In fact, the 40'000 people where the date was just 1 day off might well think that there's something magical too. And the 600'000 people where the guesser hit the right month/starsign might well think the same thing -- after all, wasn't it uncannily close to the actual date?

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I find your thought experiment a little presumptious in that seems to infer that the exampe I gave contained merely prosaic information. It didn't, but was very relevant and specific. I do find that scientists are very good at suggesting explanations and theories based upon a rationale view without actually considering evidence. In this case none. I think this is a fault but probably arises due to the prevailing acceptance of the current worldview.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

By all means, be open minded. Yet that doesn't mean one should blindly accept things without (valid) evidence!

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I thought I'd made that clear. To be honest common sense is all you need to test most things out. Where an experience is subjective - then that's a different matter. For example where something is passed on verbally. Is it true/ relevant/ helpful/ insightful / wise is the test.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

This thought makes no sense to me. Science is dominant because of its track record. Science produces results. We've been to the moon, we've found particles smaller than nuclei by smashing protons together in an underground 26-kilometer ring at nearly the speed of light. Can astrology, or Gaia, do that?

The whole reason behind science's suggest is that it's evidence based, and ready to discard wrong hypotheses in favor of new ones. Why on earth would we go back to non evidence based methods? Examples would be belief in authority (whatever my teacher/parents/pastor/Mr. President says is certainly right), revelation (whatever the next prophet says is certainly right, even if it's another Hitler) or simple economics, where propositions are true when people pay money to read about them (i.e. homeopathy, astrology etc)...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CRtMt721qA...vsreligion.png

'Faith' can stand for any non evidence based method. Clearly, there's no way around science. By the way, even Gaia theorists think that they're relying on science. Even creationists (with some tragic exceptions) think (or at least pretend) to have evidence for their claims.

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You misunderstand me. I never mentioned going back, and I certainly wasn't referring to astrology. I mentioned Gaia as an example of how science and ecology migt be combind to generate a new worldview. This hasn't happened of course. Science is dominant due to it's track record. Yes. 200 years ago Christianity was dominant in the west because of it's track record and who then would have predicted the secular society we live in now? The narrow minded adherence to that worldview provided obstacles to scientific development. I'm just speculating. Say, for example, there were developments in awareness of the mind. A combination of mind practices which were applied to science could be very powerful. Initially, though, there might be opposition due to a lack of empiricle evidence. Just a thought experiment.

I think we would agree on most things. I feel we are debating details - interesting though they are. :D

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

. Say, for example, there were developments in awareness of the mind.

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That would still be science, wouldn't it?

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

That would still be science, wouldn't it?

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Possibly. I was thinking about the subjective experience of the mind though.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

Let's make a thought experiment:
Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that 1 in 500 Indians likes, for whatever reason, to have fun messing with tourists by telling them things he/she 'knows' about their lives. Now, if each of these jokesters during their lifetime hit up 5 tourists, this means that as many tourists are approached as the population of India divided by 100. And that's 10 million.

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'Faith' can stand for any non evidence based method.

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Are you sure that your position is not based on 'faith'?

The reason I ask that is because it seems that you are too quick to explain away something Paulclem mentioned about his friend in India.

It is the sort of thing that I would expect a Christian to do if I said that I found Jesus' tomb or told a Muslim the Quran was wrong in some way.

I am not a member of these Abrahamic faiths and I am not trying to shake your faith in science to get you to join them or any other group, but I just want to suggest that there is no need to explain things away so quickly.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I find your thought experiment a little presumptious in that seems to infer that the exampe I gave contained merely prosaic information. It didn't, but was very relevant and specific. I do find that scientists are very good at suggesting explanations and theories based upon a rationale view without actually considering evidence. In this case none. I think this is a fault but probably arises due to the prevailing acceptance of the current worldview.

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I simplified things by using examples which are easy to calculate probabilistically. The method remains the same, it's just harder to translate more personal 'fortune-telling' into probabilities -- especially since they can often be ambiguously interpreted.

Anyway, I'm not telling you that I know it was all mere coincidence, I certainly wasn't there and I don't know the exact wording, so I can't make a final judgement. I just wanted to make a point about contrasting isolated data -- which can seem extremely impressive on its own -- with the context of all the occasions when it fails.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Are you sure that your position is not based on 'faith'?

The reason I ask that is because it seems that you are too quick to explain away something Paulclem mentioned about his friend in India.

It is the sort of thing that I would expect a Christian to do if I said that I found Jesus' tomb or told a Muslim the Quran was wrong in some way.

I am not a member of these Abrahamic faiths and I am not trying to shake your faith in science to get you to join them or any other group, but I just want to suggest that there is no need to explain things away so quickly.

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Yeah I'm sure it's not based on faith, and your implying of me having faith in science is misguided. My intention wasn't to 'explain away', though I admit it might have seemed like it. Much rather, I wanted to offer a convincing, alternative explanation; what people do with it is their business.

My position is not based on faith because I just showed that there's a perfeclty valid, scientific explanation for very uncanny coincidences -- if they happen isolated to random people at a random time. In order to get conclusive evidence, the individual that approached Paulclem's friend would have to be able to produce statistically significant results over a sample of several attempts. Or the one prediction would have to be so staggering that the odds of it being true by accident were extremely small, as in 1 in billions, say.

There are two problems here, let me elaborate:

1) Paulclem seems to imply that science's methods are incapable of making sense of 'anecdotal evidence', and thus, there could be good reasons for believing in things science hasn't (yet) validated. That's wrong because anecdotal evidence isn't just impractical, it's almost always insufficient. An exception proving the rule: If a stranger approached me, asking me to think of a eleven-digit number, and he then guessed correctly what I'm thinking of, the coincidence would be so vast that I'd comply and grant him psychic powers.

By the way, it doesn't have to be that impressive. In fact, even being able to guess right what number from 1-10 someone is thinking of 2 out of 10 times on average is extremely impressive and definitely works as statistical evidence if the individual keeps that average over hundreds of answers. For even the sligthest supernatural bias, the right experiment with the right number of trials will give statistically significant results! So simply blaming an inadequacy of the scientific method is wrong and doesn't give any more credence to claims like astrology -- which, if we switch numbers with character traits and other variables, works around the same statistical lines we've been discussing.

2) People often forget about actual implications of what they believe in. If astrology/homeopathy/psychicism is true, this would mean there exists a whole new kind of force. It'd be a revolution in science (and no, that's no reason for scientists to dogmatically insist it's impossible; in fact, it's a reason for every scientist to try to be the first one finding evidence for it and become famous like Darwin and Einstein).

For instance, some people believe things like 'group consciousness' and psychic connections. The problem here is that these theories go against evolution -- a standart scientific theory. Since evolution is about the spreading of genes, not about some romantic ideal of species survival and cooperation, a thing like 'group consciousness' couldn't evolve gradually, it would be, 'irreducibly complex', to use Behe's intelligent design term. So what's more likely, some anecdotal data being a mere coincidence, or a wholly developed consciousness system being a mere accident -- for where else would it come from anyway?

Long story short: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I agree that extraordnary claims need extraordinary evidence to change a theory or alter the worldview. That doesn't occlude the space for personal experiences which affect the microcosm of a person's life. Such events are globally insignificant, but personally important.

In fact I think many people harbour vews that would subvert the prevailing scientific worldview if they became mainstream - though I am making assumptions. I wonder what other think about that? My own are based upon my idiosyncrastic experience coloured by my attempts to make sense of it. I don' have a problem with this in that it runs alonside the strongly rational views that mainly colour my day to day expreriences. I feel I can't ignore them, though I am aware that I my understanding them better in the future may refute them as anything but natural occurrences or deluded experiences. Until that comes though, I need to keep an open mind in case they are mysterious. In the case of one man I met, the mystery is still with me 20 years later.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I agree that extraordnary claims need extraordinary evidence to change a theory or alter the worldview. That doesn't occlude the space for personal experiences which affect the microcosm of a person's life. Such events are globally insignificant, but personally important.

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Interesting, I haven't thought about it that way. To me, the two are identical, yet what you're saying would explain a lot of inconsistencies in people's worldviews.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

In fact I think many people harbour vews that would subvert the prevailing scientific worldview if they became mainstream - though I am making assumptions.

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Haha, you're certainly right about that! 40% of Americans reject evolution. Then there's homeopathy, astrology, psychics, ghosts, religions, Mayan prophecies, gambler fallacies... I'd say more than 80% of 'Westeners' dearly hold views that go against science.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

For instance, some people believe things like 'group consciousness' and psychic connections. The problem here is that these theories go against evolution -- a standart scientific theory. Since evolution is about the spreading of genes, not about some romantic ideal of species survival and cooperation, a thing like 'group consciousness' couldn't evolve gradually, it would be, 'irreducibly complex', to use Behe's intelligent design term. So what's more likely, some anecdotal data being a mere coincidence, or a wholly developed consciousness system being a mere accident -- for where else would it come from anyway?

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I don't see why there need be a problem with "group consciousness", if I understand that correctly, and evolution. The idea of "irreducibly complex" sounds like a code phrase for "I don't like it, therefore, it's bad". But maybe I just didn't understand what you wrote.

By "group consciousness", do you mean something like what James Cameron described in the movie Avatar?

I assume you have seen the movie. What did you think of it? I thought it was fantastic. It should have won Best Picture. I showed it to one of my relatives with fundamentalist Christian beliefs and I think he was offended by the idea of consciousness going from the humans into the avatars. I know he wanted to screw my head on right.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't see why there need be a problem with "group consciousness", if I understand that correctly, and evolution. The idea of "irreducibly complex" sounds like a code phrase for "I don't like it, therefore, it's bad". But maybe I just didn't understand what you wrote.

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Creationists use 'irreducibly complex' in the sense of 'I don't understand it, therefore God created it'. Yet basically, it means if you take away any constituent that make up a certain system, the whole thing will break down. And if there's no way it could have evolved gradually, where each small step (mutation) represents an improval, it's unlikely to evolve (for the whole system would have to jump into place rightly arranged out of nowhere). The thing with 'group consciousness' is that it starts top-down, from the group. In evolution, changes happen from the bottom-up, at the gene level. So how do changes in one's own body suddenly produce some new entity encompassing others as well? It strikes me as highly dubious to even begin with, not to mention that there's no evidence for it anyway.

As for what exactly 'group consciousness' is, it might well be what you said about Avatar, it sounds similar. Here's a website that attempts to explain what it is: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

But don't buy their propaganda! :) I've rarely seen so much nonsense crammed together. As I understand it, the link is the 'weak version' of group consciousness, some people go much further and assert that thoughts exist independently of individual minds in some Platonic realm..

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Originally Posted by YesNo

By "group consciousness", do you mean something like what James Cameron described in the movie Avatar?

I assume you have seen the movie. What did you think of it? I thought it was fantastic. It should have won Best Picture. I showed it to one of my relatives with fundamentalist Christian beliefs and I think he was offended by the idea of consciousness going from the humans into the avatars. I know he wanted to screw my head on right.

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Haha, I'm addicted to watching movies, yet I haven't seen Avatar yet. I've heard that it uses the 'find wisdom in nature/native people' cliche, which, if overdone, is quite annoying and unrealistic. But I need to see the movie first to judge, it definitely looks interesting.

I heard in the car today that the constellations in the zodiac have changed. Basically, "they" are going to add a new one: Ophiuchus

I think it should be pronounced "o-fee-yuck-cuss", but that's just my regional peculiarity.

Here are the details: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...diac-sign.html

So that means I'm no longer a Sagittarius. I'm actually an Ophiuchus.

My wife has also corrected me about my Chinese horoscope. I thought I was a dragon, but she's the dragon. I'm the tiger.

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Ophiuchus is a cool one. It's based on Asclepius, and I love Asclepius.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I heard in the car today that the constellations in the zodiac have changed.

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So does this mean people's character attributes changed as well, overnight? Or, if the constellations had been all wrong to begin with, doesn't that prove that believers are fools?

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

So does this mean people's character attributes changed as well, overnight? Or, if the constellations had been all wrong to begin with, doesn't that prove that believers are fools?

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:biggrin5:

Well, the zodiac is just a kind of clock. So, what difference does it make if we add a 13 to it?

In my case, I could barely spell Sagittarius, so I'm not out much. How do you pronounce the new one anyway?

When it comes to "belief" in astrology, what does one actually have to believe in? You get a sign. Someone gives you some advice or a prediction. I get enough predictions and advice from fortune cookies to keep my imagination amused.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

When it comes to "belief" in astrology, what does one actually have to believe in? You get a sign.

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Haha yeah, I don't think anyone really knows. Least of all the actual believers!

By assuming that the signs say anything truthful about you, one assumes something along the lines of there being a force connecting arbitrary planet and star patterns (from the past) to a) ones DNA at birth (not at conception for some reason!) and b) to one's everyday happenings. This rises some interesting questions: How the hell does that work, why the hell does it work like that, and how the hell did the original inventor just figure out all these connections without doing large-scale double blind studies??

But of course, most people don't think that far. They see some vague prediction about their love life and believe it because it sounds somewhat hopeful.

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Originally Posted by manolia

I believe it's crap. No offence to any believers.
I find it really sad that people want so desperately to feel important, in a cosmic sense (tiny and insignificant specks of dust floating into space that they are).
Whatever happens to me during my lifetime has absolutely no significance for the cosmos. Castor and Pollux being several light years away from earth (approx 50 and 30 respectively) have nothing to do with me. Even the fact that i was given the gemini sign just because i was born in june is quite arbitrary.

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Manolia how can say this! The ancient Greeks did they not create a great civilisation out of this ;-)

^^ So nice to see you back Lote : ]]

(you know i don't think that much about the ancient greeks :D)

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Originally Posted by manolia

^^ So nice to see you back Lote : ]]

(you know i don't think that much about the ancient greeks :D)

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Abandon not ye such rich heritage that changed the western civilisations Manolia ;-)

The Furies will pursue you to the nether reaches of the kingdom of Hades ;-)

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Originally Posted by Lote-Tree

Abandon not ye such rich heritage that changed the western civilisations Manolia ;-)

The Furies will pursue you to the nether reaches of the kingdom of Hades ;-)

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hehehehehehe i pass you score : ]]

No, I actually do not. :3

Here is the story of a professional astrologer who turned away from the subject when he discovered it was all nonsense:

http://www.undeceivingourselves.com/S-astr.htm



and don't even get me started on homeopathy...

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

Now let me say that I think the whole idea of star signs controlling our lives is nonsense. But recently, after a number of years, I met someone who has a very great affinity with the way I think and the things I believe in. She is a little toughie not given to self-deception, so I was surprised when she asked me my star sign and I found we were both born under the same sign. I still think it is nonsense but what do other Litnetters think about Astrology?

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I don't believe it one bit.

Of course it's nonsense, but it's still fun.

Voodoo is much more fun!!!

The OP:

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

Now let me say that I think the whole idea of star signs controlling our lives is nonsense. But recently, after a number of years, I met someone who has a very great affinity with the way I think and the things I believe in. She is a little toughie not given to self-deception, so I was surprised when she asked me my star sign and I found we were both born under the same sign. I still think it is nonsense but what do other Litnetters think about Astrology?

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I recently read a book on Vedic astrology and used some software to create my own horoscope. The hardest part was to find my time of birth and the latitude and longitude of the hospital where I was born, but I was able to track it down from some birth documents. I don't know what the information is trying to tell me.

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

Now let me say that I think the whole idea of star signs controlling our lives is nonsense. But recently, after a number of years, I met someone who has a very great affinity with the way I think and the things I believe in. She is a little toughie not given to self-deception, so I was surprised when she asked me my star sign and I found we were both born under the same sign. I still think it is nonsense but what do other Litnetters think about Astrology?

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Some things have lead me to understand that there are similarities in characters between the people born in the same astrology signs. Also, once I read an astrology book foreseeing future of the world's happenings. The book had been written much further in the past from the time when I read it. I was surprised to see how many important things that had already happened in the world this book foresaw. So, I think, there may be some connections between the stars positions and things happening under them. Of course, it takes an astrology expert to 'read' and 'decipher' this cosmic 'text'.

The closest to science this gets is in Michel Gauquelin The Cosmic Clocks: from Astrology to a Modern SciencePaladin (1967). He uses a vast store of statistical material to show correlations. I won't go into the details here but recommend buying the book at a second hand book website.

I never thought about astrology one way or the other until I had a girlfriend for several years who was a famous astrologer. When I first met her, I read Plotinus (to impress her). I remember him writing that although it is obvious to everyone that the fates of humans can be read in the stars, it remains uncertain whether the stars CAUSE human fates, or are merely CORRELATED with them.

My friend scoffed at newspaper sun sign astrology. She had written a number of books, which have been translated into more than 20 languages, including Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Russian. We didn't actually talk about astrology very much, because I was too naive about it to be able to say anything of interest to her, and because I didn't want my skepticism to ruin our relationship (and she didn't want her lack of skepticism to do the same).

She claimed that the mythic archetypes in an astrological chart can't actually predict the future, but they can help people understand themselves, just as (for example) literature can help us understand ourselves. In other words, astrology is enlightening, but not scientific.

Just recently she sent me a paper of hers about the antikythera device, touted as the first analog computer. It comprises 30+ geared wheels, that fit into a shoe-box-sized box, and, when set to a birth time by a crank, work out all the pertinent positions of the stars. It was discovered in 1901, by divers, in a ship that sunk in 150 B.C.E. (or so), but how it worked wasn't discovered until recently, when new archaeological techniques allowed archaeologists to read the instructions.

In addition to being an astrologer, she is a classical scholar who has translated original Greek documents. As a result, I once got to stay in the visiting faculty rooms at Brasenose College, Oxford University, while she did a series of lectures. You can't have more fun than that!

It is utter nonsense.

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Originally Posted by prakssj4

It is utter nonsense.

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It seems to me this is an anti-intellectual comment. For several thousand years a great many very smart people have spent a great deal of time and effort on astrological research. The science of astronomy, for example, owes much to the discoveries of astrologers. Since this site is devoted to literature, we might expect that members would be interested in the Humanities -- art, literature, and religion -- the creative works of mankind. Of course some people might say, "Christianity is total nonsense", just like prakssj4 says astrology "is utter nonsense". However, whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, it would be silly and dismissive to say, "Christianity is utter nonsense". The mythic archetypes embodied in religion (including in astrology, which is 'religious' in that it involves supernatural statements) are enlightening, valuable, and intriguing -- whether the principles on which they are based are "true" or not. Many astrological commentators (including Plotinus) are rational, sensible people, whose commentaries are about as far from "utter nonsense" as possible. It is possible to be incorrect without being nonsensical.

Ten years ago, I would have thought astrology was utter nonsense also. Today, I don't want to say anything is nonsense without trying it out. Even if it didn't work for me, I wouldn't claim it might not work for someone else.

Were I to try to come up with a theory that might justify planetary influences I would note the following:

1) The typical scientific reductions to quantum "particles", selfish genes and neurons coupled with chance doesn't explain enough. Astrology may be a way to understand some of the constraints on us that we don't currently recognize.

2) Most influences that science acknowledges can be expressed as field properties within space-time. That is, all influences are at a distance even though that distance might be very small. The influences that astrology talks about are also all at a distance so they might be expressed as field influences.

3) There are also non-local influences for entangled quantum reality. If one defined space-time as reality with only local (field) influences, non-local influences would be outside space-time. Astrology could be discussing those non-field influences.

I know that these anti-reductionist, field and non-local arguments will not likely persuade most people and they would not have persuaded me ten years ago, but at the moment they are a way for me to think outside the cultural constraints of my metaphysical box.

Well put, YesNo. I've already posted abut one book that I have read among many others (Cosmic Clocks by Gauquelin) that used thousands of cases and ran correlations. I was impressed but I am still chary of taking a definite position on the matter.

I haven't read Gauquelin's work, but what I found by searching after you mentioned him seems to show that he has found the existence of an influence. Here is something by him on the "Mars effect": http://www.theoryofastrology.com/gau...ars_effect.htm

I used to be a Libra on the Virgo cusp. Then the planet wobbled or something and I became a little more of a Virgo. Now I think I may be what we used to refer to in High School as a "technical Virgo." I didn't really expect to get that back.

Thanks for that article extract, YesNo. Good work.

What I found impressive in Gauquelin's work was the large number of cases he worked with, and that as the article shows, calculated likelihood parameters for them. Sadly I lost the book but could look up the author's name, and work from there.

There is an interesting side-effect of all this. One might think that Gauquelin's findings would make traditional scientists more receptive to this theory and test it many other cases. This seems not to have happened. The answer maybe lies in Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the idea of a tipping point when an old paradigm is overthrown and a new one is developed to replace it.

I like this quote on astrology by Jung, who, certainly, was a man who knew human nature more than ordinary people.

We are born at a given moment in a given place and like vintage years of wine we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything else. - C.G.Jung

http://www.wisdom-of-astrology.com/t...#39;sblueprint