should be taken seriously?

To me it is in the same realm as palm reading and fortune telling.

I have never taken them serious but they are intertaining.

in around 1600 it WAS taken seriously. People believed in it as a matter of course. It was a standard part of a science education. Then suddenly, 50 years later, it was not.

The question of why did it change is a good one.

for everyone than astrology would be in conflict with that idea.

I think astrology may have been co-opted by the church much in the same way as the pagen rituals were. Then after a certain point it was considered to contain to much power and knowledge.

And yes, astrology interferes with with the idea of a devine plan, because astrology is based on free will.

and remember deCartes considered us mechanical.

or Creative Speculation, not Science.

were somehow related to the huge social shifts caused by the waves of plague.

Maybe people noticed that astrology didn't warn them about the enormous devastation that hit them out of the blue and it made them lose faith in it.

Great question, though.

it is a phenomenon."
It's based on millenia of observation of the ever changing sky, and what happened on earth at those noted occasions.
"As above, so below" and, "On earth as it is in Heaven" both have connections to astrology.

is mostly a scam. It's a way for con artists to separate gullible people from their money.

Newspapers promote this garbage because some readers want them to. Newspapers are like whores in this respect: they'll give their customers whatever they want.

"As above, so below" and "On earth as it is in Heaven" are mere slogans.

The more education one has, the less likely he or she is to be taken in.

Como, eat your heart out.) My friend Marco used to organize the music concerts for the evening when the lectures and dinners were over. I got to play one year, and we were having lunch with the physicist who was the organizer. He put down astrology in a way similar to what you have done. Marco replied, in his broad Milanese accent, "All I know is, if I decant my wine during the wrong phase of the moon, the wine turns."

The "slogans," as you call them, come from the bible; they refer to the one-ness of everything in the universe. (FYI, I am not religious.)

If astrology is "a scam, a way for con artists to separate gullible people from their money", how do you deal with the idea that EVERY civilization on earth has some sort of astrology -- this goes back many millenia. Did they all get together several thousand years ago (B.C.) on a conference call to devise a plan to scam 21st century humans?

Do you feel this way about quantum physics, which is its way is almost as "woo-woo" as astrology if you look at it from a purely Newtonian scientific point of view?

For the record, I know many wildly intelligent and highly educated (Doctorate in many fields) astrologers.

I'm guessing you have no interest whatsoever in the ideas of the psychologist Carl Jung, since he used things like the I Ching in his work -- along with the Tarot and astrology. (Jung wrote "Astrology represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.)

Peace out.

Last edited Mon Oct 1, 2018, 01:55 AM - Edit history (1)

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven" is from the Lord's Prayer in the King James Version of the Christian Bible. But the use of the truncated phrase "on earth as it is in heaven" to support astrology is nothing but a slogan.

"As above, so below" is not really Biblical, although it can be found in a modern mistranslation of the Lord's Prayer in a dumbed down version of the Bible. Wiktionary states that the concept of "as above, so below" was first laid out in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing." In other words, it's the thoroughly Pagan idea that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/as_above,_so_below

but that doesn't mean that astrology is a common belief among highly educated people who have no vested interest in astrology. In fact, the consensus among academics is that astology is a pseudoscience and a scam. For proof of this, you need look no farther than the wikipedia article on Kepler College, which states the following:

Kepler College (formerly Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences) is an online certificate program for the pseudoscientific study of astrology. Based out of Seattle, Washington, U.S., it is named after the mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630).
...

In March 2000, Kepler College received provisional authorization from Washington State's Higher Education Coordinating (HEC) Board to grant degrees while the school pursued regional or national accreditation, a requirement for maintaining degree-granting status.

The HEC Board's decision was criticized by many academics due to Kepler's focus on the pseudoscience of astrology. An administrator at the University of Washington called the HEC Board's approval "ludicrous" and compared the study of astrology to "quack medicine". John Silber, chancellor of Boston University, wrote in a Boston Herald editorial that the school's promoters "honored Kepler not for his strength but for his weakness, as if a society advocating drunkenness named a school for Ernest Hemingway". Silber also said, "The fact is that astrology, whether judged by its theory or its practice, is bunkum. In a free society there is no reason to prevent those who wish to learn nonsense from finding teachers who want to make money peddling nonsense. But it is inexcusable for the government to certify teachers of nonsense as competent or to authorize—that is, endorse—the granting of degrees in nonsense."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_College

In defense of Jung and scholars I have known who are into astrology, there may be seasonal reasons for some personality traits that coincide with the signs and get more specific with the months.

However, due to axial precession of the earth, the actual zodiac sign for any given birth date is more often than not the sign which precedes the sign indicated in the newspaper astrology column. Also, some current zodiac-sign purists argue for the insertion of a thirteenth zodiac sign between Scorpio and Sagittarius.

From https://www.yourtango.com/2015270331/oops-zodiac-is-all-wrong-find-out-your-true-astrological-sign :

re the precession of the equinoxes:
https://www.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Precession_of_the_Equinoxes

I refer to the earth's axial precession and the resulting precession of the equinoxes as the "clockwork of the solar system." I remember when the song "Age of Aquarius" was popular in the late 1960s. At that time, I was intrigued about the meaning of zodiac "ages." Years later, I learned about the 25,772-year cycle in which the sun's position on the first day of spring migrates though all of the zodiac constellations. The current zodiac age of Pisces will give way the the age of Aquarius in about 600 years, if we are to accept the specific boundaries assigned to the constellations by the International Astronomical Union in the year 1928.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_age :

When you walk around Europe and see astrological symbols all over everything (even in churches) you can't help but wonder ... And thanks for your reply.

Before that it was the claws of Scorpio, and the old Arabic names of the principal stars in Libra reflect that.

I was very happy to see Ophiuchus included. I wish it were my sign, so I could mention that every time astrology comes up.

It's fairly difficult to carry on believing that your calculations for how planets move can be the basis for influence on earth, when the calculations have just been shown to be completely wrong. Anything like "as above, so below" rather depends on "below" being the centre of the universe, not just the surface of one more planet orbiting the Sun.

So, faced with the complete overturning of previous astronomy - heliocentrism, the movement of comets through the "crystal spheres", the discovery of Jupiter's moons - the academics got on with discovering what they could about he universe, with the aid of the new telescopes. And, rather than taking time out to make up a completely new scam for how the movements of pinpoints of light in the sky control your life, they just ignored it.

It was up to the con artists to continue the pretence that the angles that stars and planets make when observed on Earth, and whether the bit of Earth you're on is facing them or not when you emerge from the birth canal, have an effect that lasts your whole life. As far as I know, no one ever tried to pretend that the direction your mother was facing made such a difference; but it would have made just as much sense.

To take an illustration, the reaction to Newton's work: He wasn't immediately hailed as a genius by everyone. Some contemporary critics said, "You're just asserting that there's an attractive force between any two objects, that it's proportional to their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them? You don't explain why this supposed force arises, why it follows those rules, or how it operates. This isn't science, it's mysticism!"

The key point is that those critics were partly right. Newton didn't explain gravity. He just stated the law of gravitation and showed that it could be used to do a lot of interesting science. (For example, Kepler had produced an accurate version of heliocentrism by simply assuming elliptical orbits. Newton showed that, with gravity operating the way he said, one could deduce that the planets would follow elliptical orbits.)

Many of Newton's critics were never convinced. What happened was that new people entering the field found that doing physics Newton's way enabled them to make progress. The critics weren't convinced; they just died out. As Max Planck said, science advances one funeral at a time.

Now, getting back to astrology: Its problem is that it has no record of making testable predictions that prove to be correct. With the advent of heliocentrism, probably along with improved observational methods, I'm guessing that newly trained astronomer/astrologers found that applying their astronomical knowledge got them somewhere, but the same wasn't true of astrology. The most obvious example, although not coming until the 19th century, was the discovery of Neptune. If astrology had any merit, then astrologers should have been able to deduce that there was a planet they didn't know about. None of them did, however. It was mathematicians applying Newton's laws who figured out where Neptune was, its distance from the Sun, its orbital period, and its mass, and whose calculations were correct.

It was mainly Cartesians who weren't impressed with the book Newton published in 1687. DesCartes's math was excellent. He invented analytic geometry and came close to inventing calculus. But his physics was a mixed bag. It was full of vortices and predicted only that a vacuum was impossible - an assertion which was certainly weakened and arguably disproved by Torricelli's invention of the barometer.

DesCartes had published a book titled "Principia Philosophiæ" (Principles of Philosophy) in 1644, in which he described among other things his physics (not that it was called physics in those days). The book deserves credit for stating what we now call Newton's first law of motion. Newton borrowed that concept from DesCartes and Galileo. In an act of one-upmanship, Newton chose for his book the title "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (MATHEMATICAL Principles of NATURAL Philosophy) (my emphasis).

I was only vaguely aware of DesCartes as a physicist. From what you write, my impression is that the Cartesian loyalists were a different bunch of Newton critics than the ones I referred to. Nevertheless, the same pattern applied. As the Cartesian loyalists and Newton's contemporaries died off, people entering the field found that DesCartes's vortices, like the astrologers' signs, got them nowhere, whereas Newton's laws (regardless of their provenance) were a solid basis for moving forward.

And I wish that you atheists would stop saying he was.

Galileo told a longstanding friend of his, Pope Urban VIII, that he was going to write on the Ptolemaic system versus the Copernican system in his Dialogue on the Two World Systems. Urban, who was well aware that Galileo was an advocate of heliocentrism, asked (not ordered, asked) Galileo to treat the geocentric model with respect and not ridicule. When Galileo did not do this, Urban was displeased. Moreover, Galileo quoted Urban, and put Urban's words in the mouth of a man named Simplicius -- "simpleton" is a good translation. Naturally, Urban really did not appreciate being called an idiot in print. So he had Galileo called before the Papal Inquisition to explain himself. (Remember that Henry VIII of England had people executed for less.) So, while the formal charge was heresy, the actual charge was lèse-majesté. And while Galileo was found guilty, he was sentenced to house arrest. During the procedure, he was neither tortured nor threatened with torture.

Before I go on, let me say a few words about the Papal Inquisition. Don't confuse it with the Spanish Inquisition, a wholly separate organization. The name Inquisition comes from the Latin inquirere -- to look into, or to examine ("inquire" is from the same root). In the Papal Inquisition, defendants had such things as the right to counsel, the right to be told the specific charges against them and their property would not be seized by the Inquisition. Torture was permitted, but only when specifically authorized by the Pope or the head of the Inquisition (at that time, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine) and was to be used only once. The name was changed to Holy Office in 1908, three centuries later, and is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

One thing that should be pointed out is that a major part of the Dialogue on the Two World Systems was concerned with a basically flawed theory about tides. Galileo believed that tides were caused by the sloshing back and forth of water in the seas as a point on the Earth's surface sped up and slowed down because of the Earth's rotation on its axis and revolution around the Sun. He advanced this theory because Cardinal Bellarmine called for evidence that the Earth circled the Sun, and Galileo thought this would suffice. Unfortunately for him, the theory is flat-out wrong, and could be shown to be wrong -- for one thing, it said that there should be only one high tide per day, not two. Galileo clearly knew of this problem, but essentially blew it off.

Another thing that should be pointed out is that the Vatican assigned two Jesuits, Christoph Scheiner and Orazio Grassi, to look into Galileo's science. Both had solid credentials as astronomers. However, Galileo had managed to alienate both of them. Schiener was one of the first astronomers to observe sunspots and was, as far as he knew, the first to describe them in a scientific paper. (In fact, the first paper on sunspots was published the previous year by David Fabricius, but his paper was unknown outside of Germany.) Galileo attempted to grab the glory of having first seen sunspots from Scheiner, and compounded this by plagiarizing Scheiner in his own paper.

Grassi and Galileo disagreed on the nature of comets. What made things worse was that Grassi was right and Galileo was wrong. Grassi had observed a comet over a period of time, and had noticed that the moon moved faster in the sky than the comet did; Grassi reasonably (and correctly) assumed that the comet was further from the earth than the moon was. Galileo believed that they were optical illusions in the atmosphere. After several rounds of argument in various pamphlets, Galileo wrote an essay, Il Saggiatore -- "The Assayer" -- attacking Grassi and his theory. This essay is still taught in Italian schools as a masterpiece of polemical writing. Naturally, having been held up to ridicule, Grassi was no friend to Galileo.

Galileo was tried and convicted basically for being a pain in the arse.

The usual and uncontroversial statement was that Galileo was "shown the instruments of torture". That was obviously a threat. And the ghost of Giordano Bruno haunted the Roman (not to be confused with the Spanish) Inquisition, making an implicit threat that heretics like Galileo could be burned at the stake if they did not repent.

And, in fact, did not. So stop saying that he was threatened with torture, since the threat was not seriousl

BTW, don't give us the tripe about Bruno being burnt at the stake for saying that there may well be other inhabited worlds. Yes, Bruno said that there may well be multiple worlds in the universe. But that isn't what got him executed for heresy. He also denied the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, the efficacy of the sacraments, the Virgin Birth and so on. It's like a man who robs a bank at gunpoint, shoots someone dead, takes a hostage and runs a red light while making his getaway. The APB is not going to say, "Man wanted for running a red light."

Incidentally, Nicholas of Cusa advanced the same sort of multiple worlds hypothesis some years previously. Nicholas became a bishop, and later a cardinal, and died peacefully in his bed.

Thomas Jefferson said he looked forward to the day that the Virgin Birth would be viewed the same as Athena being born full-grown from Zeus’s forehead.

Bruno was.

Where did you get the idea that the threat was not serious? Can you provide a source for that bizarre interpretation?

Maybe they said: "By the way, Galileo, here are the various ways we could torture you if we felt like it. But don't worry, we wouldn't really do that." Galileo must have been relieved to learn that they were just joking around.

I promise not to spout any tripe about Bruno being burned for saying that there may be other inhabited worlds. I agree he was not burned for that reason. We could probably argue all day about why he was burned, but what matters here is that Galileo knew about Bruno's fate.

And not just the "bad cop" routine.

He was actually treated with considerable respect, largely because he had been a friend of Pope Urban for many years.

Galileo knew of Bruno's fate. He knew that he had not committed the sort of heresy that Bruno was guilty of, and that it did not apply to him. People nowadays like to pretend that Bruno was a martyr for science, but, as I said, he denied the Trinity, denied the divinity of Christ, denied the efficacy of the sacraments. It was things like that which got Bruno burnt at the stake, not his scientific writings.

No, you just want to slander the Catholic Church. Admit it.

by saying I "just want to slander the Catholic Church." I want no such thing. I merely spoke the truth as I see it. You are free to disagree, but not to question my motives. Let's just take the argument wherever it goes and avoid personal attacks.

It's your job to back up the implausible assertion, which I have not seen in any reputable source, that the threat of torture was not serious. It's not my job to prove the common-sense viewpoint that the threat was serious.

Think about how you would react if you were threatened with torture. Perhaps you would say: "Ha ha, I know you guys aren't serious." C'mon now. Get real.

Bruno was no martyr to science. You got that right.

I will say that I regularly come across atheists on DU whose prime objective seems to be slandering any and all believers and churches.

However, what you posted was not historically accurate.

And you are saying, "the authorities never try to intimidate a witness. And the fact remains that Galileo was not tortured.

As to the historical accuracy of my statements:

Everyone knows Galileo wasn't tortured. I never said or implied that he was. Nor did I say: "The authorities never try to intimidate a witness." Of course they do. They always have and always will.

One of the most influential Christian writers was Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Thomas Aquinas quoted him more than anyone except Aristotle, and both Luther and Calvin were heavily influenced by him.

In his Confessions, he wrote that as a young man he believed in astrology, but later turned against it, for two reasons.

First, he knew two men, each of whom had been born essentially simultaneously. One had a successful career, a happy marriage, and could be considered a success in every way. The other was a slave, and even for a slave had a miserable life. Yet astrology said that the two should be living very similar lives.

The second was that he saw astrology as a way of ducking personal responsibility. "I failed, because the stars were against me." While Augustine never heard the line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves", he would have agreed with it completely.

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2018, 03:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Augustine of Hippo and Shakespeare got it right.

Talk of the originators of the sexagesimal base 60 system which delineated both the heavens and the earth.

And the namers of the constellations with their attributes - the gods and goddesses of old precisely depicted in the heavens.

And the knowledge of the movements of all planetary bodies way before primitive telescopes.

And time's divisions.

Planetary descriptions written in clay.

All known pre-Copernicus/Galileo/Huygen/et al.

Or the 'air shaft' into the 'king's chamber' aimed directly at the pole star around which the heaves rotate.

or is this too woo?

the practice of watching the stars and of predicting their motions (and understanding them) had a variety of purposes.

Some of the system around that practice was based on observation and prediction based on observation; some was based on observation and then "what the gods wanted", more or less--folklore about explanations, and from those explanations predictions that might or might not come true; some was story telling, whether for entertainment or for practical reasons ("the fish run when this constellation appears at sunset&quot or cultural reasons.

Eventually, you get to the point where you can test the various claims, panning those that don't pan out and working from those that do. Because all the false predictions had to muddy the cause-and-effect waters.

Westerners used to believe that there was an all-encompassing ether than light traveled in. That heat was a material substance, flowing from hot objects to cold objects, and presumably with mass. That there were four humors that controlled health, or a vital energy that flows through channels and gates in the body--and try as we might to make those mean "hormones" or "nerve impulses", it's only with a lot of creative reworking and parsing of the data that we can collect information to show that these are even plausible interpretations.