Thu, 15. October 2009
Astronomy v astroLoGy
- Newspapers and magazines regularly waste space in their pages on puerile horoscopes.
- A recent cock-up within my local council organisation saw an astroLoGer invited to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. Imagine that! (Despite astronomer's pointing out that it is an Astronomer's job to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy; the event still went ahead with an astroLoGer, as planned).
Oh dear! There is still a lot of work to do - so what is the difference between Astronomy and astroLoGy? Well, quite a lot actually, because there are very few similarities.
The science of Astronomy is the study of planets, stars and galaxies, based on dedicated research and careful observations built up by very many clever men and women beginning with Copernicus (who postulated that the Earth goes around the Sun). Astronomy is the discovery of the physical nature of our Universe and the passive observation of it through optical telescopes and other instruments. One of it's basic tenets is the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System.
AstroLoGy is prediction-making and astroLoGers are fortune-tellers, on a par with tea-leaf readers. It is about symbols and fallacies. AstroLoGy is based on medieval pseudo-scientific baloney and is a fantasy without sound scientific basis. It is based on primitive astronomical knowledge as it was seven centuries ago, when the Geocentric Theory of the Solar System held sway.
I can't detect any similarities between these two descriptions, yet many misguided people think Astronomy and astroLoGy are joined at the hip!
Professor Richard Dawkins once said: "Astrology not only demeans astronomy, shrivelling and cheapening the universe with its pre-Copernican dabblings. It is also an insult to the science of psychology and the richness of human personality".
I would add that astrologers prey on the vulnerable and profit from giving them false hope about the future.
AstroLoGy was founded in the belief that the stars are located on a 'celestial sphere' maybe only a few thousand cubits away. That's not very far. The essence of astroLoGy is the pre-medieval concept that the planets and stars are close enough to us to strongly influence mortal affairs. We know this is false.
Astronomers discovered how much further away all these objects actually are. AstroLoGers have ignored that. Astronomers discovered how little influence the stars and planets can exert on us, because of the distance involved. AstroLoGers have ignored that too.
There are four forces of nature. Scientists know that the two nuclear forces only act over sub-millimetre distances. Neither of the two remaining forces: gravity and electro-magnetic radiation, emanating from distant planets or even more remote stars, can have sufficient strength to exert any significant effect on our lives. Astronomers know that even if they did, the effect would be totally swamped by the Moon (in the case of gravity) and the bright Sun (in the case of radiation).
Astronomers know that physical effects from the distant stars and the planets cannot affect us in any way. Yet, despite the steady accumulation of irrefutable evidence, astroLoGers choose not to adjust their beliefs to suit new facts, continuing to mislead people with medieval-style predictions of future human events.
Only a faulty brain process could now believe, despite the unimaginably huge increase in scale (from geocentric to heliocentric), that the astroLoGy hypothesis could possibly have any truth. Centuries ago, no-one could blame astroLoGers for believing what they do. Now there is no excuse!
It is pseudo-science, with quackery and deceit, which takes advantage of many gullible people.
Go to your local library. You will find Astronomy in the science classification but astroLoGy books will be stacked elsewhere - not next to Astronomy, as some wretched newsagents might do - but under the sub-heading of parapsychology and occultism. That's probably ok but they probably ought to be moved to the 'Unbelievably Silly Ideas' section or better still, ship them over to the 'Fiction' Department.
For further information, read the reknowned Phil Plait's "Bad Astronomy' page, which tears astroLoGy's unscientific claims to shreds:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html