The Mystery of the Missing Method

Before I get into any explanation of what I conclude are the concrete features of real astrology, one other basic objection of skeptics needs to be dealt with. Astrology, to date, has not sufficiently explained the mechanism by which it works. Yes, that is a fact. But just in case you think that alone is enough to dismiss it entirely, or even find it patently wrong, look at what Carl Sagan, the patron saint of astronomy, has to say about this line of criticism in his book, The Demon-Haunted World:

"The statement stressed that we can think of no mechanism by which astrology could work. This is certainly a relevant point but by itself it's unconvincing."

In case you wish to accuse me of quoting him out of context, here is the context - it was one of the reasons why he felt he cannot sign one particular manifesto denouncing astrology, even though he is by no means a supporter of it. He went on to show an example of how scientists were completely wrong about the notion of continental drift presented by Wegener, who had died before his work was finally vindicated. The reason why he mentions this particular theory is because the main objection was precisely that there is simply no mechanism to explain it. Very similar case was the one of washing hands - proposed by Semmelweis in order to reduce mortality rate resulting from infection. It worked, but it still wasn't accepted and was in fact ridiculed by scientists until the invisible culprit causing infection was finally discovered. Compass would be yet another example of the same problem - insufficient explanation of mechanism is an insufficient objection, especially in the face of demonstrable results, because some forces tend to be invisible to us at any given moment in history.

That is why any serious attempt at proving or disproving astrology should be focused on the observation of its purported effects. With all that being said, there are several evolving theories that might explain the mechanism by which the astrology works, and the new discoveries in physics are, if anything, only increasing the amount of options there, however much the theoretical physicists hate their theories being applied to what was previously thought of as metaphysical, supernatural or paranormal phenomena. The two possible avenues of explanation that in my opinion go nowhere (which is why I will be mostly ignoring them) are either the entirely supernatural approach, or the opposite attempts to explain astrology strictly by the 4 fundamental forces, especially gravity (since electromagnetism could hypothetically at least have some connection to brain function, while gravity based astrology is actually among the best debunked things by astronomers).

Why do I think these two are equally useless? The entirely supernatural explanation essentially means giving up on ever scientifically proving any aspect of astrology. While anyone is of course entitled to personally believe whatever they want, this approach simply leads nowhere and offers no benefits. The entirely known-physics based explanation, while obviously scientifically testable, has already been tried and didn't lead anywhere. This is the point where astrologists need to learn to trust scientists at least a little - astrophysicists know the four fundamental forces, they know what those forces can or cannot do. If astrology lives anywhere, it would probably be in some aspect of physics that we do not fully understand yet, which brings me to more recent physical theories of how the world might work.

Since astrological theories are hardly published and reviewed in the same manner as is normal in science, not to mention tested, please realize that who came up with them, where or when is scientifically speaking irrelevant. I will not name any names, try to judge those theories on the basis of their inherent logical merit only. Take them merely as hypotheses to consider, since they are no more than that by scientific standards. I do not pretend to own them either, I merely interpret and convey them here based on my theoretical knowledge of the field and experience in the practice of astrology.

What I think that the most promising potential explanations of astrology have in common is their focus on the time variable. If you really think about it, the stars, constellations and other natural cycles are only time markers. The hyper-naturalistic explanations tend to focus too much on how the stars themselves would cause anything on Earth, but that most likely is just a giant red herring. As many astrologists have stated, it is like expecting the thermometer to be causing the temperature, or in a more direct analogy, the clock showing 12:00 PM to be causing a family to have lunch. If you accept the stars as just that, a measure of natural time, numerous criticisms of astrology simply evaporate. Such as the most painful misconception, which keeps appearing again and again - that the constellations have moved, therefore astrology no longer applies. Even cursory glance at how tropical or sidereal astrology deal with precisely that in two different, yet equally functional ways, would reveal that it is a non-issue. Astrology always does the same - chooses a fixed beginning point in the time cycle it measures, and then divides the time cycle by twelve equal portions.

Since western tropical astrology is technically more natural-time-cycle-on-Earth-oriented (beginning the zodiac always at the the same point in the year - spring equinox), I personally prefer it, but then again, maybe this solution works only for the northern hemisphere, or maybe only in the mild climate zone of it. If the cause of the differences is the weather at birth, which is one of the possible mechanisms. Science is actually finding certain examples of such mechanism possibly working in general (not necessarily in conjunction with astrology). But that should mean that signs close to each other within the same season should be fundamentally similar, which is not the case in astrological lore. A fun summary of relevant discoveries (and how they don't relate to astrology) could be found for example in this article. At any rate, even though I do not support this venue of explanation, at least not as the direct or fundamental culprit, weather at birth being controlled in relation to astrology in scientific studies is probably a good idea.

Entirely different hidden mechanism behind the kind of temporal correlation that astrology requires could be derived from information theory and especially the notion that our universe is a mathematical simulation. This is something that a number of serious scientists pursues at the moment, not only the fans of Matrix movies, and in my opinion, it is the most promising angle from which the astrological mechanism could be explained. It is the same reason why I personally think that astrology has practical uses if used as a template for certain kinds of algorithms that in simulations would do things similar to what people believe astrology does in real life. Every programmer and mathematician knows that random functions are never really random, yet our universe seems to be full of chaos.

Maybe the chaos is a pattern we haven't decrypted yet, and maybe what we know as astrology is a part of it - an algorithm that distributes characteristic traits and selects original conditions of emergent events and entities, based on some system, structure or purpose. The Jungian notion of synchronicity would then be explained as such algorithms being run outside of our runtime (in other, higher, more real dimension of time), and then coordinating events happening here, to us seemingly simultaneously. Modern physics do not prohibit something like this and it also means that it could be eventually mathematically formulated and therefore scientifically verified.

Speaking of modern science, the one remaining approach is a mix between the paranormal and, for a lack of simple description, the quantum. This is where things like quantum theory of consciousness come into play in regards to "psychic" powers - quantum weirdness, entaglement and unified field theory allowing (not yet explaining!) things like precognition, telepathy or ESP. There has been some tangentially relevant research done, such as Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance studies, or various studies showing that people can feel other person's trouble over distance or know subtle little things before they observe them. If you are skeptical about it, I don't blame you, but I am speaking of properly controlled and replicated experiments, the best of which were presented for example in this episode of Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (S02E05, Is There a Sixth Sense?). Some astrologists believe that some of these strange mental phenomena are what makes astrology work, and all of the symbols and methods are equivalent to tea leaves or tarot cards - a random structure serving as a starting point to stimulate the necessary psychic powers, allowing for the divination to produce any real knowledge. Once again, I do not subscribe to this approach as the primary mechanism, but once again it is something to be controlled for in any experiments where it would possibly come into play.

These hypothetical mechanisms have different implications, and thus can be differentiated. Do practicing astrologers care? Nope. Do scientists testing astrology care? Nope. Which is why there has been barely any relevant research done so far - what we've got is mostly testing without theoretical basis of a practice without precisely articulated standards. Setting out to fail is, in my humble opinion, not a very good strategy to prove or disprove anything. Also, that is why you need to look at the methodology of any scientific test of astrology before you decide to believe its conclusion.