Whenever an astrologer, a real one, states anything about what any aspect of any horoscope means, he or she isn't randomly generating an answer. It would certainly sound like that to a person not versed in astrology, much like you wouldn't understand any specialist doing a sophisticated analysis in a cryptic professional language, but there is always a strict method to the madness. But not only that - astrology can only work in a universe, which is fundamentally non-random. In astrology, randomness isn't a valid concept, and probability is, at least in human matters, not much more than illusion.
As far as critique of astrology from scientific position goes, this is maybe the most important and most misunderstood issue, because behavioral psychology demands a statistical, probabilistic proof, which can be expressed using numerology-free, strictly quantitative math. In my possibly mistaken opinion, this requirement is a roadblock not only in the way of demonstrating that astrology works, but also in the way of advancement of social sciences as a whole. For all of those reasons, I would like to discuss it here with whomever is interested in qualitative science in general.
It is one of those slightly mindbending issues, so please, bear with me. Historically speaking, probability was "axiomatized" in 1933, so it is a fairly modern concept. Prior to that, rules of chance were formalized in the west first in the late medieval times. It happened much earlier in ancient China, but that is disconnected entirely from the western astrological tradition, so it's neither here nor there. In ancient west, Greek philosophers did discuss randomness, but not in a formalized, quantitative way. The focal clash of ideas in those times existed between fate and chance, specifically the role of human agency and free will in affecting either.
Methods of divination were tools to aid precisely that effort - to figure out ways how to take your life into your own hands, based on approximation of how fate and chance figure into your life. If anything, the ancient cultures tend to lean much more to the side of predestination, rather than to the side of what we would call today randomness. Astrology in particular is sometimes criticized for being fatalistic, as well as random, which of course isn't logically consistent, but then again, astrology is also presumed to be internally logically inconsistent. I guess I will have to cut this whole Gordian Knot right down the middle.
It is one of those slightly mindbending issues, so please, bear with me. Historically speaking, probability was "axiomatized" in 1933, so it is a fairly modern concept. Prior to that, rules of chance were formalized in the west first in the late medieval times. It happened much earlier in ancient China, but that is disconnected entirely from the western astrological tradition, so it's neither here nor there. In ancient west, Greek philosophers did discuss randomness, but not in a formalized, quantitative way. The focal clash of ideas in those times existed between fate and chance, specifically the role of human agency and free will in affecting either.
Methods of divination were tools to aid precisely that effort - to figure out ways how to take your life into your own hands, based on approximation of how fate and chance figure into your life. If anything, the ancient cultures tend to lean much more to the side of predestination, rather than to the side of what we would call today randomness. Astrology in particular is sometimes criticized for being fatalistic, as well as random, which of course isn't logically consistent, but then again, astrology is also presumed to be internally logically inconsistent. I guess I will have to cut this whole Gordian Knot right down the middle.
Astrology is neither fatalistic (fully deterministic), nor random (meaninglessly chaotic). Conventional science is both of those things, especially the remnants of scientific intellectual culture within it from the times of Isaac Newton and mechanistic materialism, also called positivism. I will try to put it in terms that people familiar with game theory may understand. The whole of astrological lore is like a deck of cards. Your natal chart is like a hand of cards that you are dealt at birth. Life is the game, and it has phases, or rounds, during which conditions change according to predetermined rules. Which are themselves immutable. And the game isn't rigged, it's perfectly fair, meaning that each hand has the exact same overall probability to achieve anything that can be achieved in the game (if you leave the skill of players, the free will or free agency, out of it).
The players have free will, and are thus, in terms of statistics, perfectly chaotic, but all of their actions taken together throughout the whole game typically average out into standard random distribution. And that is where it gets slightly mindbending - that is why you cannot prove any aspect of astrology in terms of probability. If you assume that randomness is a thing and free will isn't, you are looking for deterministic mechanism that will help you predict the results of the game. But the game is not decided by deterministic mechanisms at all. In the grand scheme of things, nothing in particular happens more often than anything else that can happen. It fluctuates around the middle, sure, since the skill of players chaotically varies, but over time, it always turns into white noise.
The players have free will, and are thus, in terms of statistics, perfectly chaotic, but all of their actions taken together throughout the whole game typically average out into standard random distribution. And that is where it gets slightly mindbending - that is why you cannot prove any aspect of astrology in terms of probability. If you assume that randomness is a thing and free will isn't, you are looking for deterministic mechanism that will help you predict the results of the game. But the game is not decided by deterministic mechanisms at all. In the grand scheme of things, nothing in particular happens more often than anything else that can happen. It fluctuates around the middle, sure, since the skill of players chaotically varies, but over time, it always turns into white noise.
Astrology, however, isn't like game theory either. It doesn't treat players, or individual people, as rolls of the dice. It looks for patterns of how some people succeed at life and how others fail at becoming themselves using intentionally their free will. Each astrological symbolism contains within it a parable, much like a zen koan, which is not a prediction of result, but complex explanation of conditions for success or failure. And those essential conditions are entirely subjective. But not in the modern hijacked sense of the word "subjective" - meaning particular, arbitrary and irrational. Astrology treats subjectivity in the classical ancient way of understanding the concept - as universal, natural and logical phenomenon.
Put simply, one of the fundamental axioms of astrology is that human experience and agency matters to the cosmos. The same cosmos, the same reality, in which it naturally occurs. Astrology treats existential states of human nature as physical variables. As I have explained in one of the earlier articles, astrology is based on numerology, which is qualitative math - allowing to express subjective meanings or states clearly, and do formal logical operations with them. Much like in quantum mechanics you can know only some properties of particles at any given moment, but not others, natal chart is a map of possible ways in which a person can develop in life, where only some aspects of it can be fully known, depending on what choices the person makes at key moments - emulating probabilistic notion of chaos.
Put simply, one of the fundamental axioms of astrology is that human experience and agency matters to the cosmos. The same cosmos, the same reality, in which it naturally occurs. Astrology treats existential states of human nature as physical variables. As I have explained in one of the earlier articles, astrology is based on numerology, which is qualitative math - allowing to express subjective meanings or states clearly, and do formal logical operations with them. Much like in quantum mechanics you can know only some properties of particles at any given moment, but not others, natal chart is a map of possible ways in which a person can develop in life, where only some aspects of it can be fully known, depending on what choices the person makes at key moments - emulating probabilistic notion of chaos.
You may think that not being able to fully predict what will happen to a person makes astrology useless, but then you are entirely missing the significant part of it. When quantum mechanics were experimentally proven, the new knowledge was that we cannot know certain things, which we have previously thought to be knowable. That also seems like knowing less, but in reality, it is knowing a great deal more, which can lead, and has lead, to incredibly counterintuitive, but immensely useful practical innovations. If astrology is to be proven, similarly counterintuitive tests need to be devised, since if it is true, it proves fundamental assumptions of modern social sciences to be wrong.
If you think that astrological statements predict that something will be happening more often than something else, you are completely missing the point of it, and consequently, you may never be able to prove it in this way. Not because it has to be nonsense, but because you have got all of the fundamental assumptions wrong. Of course, I may be the one, who is completely wrong. But a serious experiment has to control for all possible ways in which it can fail, or it is not a strong proof of anything. Accepting subjectivity as natural and always embedded in the holistic context of the entirety of nature is, in my opinion, the next step that social sciences need to take, but not as a derivation of chemistry or physics - it must be as its own thing, a fundamentally qualitative natural science. Astrology may not be the definitive method in this direction, but it is both the original, and the state of the art, and that's why it would be wise to respect it, at least for the moment.
If you think that astrological statements predict that something will be happening more often than something else, you are completely missing the point of it, and consequently, you may never be able to prove it in this way. Not because it has to be nonsense, but because you have got all of the fundamental assumptions wrong. Of course, I may be the one, who is completely wrong. But a serious experiment has to control for all possible ways in which it can fail, or it is not a strong proof of anything. Accepting subjectivity as natural and always embedded in the holistic context of the entirety of nature is, in my opinion, the next step that social sciences need to take, but not as a derivation of chemistry or physics - it must be as its own thing, a fundamentally qualitative natural science. Astrology may not be the definitive method in this direction, but it is both the original, and the state of the art, and that's why it would be wise to respect it, at least for the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment