Chronicle of a debate

8/13/2019 Chronicle of a debate

1/8

Born in 1962 and I have been anastrological counsellor to individuals,couples and businesses for almost thirty

years. After experimenting different schoolsof Astrology, ten years ago I resolved to joinCiro Discepolo's astrological method andschool, named ctive strology-- based onthe active relocation of the Solar Returns(Mr. Discepolo calls them: Aimed SolarReturns or Aimed Birthdays) and theexorcism of the symbols, as originallyconceived by Swiss psychiatrist Carl

Gustav Jung. I am the founder and currentmoderator of the newsgroup of astrologicaldiscussion and information in Italianlanguage it.discussioni.astrologia.

Websitehttp://digilander.libero.it/drusetta/Bloghttp://lucianodrusetta.blogspot.com/

Chronicle of a DebateByLuciano Drusetta Italy.

Translated and partially rewritten intoEnglish by the AuthorReviewed by: Pamela Jablonski U.S.A

Article originally published in CiroDiscepolos magazine Ricerca 9 issue 43rom time to time the fascinating

(but sometimes well-worn) debateon the topic of Astrology vs. Science

comes into fashion on the Internet.

Among the hackneyed sentences that you

can read on those occasions, it may be

difficult to disagree with this: the

opponents of astrology often do not have

the humility to try to understand what

astrology really is, what astrology reallydeals with, and how our discipline really

works. Discussing astrology with them is

like talking to stone walls. I dont think

that any of them has ever opened a

handbook of astrology and/or has learned

to cast a natal chart to verify its practical

utility. It is true that some people tried to

test certain horoscopes in a so-calledscientific way: but they did so in bad

faith, often resorting to, as they say in

boxing jargon, sensational hits below the

waist.

I remember for example the classic case

(with which sceptics claimed to have

definitely demolished the astrology) of

five natal charts of five celebrities: the five

nameless charts were sent to five well-

known astrologers in order to have their

F


2/8

readings. The 25 resulting reports were then sent back to the five celebrities. Each celebrity

was asked to identify which were the five readings that referred to him/ herself. The tester

claimed that, if astrology had worked, each celebrity would have selected the correct five

readings out of the 25. Obviously the result was below the average, i.e. none of the celebrities

was able to recognize which astrological report actually referred to his or her personality or

character.

Self-claiming defenders of science occasionally propose similar experiments also in the

virtual groups of discussion on the Internet: but the result can only be scientifically

irrelevant, because what they proudly define as a scientific experiment is rather like a

deliberate mockery with the intent to frame the nave astrologers who wish to collaborate

with the sceptics (possibly because they hope to convince them that astrology does work

indeed). At most, such a test can only put in evidence two aspects that any experiencedastrologer should have already known quite well, and that they can never ignore. That is to

say:

1) The clients difficulty in knowing and recognizing himself in what the astrologer conveys

to him. Often people even tend to refute the astrologers reading at first, but later on they

may change their mind admitting that indeed, things are exactly as the astrologer reads from

their natal chart!

2) The astrologers difficulty conveying a holistic, logical, coherent and plausible description

of the clients character and general situation, starting with a myriad of seemingly

disconnected details (a phase of the reading of the chart that is particularly difficult for

beginners, and it proves to be critical even for expert astrologers).

Indeed, the above described experiment does not test any of the deepest mechanisms, any

of the most basic assumptions of our discipline. Certainly there is no use in discussing with

people who have already have a bias against astrologers and whose sole purpose seems to be

to lay insidious traps. But further reflection on certain aspects of astrology can be useful to

those who deal with astrology and who, knowing its mechanisms and its limits very well,

use the incongruence sometimes seen to research why and how astrology works, and

whether our discipline can or can not be considered a science . But to do so, we must also

understand what scienceis, and why today science enjoys an undisputed authority. We should

also consider whether the authority of science is, or is not, justified by the facts. In other

words we should consider both science and astrology under a critical and epistemological

approach (which is what I wanted to suggest by titling my previous article on this subject:

For the Application of Epistemology toAstrology).


3/8

Is astrology a science?It is hard to answer this question when we do not agree even on thedefinition of science. Many agree in specifying that there are two types of science: the hard

or exact sciences (mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy...) and the soft or non-exact

sciences(medicine, psychology, sociology, meteorology...). However, be they exact or not, be

they hardor soft, in both cases the listed disciplines are commonly judged to be realscience,

with the official stamp or the power of authority and the effectiveness that the word scienceentails. The exact sciences describe precise laws; following these laws it is possible toreproduce a given phenomenon in laboratory conditions and to foresee its taking place in a

natural environment. The non-exact sciencesdescribe complex events based on theoreticalmodels that adapt more or less precisely to reality (perhaps they neglect certain factors

considering them virtually irrelevant) and they allow to forecast those events by means of

simulation (usually performed through powerful computers and with the help of

sophisticated software packages). Sceptics tend to stress that astrologers often fail their

predictions, but let me underline that sometimes even the forecasts of the non-exact sciencesfail: everybody laughs at the approximation of the weather forecasters, who may predict a

sunny day in a particular area and the following day that area is devastated by the most

violent hailstorm of the last decade...

Astrology is based on theoretical and practical assumptions that, in my very humble

opinion, can be defined as scientific. I refer to everything you need to calculate, cast and

draw a horoscope: the concepts of astronomical geography, the trigonometric formulas of the

house systems and our precise ephemerides, which differ from the astronomical ephemerides

only because they consider other points of reference. However, scientists and sceptics

usually deride the phase immediately subsequent to the casting, i.e. the interpretation of the

astrological chart, because it is judged not to be enough(or very little, if any) scientific. What

is the reason of such scepticism? Among the reasons that one can read from time to time in

the group of discussions on the web, frequently are the nave attempts to explain thatscience is a method of knowledge which is much more reliable than any other1 because itassumes the following:

a) The existence of a real world, external and independent from the observer;

b) that this world works the same way constantly over time, and that the phenomena are

reproducible; and

c) that every event has a cause (the principle of cause and effect).

Some sceptics, in the mood for enflaming, stress that the above listed three points pose

serious problems for astrology. But they forget that these three principles pose serious

problems also for science itself, because they open the door to a sequel of problems that are

not easy to solve. Here are some.

Point a): the direct observation of the external world and its interpretationby the humanbeing implies huge limitations and is not always possible. Those who claim that thanks to


4/8

science we know what happens inside the Sun, about 150 millions km from here, they seem

to be unaware that if we know it (or if we think we know it) this hasnt certainly been

achieved by means of direct observation or measurements. For what thermometer in fact

could ever measure the temperatures of our star? None. We inferbased on a complex set of

scientific assumptions, which of course are considered valid and undisputed. And how do we

know what the world was in the Devonian age? We do not know; we can only have a paleidea of it, based on the fossils that we collect digging rocks, and based on our present

knowledge of geology, we believe that those rocks belong to that particular age. And how do

we see that the universe is expanding? We do not see; we deduceit from the fact that most of

the galaxies observed through the prism lens, show a distinct red shift, which is interpreted

as Doppler Effectand which we explain as the effect of the light source moving away from

the observer. Some of those theoretical premises are probably based on direct observations

(observations might be false or might lead you to false conclusions, but discussing these

issues is out of the scope of this article) but a good deal of them derive from other theoreticalassumptions, in a sort of logical skein that we could not easily disentangle in a few lines.

As for astrology and observation, I have already expressed my scepticism about the

prevailing theory claiming that astrology was developed out of the spirit of observation of

the goat herders in Chaldea or Babylon, who first noticed some sort of correspondence

between the time of year in which one is born and his or her character. At the time when the

basic astrological assertions were presumably encoded, nobody certainly even dreamt of

looking at reality with a Galilean eye. This is why I would exclude that astrology was

deduced from a number of observations and practical tests, and then organized in a logical

and complex theory. In fact the origin of astrology itself is shrouded in the same aura ofmystery that covers the origin of many other typically human activities and fields of

knowledge (language, cooking, breeding, art, religion). Since the evolutionary theory (the

one prevailing these days) does not explain it thoroughly, we can only make conjectures on

their origin. Maybe Italian astrologer, Lisa Morpurgo, realized this fact when she developed

intriguing hypotheses about the extraterrestrial origin of the concept of zodiac.

Point b): not all phenomena are reproducible;nevertheless science still deals with them too.It is impossible to replicate storms, tornadoes and earthquakes to our liking either in nature

or in laboratory: at most we can do simulations and build up theoretical models of them, yet

the disciplines that deal with this kind of phenomena are considered to be science. For

example, it is not possible to apply the Galilean method to study the biological evolution of

the species, because biological evolution is believed to develop in times too long for humans.

Scientists tried to reproduce a sort of biological evolution in laboratory, bombarding

countless generations of Drosophila (fruit flies) with X rays to induce those genetic

mutations that, in nature, are supposed to incite the birth of new species within a fewgenerations, evolutionists claim. The flies reproductive rhythms are so impressive that in a

few years they can produce many generations equivalent to those that less frequently


5/8

reproducing species may procreate only in millions of years. But despite such induced

development scientists did not succeed in creating any new species of flies: only entire

generations of deformed and sterile Drosophilas, or whose offspring becomes magically

normal in the successive generation2. The very origin of life on Earth is a non-reproducible

event. Many times scientists have tried to reproduce it in laboratory condition, but their best

result ever was the forming of some chains of amino acids and proteins. Creating life frominanimate matter in a laboratory, its another kettle of fish and no one has succeeded yet. Yet

no one denigrates the scientists working on this issue.

Are astrological phenomena repeatable?Some are, some are not. When it comes to verifythe astrological assertions relating to the fast planets, no problem: we have thousands of

examples allowing us to carry on broad and well-documented statistical researches. But if we

try to verify the assertions on the slow planets, things are different. In an article I once

happened to read the following statement: Every passage of Uranus in Aquarius tends to bringout evidence or indication that everything evolves and transforms. This statement, due to its

intrinsic characteristics (the presence of the verb tends and the lack of concrete examples as

support of this assertion), is hardly falsifiable3 and it is therefore generally considered as

unscientific. To verify this affirmation, the author should have described at least two or

three specific examples of passages of Uranus in Aquarius in different historical periods,

proving them to be correspondent to changes or evolution of historical importance.

On the other hand, we have emphasized that many scientific hypotheses are also expressedin such way that can not be refuted. In order to be falsifiable (i.e. refutable) a hypothesis

must be stated in clear and unequivocal terms, certainly not in terms of probability. The

scientist claiming We have 96% chance that at any moment a positron appears in the area

X of the accelerator Y does not produce a scientific prognosis because the assertion retains

its validity whether the positron appears or it does not appear. In addition, to prove the

falsity of scientific theories, they should not be modified only for the sake of preserving or

protecting them against all kinds of rebuttals. This is an important point, because

evolutionism has been moving away gradually from the original Darwinian Theory by

incorporating a sequel of self-adjustments which epistemologists define as ad hocmodifications4.Item c): the principle of cause and effectis certainly the most prevalent scientific principletoday, but it proves insufficient before the epistemological-philosophical paradox of the

uncaused cause. If we claim that everything has its own cause, sooner or later we must go

back to an initial cause, to the principle of all, to a factor not caused by anything. The

evolution is based on the same logic: mammals have evolved from reptiles, reptiles have

evolved from amphibians, amphibians from fishes, fishes from invertebrates, invertebrates

from mono-cellular organisms, mono-cellular organisms from chains of amino acids, amino

acids from simple protein... But to what extent can we bring back the evolutionary chain? At


6/8

a cosmic level, assumptions are made about a solar system that has evolved from a cosmic

cloud, which has evolved from... from what? If everything evolved from something prior

and (who knows why?) more primitive, then there must have been something absolutely

primary, poor, essential that evolved... out of nowhere!

In fact, science has made assumptions about the Big Bang: an exciting theory but with afundamental limit. In their discussions against astrology, our opponents claims that science

should not limit to describe it should also explainthe world, it should be able to tell us the

whyof things, thus giving a factual contribution to the development and to the welfare of

mankind. However, this view does not reflect the sad reality. The Big Bang theory in fact

does not explain whymatter has felt the need or the spur to explode, instead of remaining

in the state of equilibrium in which, presumably, it was. And evolutionism does not explain

whysome species have had to evolve in order to survive, while so many other species (ants,

sharks, certain reptiles, medusae) have remained unchanged to this day.

There are also certain purely descriptive sciences, such as comparative anatomy and Linnaean

classification. Thanks to them, for example, we can know exactly what are the differences

between the owls and the hawks, but nothing they say (because clearly it is not their

purpose) on the why the living beings show such a variety of organs and organisms.

Nevertheless the scientific community does not laugh at the classification of living beings

by calling it useless.

Does astrology limit to describe a certain reality or does it also help us to explain it? Itdepends. There is certainly a practical astrology, an applied astrology, which proves to work.

Whoever deals with counselling can safely ignore the problem of how and why astrology

works. Years ago, in a message sent to an Italian newsgroup of astrology on the Internet,

astrologer Ciro Discepolo described himself as a radio-repairer who knows how to repair a

radio set but who can not argue with the sage and the experts when they dissert on the most

hidden features of the Hertz waves. I find that this is a very clever example, but I knew that

Mr. Discepolo, whom I consider one of the most important Italian astrologers, was too

modest. In fact in his recent works he gives us his own opinions and theories on how and

why astrology works, and I guess that everyone who deals with astrology has eventually

asked himself the same questions and has also found his own personal answers.

Is astrology based or not on the principle of cause and effect?I think it is not. So it seems tome pointless trying to explain how and why the planets or constellations influence the

nature and/or the life of somebody: perhaps there is no influence at all. Although the

astrologers make statements like: Nick is so and so (say romantic, lazy, hesitant) because

his moon is in Pisces in reality we know very well that things are not in these terms. Nickis not so and so becausehis moon is Pisces, but surely the moon in Pisces tells usthat Nick

was born so and so. It's a bit like the road sign warning the driver of a crossroad: the


7/8

intersection exists, but not becausethere is a road sign indicating it. We know that if all the

fingers of our watch point to the number 12 is noon (or midnight); but certainly it is not

noon becausethe fingers points to the number 12. Just like the road signs or the position of

the fingers in the old-fashioned clocks, also the combinations of planets, luminaries, signs

and houses give us useful insights into the life and character of people, while they are not the

cause of it.

Again let us talk of falsification:an epistemological approach claiming that one can neverprove the absolute validity of a thesis, we can simply prove it to be untrue. Although it is a

fairly reasonable attempt to overcome the limits of the so-called nave inductivism5, even

this approach is to some extent based on the same assumptions as inductivism. Among

them, the repetition of the phenomenon and its direct observation. The promoter of

falsification, Popper, argued that one single testproving the falsity of a theory is sufficientto dismiss(refute) it. Alas, reality is slightly different. The defenders of a given theory can(rightly) consider a single proof to the contrary as a mistake, an error, a misunderstanding

that falsifies the theory only apparently. The truth of a theory, they claim, may also depend

on the level of technology achieved: what seems absurd today, tomorrow could be

acceptable. Suppose I keep two heavy objects in my hands and then I drop them, suddenly

turning my hands upside down. Suppose now, however absurd it may seem, that the two

objects do not fall down, as everyone expects, but remain floating mid-air. By doing so have

I shown that gravity does not exist? Of course not, nobody with a good practical sense

would believe so: they would rather believe that I've simply proved to be a good magician.Sceptics would challenge me to repeat the performance in a laboratory under controlled

scientific conditions and upon their command, as often as they deem necessary. A single

event against shall not in any way be accepted as falsifying proof against a theory that, in

thousands of other occasions, has proven to work optimally. And, of course, it is absolutely

OK to do so.

Every time that a controversy raises on the Internet (or on television, radio, newspapers or

at the pub...) between sceptics and astrologers, somebody repeats the concepts of which I

have tried to demonstrate the limits: that science is a method of knowledge better than

others, that horoscopes should undergo a scientific test, that astrology is not an exact science

and so on.

I personally never claimed that astrology is a science. I simply say that we can consider it

under an approach of epistemological type. I think that this is the right thing to do, or better

said: the only thing we can do if we really want to place astrology in its correct cultural

dimension without inferiority or superiority complex with respect to anyone.

In addition I have shown that even the sceptics approach that quote Galileo (the so-called

nave inductivists) and even Poppers approach, (the falsificationism), have notable limits.


8/8

And indeed, both approaches have been criticized by other epistemologists, among whom I

would like to mention, Thomas Kuhn, with his paradigms. God willing, Ill discuss his

point of view in a future article.

1A.F. Chalmers, What is This Thing called Science? Queensland University Press, Open University Press and Hackett,

2nd revised edition (6 new chapters), 19822G. Sermonti and R. Fondi, Dopo Darwin. Critica all'evoluzionismo, Rusconi, Milan 19803

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability4See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc#Ad_hoc_hypothesis5See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductivism

Chronicle of a debate

Documents

Transcript of Chronicle of a debate