Is astrology 'unscientific'?

[Jonti]

Zword, I put you on ignore because you were being intellectually dishonest and personally abusive. I have a feeling most readers will find this plausible. I just don't want to spend time with you, even in cyberspace, while you're behaving this way.

Yes, there is a real struggle going on. But, as another poster said here, with your attitude we'd still be shuffling around waiting for the Pope* to tell us what to believe about the nature of reality, how to live our lives and what the limits to knowledge would be.

That's the issue. Like it or not, the methods of science and rational discourse based on evidence is the only way yet devised that can deliver us from the bubbles of our own delusion. I think you understand that, which is why you are so very keen to have your favoured views seen as a scientific. But the struggle for reason is not about aligning with folks who share your views about this or that particular. It's about aligning with folks who are committed to working together in the light of reason and evidence to sort what's real from groundless nightmares or wishful delusions.

* replace with appropriate faith-based leader of your choice

 

[Falcon]

There is a legitimate debate to be had about whether, by being unscientific, Astrology is at the same time 'not useful'.

However, I think that being unscientific does pose additional challenges to the goal of deciding whether something is 'useful' or not.

Leprechauns, Astrology and Marxism are all 'unscientific'. Just like Astrology (and possibly Leprechaunology, I haven't checked), Marxism is served by enormous texts of impressive internal consistency, and a cohort of devout adherents who swear by the accuracy with which it describes and predicts reality.

Nevertheless, internally consistent texts are not of themselves a guarantee of truthfulness (Lord of the Rings, anyone?). And for every devout adherent of Marxism there is someone who's experience of reality 'falsifies' Marxism's basic axioms. (I won't go so far as to say whether this suggests that Astrology has as much substance as Marxism, or that Marxism has as little substance as Astrology).

But at the end of the day, our nervous systems are hard wired to detect patterns in things - even when there is no correspondence between that pattern and anything real. I think it is more likely that perceiving a correspondence between a configuration of planets and certain life events is the same mechanism by which we see pictures of elephants in the clouds.

There are two sets of phenomena accessible to human reason - the finite set of those for which a convincing explanation can be provided (which is all science does), and the infinite set of those for which one cannot. One of the goals of science is to convert as many phenomena from the later category into the former. However, once you accept that unobservable things for which a convincing explanation cannot be provided are nevertheless real, you must accept that anything is possible. Including Leprechauns, Gandalf (and, yes, I know - God). That would, on balance, not be a pleasant world to live in.

Until Astrology can provide a convincing explanation of itself in terms of real-world phenomena, given the existence of this plausible counter-explanation, there is no basis to accept it and considerable intellectual risk of doing so.

 

[slaar]

Rogue Scientist Has His Own Scientific Method

As so often, The Onion comes up trumps:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49180

TALLAHASSEE, FL—Only months after abandoning a tenured position at Lehigh University, maverick chemist Theodore Hapner managed to disprove two of the three laws of thermodynamics and show that gold is a noxious gas, turning the world of science—defined for centuries by exhaustive research, painstaking observation, and hard-won theories—completely on its head...

"What my hopelessly pedantic colleagues fail to realize is that their scientific method is just that—their method," said Hapner, whose self-published 2004 thesis argued that matter exists in four states: solid, liquid, gas, and powder. "After all, would a chemist who closely observes a phenomenon, formulates a hypothesis, predicts a likely outcome, and then tests the hypothesis be capable of proving that photons, far from being subatomic particles, are actually the size of a child's fist?"...

"Bombarding a plutonium nucleus with accelerated electrons, long believed to produce a nuclear fission reaction, has, in fact, no consequence at all," Hapner said. "I'm going to prove that if it's the last thing I ever do."

Absolutely inspired.

 

[Azrael23]

Well if matter is created via vibrational frequency we can see how invisible forces like gravity are transmitted. Revelations like the zero point field give credence to the idea that alignments of planets, sun cycles, moon cycles not to mention the resonance of earth itself (schumann resonance) have effects upon higher levels of human experience.

It would also be effecting matter through gravity. Our bodies are essentially made of water afterall.

 

[8ball]

It's funny but it becomes ever harder to tell the ramblings of people who actually know something about physics from the babbling of utter loons

 

[Azrael23]

Call me a loon, makes no difference.

 

[Teepee]

Well if matter is created via vibrational frequency we can see how invisible forces like gravity are transmitted. Revelations like the zero point field give credence to the idea that alignments of planets, sun cycles, moon cycles not to mention the resonance of earth itself (schumann resonance) have effects upon higher levels of human experience.

It would also be effecting matter through gravity. Our bodies are essentially made of water afterall.

I love it when you try do science. Fucking hilarious.

Astrology is bollocks btw

 

[Meltingpot]

I don't think it's scientific, but I do think there's truth in it if it's seen at a subjective level, i.e. how you're likely to feel about what's going on in your life, how much energy you're likely to have at a certain time, whether you want to go out or stay in and read a book etc.

We're not good at doing subjectivity in our culture; everything's got to be objective, scientifically demonstrable etc. or else it's "bollocks".

 

[Jonti]

And from next week's news ...

Only months after abandoning a tenured position at Lehigh University rogue internet troll Jazz Musey managed to overturn Kant and centuries of philosophical and theological thought with a Rational Proof for the Existence of God ...

Of course, no-one would ever be so stupid. Would they?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

omg necropost

this isn't science - or if it is, it is forbidden science that man was not meant to know

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

thankfully the stars told me that this thread was going to be bumped



actually this is a lie the stars put forward a research paper indicating that their studies had indicated a high likelyhood of this thread being bumped.... the results they have gathered from the subsequent bumping should prove to be useful when the paper is reviewed by their collogues in I Ching, Cheiromancy and Numerology

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Fucking hell. It's a right larf in here sometimes init.

Pseudo intellectual bollocks mostly.

 

[Meltingpot]

thankfully the stars told me that this thread was going to be bumped

actually this is a lie the stars put forward a research paper indicating that their studies had indicated a high likelyhood of this thread being bumped.... the results they have gathered from the subsequent bumping should prove to be useful when the paper is reviewed by their collogues in I Ching, Cheiromancy and Numerology

Nice one, but I don't know what Cheiromancy is (palmistry?). If it's to do with Cheiro, there's a spooky story about him. According to Linda Goodman in her book "Star Signs", he was convinced that Edward VII was going to die on a certain day, and he did; whether or not (as has been suggested) it was because he'd been convinced by Cheiro that he was going to die that day, and was in effect murdered by his subconscious mind, is an interesting question.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

yes it's Palmistry

google baby! it's your freind