well

[Guest guest]

Hi prof

 

The questions i ask are related to the chapters i read,but in

relation to my chart,cause so far nothing of what I read is true.

Moon-sub cycle,ruler of 3 - loneliness, failure in business ventures-

NOT TRUE

sun cycle,ruler of 2- loss of status - IT WAS THE OTHER WAY ROUND

 

and I could go on...

And I tell you why Kavach requires faith - so that if things

work,people will say it was the remedie,but if they fail,you can

always say the person didn`t have enough faith.

As for what your student said about planets giving mixed rsults- how

very convenientt! That way nobody can say astrology fails. If planet

Saturn didnt cause bone problem, you can always claim that other

planets can do it. This is as old as earth,only fools those who

don`t think.

But consider what "it works" actually means. It means that all non-

astrological influences leading to the same result have been ruled

out. Astrologers seem to take this proviso for granted, but

researchers have to be more careful. Ruling out non-astrological

influences is harder than it might seem. We are too easily misled.

 

NQQ5.3

Why is that?

 

Researchers: Throughout human evolution we have been deluged with

incomplete and ambiguous information arriving via our senses. But

survival required us to see, hear and move instantly in response to

food or danger. To stop and reason carefully on every occasion, as

when a predator was about to pounce, would have been disastrous. A

man seeking truth by reason did not live long. Today we have

inherited the consequences -- speedy sense perception as in

recognising faces but poor reasoning skills as in assessing

astrology. In short, when it comes to reasoning we are easily

misled, a liability that went largely unnoticed until the rise of

experimental and cognitive psychology in the early 1900s. So we have

to look at astrology under conditions where we are less likely to be

misled.

 

OQQ5.4

 

 

 

More to the point, if astrology is almost impossible to test then it

is almost impossible to discover in the first place, or to claim

that some techniques work better than others, which (as noted by

Charles Harvey in 18.11) would wipe out astrology textbooks and deny

the improvements actually achieved. Furthermore, as we showed in

12.5, the idea that astrology is almost impossible to test cannot be

true when astrologers are so readily convinced that it works (or

not, thus Charles Carter says "my own experience with figures cast

for me by horarists has been unfortunate. In fact they have usually

been downright wrong and never strikingly right" Astrological

Journal December 1962).

 

Interestingly, we seem here to be in precisely the

 

Based on an article published in Society and Science, a journal of

the Nehru Centre, 1982, 5, 16-24, by K.D.ABHYANKAR

 

When I tell people that I am an astronomer, they ask me immediately

whether I can predict their future from their horoscopes. On

receiving a negative reply, they look down upon me as a man of no

consequence and wonder what kind of astronomer I am. It is not their

fault, because most persons, including the well-educated ones, do

not know the difference between astronomy and astrology.

 

Astronomy studies the physics and chemistry of heavenly bodies. It

is an observational rather than an experimental science.

Nevertheless astronomers follow the same logical process known as

the scientific method that is used in the experimental sciences.

 

Astrology is not a science. The ancients believed that the planets

and Nakshatras could produce good or evil effects, which led to the

notions of astrology. Today, from the laws of physics, it is clear

that the planets cannot have the effects claimed by astrologers.

Even astrologers know this, but they go on fooling innocent people

in order not to lose face. Further, there is no astrology in the

Vedas, so the term Vedic astrology is a misnomer.

 

Many people will agree with me but will still consult astrologers,

even though most forecasts are wrong. One can look up the forecasts

published in various newspapers to verify this. People visit

astrologers in the same way that they visit many doctors and get

partially cured just by talking with them or by taking their fake

medicines. So astrologers are more like psychiatrists than anything

else. Once we realize this, we would rather face our problems

rationally and courageously than consult an astrologer. So the UGC

proposal to introduce astrology as a subject in science faculty is a

step in the wrong direction. It amounts to replacing truth by

untruth and light by darkness.

 

2001, Vol 81(2), 215

 

Re (1), the philosopher Thomas Kuhn noted that when an idea is in

crisis, its supporters retreat behind a smokescreen of speculation

that sounds good but is actually empty. This is precisely the

situation with modern astrology. Rather than demonstrate their

claims under artifact-free conditions, or specify what research

would be relevant or how controversies and disagreements might be

dealt with, astrologers retreat behind a smokescreen of speculation

about the nature of truth, reality, perception, language, and so on.

Talk yes, actual progress no.

 

Re (2), recall that the claims of astrology are grandiose, and that

almost no area of human affairs (individual, collective, past,

present, future) is supposed to be exempt. In other words we are

supposed to believe simultaneously that astrology, like gravity, is

writ most exceedingly large, while its influence is most exceedingly

difficult to demonstrate. Scientists tend to part company with

astrologers at this point. How can astrology be so difficult to

demonstrate when astrologers are so readily convinced that it works?

 

EQQ12.6

One answer might be as given by Stephen Arroyo in his Chart

Interpretation Handbook (CRCS 1989). He says "statistical studies in

astrology have been almost universally pointless" because "only

experiments with living people in a clinical situation can fully

show astrology's value and validity in its guidance, counselling and

psychotherapy applications." What do you think of this view?

 

Researchers: Arroyo does not give examples of such experiments for

others to try out, nor does he show how they have resolved

conflicting claims, so we have no reason to believe him. Arroyo

seems unaware that phrenologists said the same thing about an

actually invalid phrenology, and that "living people in a clinical

situation" is precisely the situation where reasoning errors

(Barnum, Dr Fox, hindsight, placebo, Polyanna, and so on) rage most

out of control. In fact clinical studies of the kind he advocates

have been made, but they have revealed nothing not explainable by

reasoning errors and other artifacts.

 

Indeed, scattered throughout the astrological literature are

accounts by astrologers who had accidentally used the wrong chart

during a client consultation. One of us (Smit) had the same

experience, and another of us (Dean) deliberately used wrong charts.

According to Arroyo, because "living people in a clinical situation"

fully demonstrate astrology's validity, the error should have been

instantly apparent. In fact nobody noticed. In Smit's case he had

always been told that charts uniquely fitted their owners, so he was

profoundly shocked -- it showed that "astrology's validity" was

effectively meaningless.

 

On this point, listen to what Donald Bradley said in a 1964 issue of

American Astrology: "How many times have you worked with erroneous

birth data and found admirably apt indications for everything that

happened in the native's lifetime? We've all had this jarring

experience ... Give me some false data and ... the chances are good

that I'll be able to find a convincing configuration, progression,

transit, key cycle, revolution, direction or dasa that is

appropriate ... with multiple confirmation too, making everybody

cluck about how marvelous astrology is. Too many times have we found

that somebody was really born in 1923 and not 1924; or a rural

doctor ... wrote pm instead of am on a birth certificate; or

someone ... was still using an Old-Style birthdate; or a birth hour

should have been recorded in daylight-saving time -- and so forth.

But even though the information was seriously in error, the gears of

the chartwork seemed to click off just fine. ... But is it science?

That's the big question, and on this question hangs the whole

disposition of astrology's worthwhileness."

 

Or as Rob Hand says in the Nov-Dec 1989 issue of the Astrological

Journal, "I'm sure you've all experienced, those of you who do any

number of consultations, the horrible and demoralising phenomenon of

giving a brilliant reading from the wrong birth data! It's one of

those little classic embarrassments we don't like to talk about. ...

nevertheless, we have to agree that convincing readings of the wrong

birth data are a real phenomenon." Or as Geoffrey Cornelius says in

his book The Moment of Astrology 1994, "The entirely 'wrong'

horoscope produced by misinformation or gross error not infrequently

(but not always) works just as if it is a 'right' horoscope" (page

259).

 

NQQ12.7

Some astrologers claim that the lack of proof for astrological

effects has shown only the ineffectiveness of the measuring tools.

They claim that the tools used to test astrology are like trying to

catch plankton with a shark net. Scientists draw in the net, but it

reveals nothing. Which is proof that plankton don't exist, right?

 

Researchers: This is a classic example of woolly thinking.

Scientists would conclude that objects above the mesh size did not

exist, not that objects below the mesh size did not exist.

Furthermore they would be careful to use the same nets as

astrologers and in the same way. If the nets reveal nothing, how can

astrologers claim the opposite? This is basically the bottom line.

It bears thinking about.

 

13. White crows, prestige, resources, could

There is a further point. Consider what our observations would

entail if we knew nothing about astrology and wanted to set it up

from scratch. For one planet enjoying just 12 signs, 12 houses, and

9 kinds of aspect (5 major, 4 minor) to 9 other planets, there are

12x12x9x9 = 11664 unique combinations without even taking the sign

and house position of the other planet into account. For ten planets

this gives a total of (1166410)/2 = 2x1040 unique combinations (we

divide by 2 to avoid double counting). The total is somewhat less

than our previous 10360 but is still so huge that merely writing

down one keyword per combination would require a stack of paper

heavier than a million Suns. If we are forbidden to consider factors

in isolation, we are now obliged to match this huge number of

combinations directly to the almost infinite variety of human

behaviour. It would be like matching stars in the sky to grains of

sand in the Sahara and claiming we had got it right. Even without

reasoning errors our capacity could not possibly cope, let alone our

supply of paper. Which brings us to our further point -- that

astrological theory could not be based on observation. Armchair

proclamation yes, observation no.

 

In case you wondered where the "million Suns" comes from, assume 50

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