Is astrology a science? Britain joins the debate

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Is astrology a science? Britain joins the debate

By Rashmee Z. Ahmed

The Times of India News Service

LONDON: In an amazing astral coming together, forecast by nobody and apparently uninfluenced by the planets, Britain is joining India in the great debate: Should astrology be a mainstream university subject or is it an academic lunacy?

The arguments over the precise status of astrology - an art, science or moon-gazing nonsense - centre around reports that two British universities plan to join those at Southampton, Manchester and Plymouth to search for astrological truth.

The truth, once it is discovered, will offer a spatial insight into the British academic astrologers breadth of vision. Some British research teams are examining the star signs ("good" or "bad") of Nepalese girls sold into prostitution. Others are looking for astrological links to drug addiction and the planetary portents for infertility.

The skeptics say it is crystal-ball gazing gone mad and they fear a future threatened by star-struck PhDs in horoscopes.

The British debate, featured in The Sunday Times, London, ranges over well-worn ground recently covered in India by renowned astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar and astrologer Vasant D Bhat of Pune's Jyotish Parishad soon after it emerged that the University Grants Commission plans to set up departments of Vedic astrology. Bhat had challenged Narlikar's criticism of the UGC decision, his contention that it would take India "backward in time" and that the proposed university course should not be called jyotirvigyan because astrology is not a science. But Narlikar has pointed out that as far back as the mid-1970s, nearly 200 top-flight, mainly Western, scientists had recognised astrology as a serious threat to rational discourse even though astrology was a fringe issue in the West.

But, the current British debate appears to show a heavenly new awakening for astrology. The Sunday Times quotes Dr Christopher French, who investigates the psychology of the paranormal at Goldsmith's College in London. He says astrology's popular influence remains tremendous with 75 per cent of people reading horoscopes and one in five believing them. Diana, the late Princess of Wales and Nancy Reagan, former US first lady, are credited with bringing the court astrologer back into fashion in the West, even as the staid European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is supposed to have invested some of its five-billion-pound portfolio on the basis of moonshine and star charts.

The paper also says several big Western companies routinely consult their financial horoscopes almost like the average Indian politician seeking an auspicious portent from the heavens.

But like their Indian counterparts, British scientists and astronomers dismiss astrology as "wild and whacky theories" and as an ancient craft without empirical evidence. A Cambridge professor of applied astronomy says astrology is "at the opposite end to serious science".

The debate looks set to continue into the black hole of the stalemate.