Can Astrology Be Considered A Science

As a result, it is considered pseudoscience.

Is astrology considered a science?

Astrology isn’t the most scientific method of answering queries. Astrologers strive to explain the natural world, but they rarely attempt to critically examine if their explanations are true, which is an important aspect of science.

What qualifies astrology as a science?

Is astrology accurate? Reading horoscopes is a popular pastime, but is there any scientific evidence that they are accurate?

When you’re enticed by a familiar interruption and your willpower weakens, problems can occur.

Every day, up to 70 million Americans consult their horoscopes. At least, that’s what the American Federation of Astrologers claims. According to a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life poll conducted twenty years ago, 25% of Americans believe that the positions of the stars and planets have an impact on our daily life. In 2012, the General Social Survey indicated that 34% of Americans think astrology is “extremely” or “kind of scientific,” with the percentage of individuals who think astrology is “not at all scientific” dropping from two-thirds to about half.

Astrology is the concept that astronomical phenomena, such as the stars over your head when you were born or the fact that Mercury is retrograde, have the potential to influence our daily lives and personality traits. Of course, this is distinct from astronomy, which is the scientific study of celestial objects, space, and the physics of the cosmos.

A particular facet of astrology, the foretelling of a person’s future or the provision of daily counsel via horoscopes, is gaining in popularity. The Cut, for example, recorded a 150 percent rise in horoscope page views in 2017 compared to 2016.

Clearly, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to read the stars for guidance. Understanding the positions of the stars is the foundation of astrology, which appears to be a scientific discipline in and of itself. Is there any scientific evidence that astrology has an impact on our personalities and lives?

But, since I still have five minutes of this six-minute podcast to fill, let’s take a look at how astrology has been put to the test.

Is astrology a history or a science?

Though astrology (the study of the movements of celestial bodies to find answers, signs, and predictions) isn’t a science in and of itself, humans have long used the stars to organize their lives. Farmers have been using the sky as a calendar since the time of the Ancient Egyptians, when the rise of Sirius, the Dog Star, around mid-July was considered as a sign of the Nile’s annual flooding. Travelers used the sky as a compass to determine where they should go. Many people also used the heavens as a source of magical guidance.

But who was the first to glance up at the sky to make sense of what was going on below and why their fellow people were acting the way they were? It’s unknown who invented this style of thinking and when, but historians and astronomers have some insight into how it became so prevalent today.

Why isn’t astrology regarded as a science?

Astrology is a collection of belief systems that assert that there is a connection between astrological phenomena and events or personality traits in the human world. The scientific community has dismissed astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing has discovered no evidence to back up the astrological traditions’ premises or alleged effects.

What is the Quran’s take on astrology?

Many readings of the Quran (the basic Islamic source) point to Astrology as a practice that contradicts the Islamic religious tradition’s fundamental values. Astrology eventually points to the function of heavenly creatures in influencing terrestrial life and people’s daily lives, so obstructing their destiny. Several Quranic passages are interpreted to refute this theory. In particular, when it comes to horoscopes, Islamic scholars look to the Quran’s teachings in Surah Al-Jinn, where it is indicated that “He is the All-Knower of the ghayb (unseen), and He discloses His ghayb (unseen) to none but a Messenger (from mankind) whom He has selected. (He informs him as much as He wants about the unseen), and then He sends a band of observing guards (angels) to march ahead of him and behind him “to imply that any such extraterrestrial influence on humanity is implausible and, as a result, haram (forbidden) in Islam. This is emphasized even further by the tafsir (scholarly interpretation) of the passage, which states that no one other than Allah (God) may be credited with knowledge of the unseen or unknown. In Islam, the use of horoscopes and the following usage of astrology is rejected in this way. Nonetheless, the Quran encourages the use of astronomy, rather than astrology, in identifying the time of year (i.e. the Lunar Calendar) and compass bearings. The Quran illustrates this concept by pointing to celestial creatures as ‘landmarks’ embellished for adherents to use as a tool of self-direction. As a result, the Quran emphasizes the primary role of astrology as a way of providing physical guidance/navigation for an adherent, thereby prohibiting its usage as horoscopes.

supported by no real data, but also attacking those who point out these emperors’ nudity. In addition, even a hypothetical tolerant, open-minded supporter of junk sciencethe sort of person who might believe in critical positivity ratio but also actively support the publication of criticisms of that workcan still do a certain amount of damage by diluting scientific journals and the news media with bad science, and by promoting sloppy work which reduces space for more careful research.

You know how they say that science is self-correcting, but only because people are willing to self-correct?

Similarly, Gresham’s law is real, but only because people are willing to circulate counterfeit bills, or to circulate money they suspect may be counterfeit, while keeping their mouths shut until they can get rid of their wads of worthless stock.

P.P.S.Just to be clear:No, I don’t know that astrology is a waste of time, and it could be that Marc Hauser was onto something real, even while he was fabricating data (according to the U.S. government, as quoted on Wikipedia), and the critical positivity ratio and ovulation and voting and all the rest . . . all these could be realwho knows!

Just cos there’s no good evidence for a theory, that doesn’t make it false.

I don’t want to suppress any of these claims.

Publish it all somewhere, along with all the criticism of it.

My problem with the promoters of junk science is not just that they promote science that I and others consider to be junkwe can be wrong!

but that they continually dodge, suppress, and fight against legitimate open criticism.

Who is the originator of astrology?

Jones stated, “This is possibly older than any other known case.” “It’s also older than any of the written-down horoscopes from the Greco-Roman period,” he said, adding, “we have a number of horoscopes written down as a kind of document on papyrus or on a wall, but none of them as old as this.”

The discovery was presented in the most recent edition of the Journal for the History of Astronomy by Jones and StaoForenbaher, a researcher at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb.

Forenbaher told LiveScience that the crew was working near the entrance of a Croatian cave in 1999, a site well known to archaeologists and residents of the surrounding hamlet of Nakovana who simply named it “Spila,” which means “the cave.”

Nobody realized at the time, however, that the cave featured a part that had been locked for over 2,000 years. Forenbaher’s girlfriend (now his wife) dug under the rubble and discovered a broad, low passageway that ran for over 33 feet in the dark (10 meters). “The unique King Tut experience, arriving to a spot where nobody has been for a couple of thousand years,” Forenbaher said of passing down the corridor.

When Forenbaher entered the cavern, “there was a very thin limestone crust on the surface that was splitting under your boots,” indicating that “nobody had gone there in a very, very, long time,” he added.

The researchers eventually discovered that it had been blocked off in the first century B.C., presumably as a result of a Roman military effort against the locals.

The archaeologists discovered a phallic-shaped stalagmite, as well as countless drinking containers deposited over hundreds of years and something more. “These very small bits and pieces of ivory came out in the course of that dig,” Forenbaher explained, “and we didn’t even recognize what we had at the time.”

The group got to work. “It took years to piece them together, find more bits and pieces, and figure out what they were,” Forenbaher explained. They ended there staring at the ruins of the world’s oldest known astrologer’s board.

Archaeologists aren’t sure how the board got inside the cave or where it came from. The Babylonians developed their own version of horoscopes around 2,400 years ago, which is where astrology began in antiquity.

Then, around 2,100 years ago, astrology went to the eastern Mediterranean, where it became popular in Egypt, which was ruled by a dynasty of Greek monarchs at the time.

Jones explained, “It gets transformed very much into what we think of as the Greek style of astrology, which is really the present type of astrology.” “The Greek style of astrology is the foundation of astrology that spans the Middle Ages, modern Europe, modern India, and beyond.”

The ivory used to produce the zodiac images dates back to 2,200 years, just before the advent of this new kind of astrology, according to radiocarbon dating.

The location of the board’s manufacture is unknown, though Egypt is a possibility. They believe the ivory came from an elephant that was slain or died in the area around that period. Because ivory is such a valuable commodity, it would have been preserved for decades, if not a century, before being utilized to make the zodiac. These signs would have been adhered to a flat (probably wooden) surface to form the board, which could have featured other features that did not survive.

It could have been loaded onto a ship sailing through the Adriatic Sea, a vital trade route that the cave overlooks. Illyrians were the people who resided in Croatia at the time. Despite the fact that ancient writers had a negative view of them, archaeological evidence reveals that they interacted with surrounding Greek colonies and were a vital part of the Mediterranean civilization.

An astrologer from one of the Greek colonies may have visited the cave to make a prediction. A consultation in the cavern’s flickering light would have been a powerful experience, if not particularly convenient for the astrologer.

Jones commented, “It doesn’t sound like a very practical site for performing horoscope homework like calculating planetary placements.”

Another hypothesis is that the Illyrians acquired or stole the astrological board without fully comprehending its use. The board, along with the drinking containers, would have been presented as an offering to an unknown deity worshipped in the cave.

“This astrologer’s board could have shown up as an offering along with other exceptional items that were either bought or robbed from a passing ship,” Forenbaher speculated. He noted that the drinking cups discovered in the cave had been chosen with care. They were made in another country, and only a few cruder amphora storage vessels were discovered with them.

“It nearly appears that someone was bringing out wine there, pouring it, and then discarding the amphora away because they weren’t good enough for the gods, or to be deposited in the shrine,” Forenbaher said.

The phallic-shaped stalagmite, which may have formed naturally on the site, appears to have served as a focal point for these offerings and rituals held in the cavern. Forenbaher cautioned that all stalagmites appear phallic in some way, and it’s difficult to know what significance it had to the cave’s inhabitants. “It had to mean something significant,” he said.

“This is a spot where goods of local importance were deposited with some type of supernatural power, transcendental being, or whatever.”