VIDEO VERSION AT: https://youtu.be/P3i7LswGS0E

This is episode 3 

of Astrology vs. Science:

“Do The Planets Affect Us?”

As I forewarned in Episode One, If astrology embraces a causal model to rationalize its validity, science will rip it to shreds. Well, here’s the shredder:

“There is no proposed mechanism of action by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth in the way astrologers say they do that does not contradict well-understood, basic aspects of biology and physics.”

Before we respond to this, let’s make sure we understand  exactly what it’s saying. First of all, what is a “proposed mechanism”?

Proposed Mechanism

A mechanism is, basically, a machine. 

A machine is, basically, a series of parts that affect each other to produce some sort of output. You turn one thing, which causes something else to turn, which causes something else to turn even more, and your bicycle moves happily forward.

Sciences like physics are called “mechanistic” because they assume the world functions like a machine. This is a reasonable assumption, and Krishna himself expresses the same point of view when he says “yantrārūḍhāni māyayā”

Mechanistic proposals are proposals about the way the specific parts of world-machine work. Gravity, for example, is a mechanistic proposal which explains how and why things fall, or in other words, why objects are drawn towards larger objects. Inertia is another mechanistic proposal, it explains motion. 

Proposed mechanisms are not always valid. Science accepts a proposed mechanism as a valid mechanism only if it can prove that it really works. 

How can they do that? By making accurate predictions. We accept gravity as a valid mechanism because it can predict the way a thing will fall, and, if you test it, the thing will indeed fall exactly as predicted.

So, when someone says, “There is no proposed mechanism by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth in the way astrologers say they do,” what do they mean? They mean there is no explanation of how the location of Saturn, for example, could mechanistically cause a particular person to be very pessimistic or tenacious.

…Without Contradicting Basic Principles

The problem isn’t that people haven’t proposed mechanisms  to explain how the planets affect human character and behavior. Ptolemy himself (the inventor of the whole idea that planetary positions affect people) gave a proposal. The problem his proposal, and others that have followed it, aren’t any good when put to empirical and logical tests.

Basically, Ptolemy proposed that planets emit some sort of energy, which interacts with the earth, which affects the weather, which then affects the natural world, which then affects human behavior. 

Initially it sounds plausible, but the problem is that neither ptolemy nor anyone who followed him ever specified what that “energy” from the planets is, so it could never be verified to actually exist.

Some say it’s gravity. Carl Sagan famously ripped this idea apart on his historic television series, Cosmos.

One significant problem is that gravity doesn’t directly affect human behavior, it affects how objects are pulled towards one another, and it would require a lot of steps to explain how pulling objects together could wind up eventually causing the minute variations in human behavior that astrology deals with. Each one of these steps would require experimental verification before the model could be accepted as scientifically valid.

Another problem is that the proposed mechanism also must not contradict well-accepted, basic aspects of astrology. The planetary-energy / gravitational theory doesn’t pass this examination.

1. Saturn’s gravitational effect doesn’t change based on the time of day, but astrological interpretations of Saturn’s effects change enormously based on the time of day, because that changes the house occupied by Saturn.
   
2. Saturn’s gravitational affect on earth is microscopic compared to that of the Sun, yet in astrology Saturn can easily be even more influential in a particular horoscope than the Sun.

If we say it’s some other force, not gravity, then naturally we will be asked, “what force?” If we cannot clearly answer that, there is no way to prove or disprove that it exists, so it is not scientific. 

You could choose to believe in it anyway, that is an option, but your belief would be just that, a belief, not science. In fact, such a belief could legitimately be called un-scientific or pseudo-scientific.

Maybe you are OK with that. Maybe you don’t care about science, so you are comfortable having an unscientific and irrational belief. That’s OK, but personally, I’m not. I think that the scientific approach to thinking is fundamental to how the human intellect should work, as evidenced by it having evolved out of classical vedic schools of nyāya, vaiśeṣika, and saṁkhya. So, for me, it is essential that an idea be rational and not defy scientific processes.

Is Astrology Unscientific?

So then, what’s the bottom line; is astrology pseudo-science after all? Well, scientists really seem to be convinced that we are… but let’s examine their conviction for a moment.

It turns out that the way scientists arrive at their negative convictions is an embarrassment to their intellectual integrity. 

First of all, it is the most heinous embarrassment to betray ones own mother – and by denigrating astrology, modern science does exactly that.

Second of all, it is embarrassing for any scientist to reach a conclusion prematurely. In fact it’s a childish blunder for anyone to reject a proposal before even understanding it – but that is exactly what  modern science does with astrology. They say, “there is no mechanism by which the planets can affect us like astrology says they do” without realizing that astrology does NOT EVEN CLAIM that “the positions and motions of stars and planets affect our behavior.”

Or… did we?

And that’s the really sad part. Sure, it’s unfortunate that science doesn’t really understand astrology but the really sad thing is that many or even most astrologers don’t really understand astrology.

Honestly, it’s our fault scientists don’t understand astrology. We are the people who are supposed to defend and represent it, but we are, frankly, doing an awful job of it. 

How many of you watching this right now realize that astrology is NOT based on the concept that “the positions and motions of stars and planets affect people and events on Earth”? Honestly, most of you probably think astrology is based on EXACTLY that premise, right?

Why do so many of us think astrology is about how “planets affect us”? Because we tend to just accept what we hear.

What do we usually hear? Whatever is being said the most often.

Is what is said the most often usually accurate? Not always.

Let’s be specific. What exactly did we hear about astrology when we were first introduced to it? Well, most of us were fed some variation on Ptolemy’s idea. And we gobbled up that pre-packaged TV dinner, because it was the only food in the house. How many of you quietly thought potatoes tasted oddly like aluminum? 

How many of you watching this right now realize that Ptolemy literally just made up that garbage in an attempt to make astrology sound impressive to physics?

Some of you watching right now are “Vedic” astrologers, or fans of Vedic astrology. How many of you realize that ptolemy’s causal mechanism completely contradicts native and essential Vedic concepts of Karma and Kartavyatva?

Some of you watching right now are into Western astrology. How many of you realize that Ptolemy derailed your tradition and led it into a train wreck? Western astrology never embraced  a mumbo-jumbo pseudo-scientific causal mechanism until Ptolemy stumbled onto the scene and tried to make it sound like physics. The Babylonian and Egyptian foundations of western astrology did not operate on such a silly pseudo scientific model, nor did any other Greek before Ptolemy.

The very word “Astrology” tells us that it is not based on a causal mechanism. “Astrology” means “sky words” or “information in the heavens.”

The “positions and motions of stars and planets” do not affect people. They are words written in the sky by the universe itself. Like words, they convey information about the flow of time. They do not mechanistically cause events.

If you really love astrology, the most important thing you can do for it right now, the one thing that will truly prove to make a difference to its future, is to stop believing in Ptolemy’s mistake. Not everything Ptolemy wrote was bad, but this particular idea, that there is a causal mechanism by which planets literally affect humans, is a really, really, really bad idea.

If you love astrology and want it to flourish and improve in the future, the most important thing you can do right now is to stop thinking that the planets cause any behavior or events. 

Then what is the relationship between human events and planetary positions?

• Human events are propelled by human actions. 
• Actions cause change.
• Change unfolds with time, and is inseparable from it.
• The positions of the planets in the sky measure and describe the progress of time

Planetary positions therefore describe time, which describes change, which describes actions and events here on Earth. 

Is this a scientific model? It very well might be. One thing we can say for certain right from the start is that, unlike Ptolemy’s model, it’s not unscientific. (Because it doesn’t violate any principles we see operating in the world, and doesn’t rely on any principles we have never seen anywhere).

What is astrology, really? Is it the way planets and stars affect people?

NO.

Astrology is the language of the sky; a language spoken by time, describing itself.

The better we learn this language the better we can understand time – past, present, and future – and thus understand human and natural behavior, character, and events. 

Outro

Now we have replied to wikipedia’s entire introduction to their scientific critique of astrology. We will continue into the body of the article in episode 4, going into more detail about the ideas and specifics presented so far.

Please be sure to go through the description below the video to find a link to transcripts, astrological readings, and my book, The Beautifully Rational Philosophy of Astrology – which explains everything we have covered here in an easy to understand way.