The Science of Astrology

Through the years, many scientists have taken great pains to denounce astrology. In 1975, 186 leading scientists, including some Nobel laureates, signed a petition to warn against astrology as a superstition and pseudo-science. A few scientists objected to the authoritarian and dogmantic tone of the statement ; while others suggested scientists should study the subject before dismissing it. Nevertheless, the statement remains a cornerstone of scientific attitudes towards astrology. Bill Nye, the self-professed "science guy," is a recent example of such people denouncing astrology, either for its inability to explain the present or predict the future. In this article, the source of the objections of science types to astrology are examined, followed by an overview of the nature and limits of astrology as a scientific field of inquiry into human life.

The difference different types of cosmology make
In the western world, most who object to God, do so based on their understanding of a Judeo-Christian conception of God and dualism. Hence, they remain by and large ignorant of other conceptions of God, such as in Indian cosmology of monism. This matters in that scientific materialism now pervades the west, which finds it easy to reject a simple conception of God, such as being a seperate being that resides in "heaven," requiring intermediation of priests, to connect God and the masses. By  comparison, the Indian conception of Brahma (God) implies an all-pervasive consciousness, an energy force, that permeates the created world. Further, this conscious energy is reflected, to varying degrees, in the self-reflective conscious vibration of human, animal, insect and plant beings, as well as in the slow unconscious vibration of inert matter. In short, all humans are reflections of the divine. Indeed, the Indians further assume that the created world is a "divine play" of God, which began when He/She awoke from a sleeping state in the Big Bang  In doing so, the created world began to reorganise from the instantaneous expanding chaos into an evolving order of increasing consciousness and meaning. As unit entities of the divine consciousness, the souls of human beings, evolve by taking birth in lifetime after lifetime. They learn from their actions and the law of karma, based on relentless recurring episodes involving "pain of separation." This process of action and reaction purifies the soul, and in the end, the understanding arises that the only true goal of existence is the infinite love of God, which all can seek refuge in, based on pure devotion, acts of mercy, or intellectual understanding. Contrast this with the understanding of western science types (also in Communist China), who normally believe the created world is one of matter over mind, such that all of human life can be explained by material processes, including our mind and consciousness. In turn, compare that with the Indian school of thought, which believes in mind over matter, and that all of life can be explained by the struggle to evolve our conscious experience in life. By all appearances, the divergence in views is creating difficulty for western scientists to comprehend the knowledge of the world they are faced with, where matter, energy and consciousness interact. Indeed, the factual knowledge of the world, based on only matter and energy, has far outstripped the scientist's comprehension of the world as a system of meaning, due to their belief in a stale material cosmology that excludes consciousness as an integral part of the framework. This is important when explaining their reaction to astrology, but the problem also resides with western astrology, it too being largely based on the western cosmology of duality or materialism. Indeed, it is the ancient vedic tradition of astrology which is aligned with this deeper meaning of life and is likely the true source of astrology in the world, being also based on the real, visible zodiac.

The difference different types of astrology make

There are no kind ways to say this but western astrology is a dead end. While it has some redeeming features, it is doomed in praxis. It relies on a conceptual zodiac, that is wrong. It makes no distinction between visible and invisible (to the naked eye) planetary bodies. It focuses on sign placement of the Sun for central meaning, which takes 30 days to pass through a sign. It has limited understanding of horoscopic astrology and no clear rules of interpretation and prediction. The redeeming feature is that planets and their aspects do sometimes work. As a result, predictions based on western astrology are often wrong and there is a common reliance on 'after the fact' explanations as 'proof' of relevant insight. Sadly, western astrologers appear to be so vested in this accumulated hodgepodge of "knowledge" that by and large they refuse to even consider a better system, the vedic system. More troubling is the fact that the world of science has been exposed to this flawed and failing system of astrology for several hundred years, and the impression is not one of admiration, as earlier noted. Perhaps, this sorry state would be expected to continue, if there were not a viable alternative: vedic astrology. Let's us consider a few historical facts in this regard. The origins of vedic astrology are likely far older than the archaeological record is able to verify, going back many thousands of years. The Indus-Saraswati civilization is traced back to 12.000 BCE, while the Sumerian-Mesapotamian civilization is far younger, emerging in 5.000 BCE. Proto-astrological concepts are known in the Rg Veda, such as the Sun, Moon, the nodes and eclipses and the planets and their aspects. At the same time, the earliest record of horoscopes comes from Greek texts of Greek speaking astrologers in 1st century BCE of the Pan-Hellenic world, which stretched into India. Should that find be taken as a sign that horoscopic astrology emerged in Greece? Hardly, as there is no record of astrology in Greece before the Greco-Indian era. Why would the spontaneous emergence of the most developed form of astrology appear there, without any prior development? As in ancient times, the emphasis of vedic astrology is on the visible sidereal zodiac and planets. By comparison, the devolution of astrology in the emergence of sun sign astrology based on the now imaginary tropical zodiac, emerged in Rome. The horoscope forms the basis of the horosocopic system of astrology, that focuses on the ascendant and its degree in order to identify the personality and physical appearance. The ancient vedic system placed the ascendant at the top of the horoscope, representing the beginning of the reading with the 1st house of self, whereas the nascent western astrology moved the ascendant to the left, representing the appearance of the sun in the east. Importantly, it is truly the vedic system that can offer a plausible philosophical context, as earlier discussed, for why the planets and cosmos influence life on earth, and why the planetary influences contain both blessings and challenges, consistent with the karma seen in a horoscope. The Systems' Approach for Interpreting Horoscopes may be considered the prime method of this most advanced form of astrology, by offering a more accurate basis for horoscope interpretation and prediction. It does so by emphasising the functional nature of planets, based on the houses they rule, in addition to their general indications, as well as offering other helpful rules for interpreting the horoscope.

The difference different types of science make
Astrology has a scientific problem and it is different from what most people think. It is not because astrologers can't or won't apply the scientific method. It is because astrology is, like human life itself, ever moving forward from an infinitely complex set of mundane factors, which can never be replicated in a scientific experiment. Moreover, the scientific hypothesis for why astrology works cannot easily be posited in a scientific world that itself excludes astrology's main object of study, the evolving influences of the cosmos on human consciousness. What we have, however, to build on, are insights acquired by noble and intelligent astrologers over millennia, on how to interpret horoscopes and to predict based on them. Indeed, it is only through repeat accurate predictions that we best align astrology with that of science. More accurate predictions would not only make the users of astrology happy, but make astrologers more confident in their work and scientists more curious about astrology as a worthwhile field of scientific study. In doing so, astrologers become more scientific in their approach and the scientists invest more in new knowledge involving the philosophy of the world they seek to understand and explain. So, the hope of an article like this one is that it helps western astrologers and scientists to reframe their views and practices, and thus bring them closer together, based on all the available knowledge. Indeed, the objective of intellectual inquiry is not to win an argument but to improve the lives of people. As Nelson Mandela wisely observed "only by changing ourselves can we hope to change the world."

Ptolemy's mistake (and the origin of Western astrology)

The name of Ptolemy, the astronomer, cartographer and astrologer, has become almost legendary as representing a multifaceted scholar during the declining phase of the Hellenic world. This impression may be largely undeserved. In fact, the writings and many errors made by Ptolemy suggest he was not the expert his books made him out to be. Importantly, he adopted an astronomical calculation concerning the starting point of the zodiac which resulted in a fictitious moving (tropical) zodiac being populalrised. This was undoubtedly based on a misunderstanding and his advocacy of this calculation in his book resurfaced in Europe during the Renaissance in the late Middle Ages and became the basis of the birth of modern Western astrology.

Claudius Ptolemaeus
Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. AD 90 – c. 168), known in English as Ptolemy, was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and a poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule and died in Alexandria around AD 168. Ptolemy was the author of several treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise known as the Almagest ("The Great Treatise“). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known as the Tetrabiblos ("Four books"), in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.[1]

Errors in calculations
While evidently accomplished as a writer and celebrated during the middle ages, the originality of his works has been cast in doubt due to his unfamiliarity with the astrological practices of his time and the many important errors made in his books. His importance is not least traced to his major work, the Almagest, which is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy in the Hellenic world. Indian and Babylonian astronomers had developed arithmetical techniques for calculating astronomical phenomena; Greek astronomers such as Hipparchus had produced geometric models for calculating celestial motions. Ptolemy, however, claimed to have derived his geometrical models from selected astronomical observations by his predecessors spanning more than 800 years, though astronomers have for centuries suspected that his models' parameters were adopted independently of observations. Ptolemy presented his astronomical models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. Later, it was demonstrated that his ephemeris is of dubious quality, diverging significantly from the calculations of his contemporaries. Because Ptolemy derived many of his key latitudes from crude longest day values, his latitudes are erroneous on average by roughly a degree (2 degrees for Byzantium, 4 degrees for Carthage), though capable ancient astronomers knew their latitudes to more like a minute. He agreed that longitude was best determined by simultaneous observation of lunar eclipses, yet he was so out of touch with the scientists of his day that he knew of no such data more recent than 500 years ago (Arbela eclipse). In terms of cartography, when switching from 700 stadia per degree to 500, he expanded longitude differences between cities accordingly (a point first realized by P.Gosselin in 1790), resulting in serious over-stretching of the Earth's east-west scale in degrees, though not distance.

Ptolemy‘s popularity was based on his Handy Tables, a useful tool for astronomical calculations and a model for later astronomical tables. In the tables was tabulated all the data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, the rising and setting of the stars, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon – albeit with a large margin of error. Ptolemy‘s Planetary Hypotheses went beyond the mathematical model of the Almagest to present a physical realization of the universe as a set of nested spheres, in which he used the epicycles of his planetary model to compute the dimensions of the universe. He estimated the Sun was at an average distance of 1210 Earth radii, which is one twentieth of the actual distance. Meanwhile, he calculated the radius of the sphere of the fixed stars as being 20,000 times the radius of the Earth, or within the distance of the Sun. It is uncertain if other astronomers of his day were so widely off in their distance calculations.

Certainly, his most crucial error was in failing to correct for the precession of the equinoxes in order to anchor the zodiac and the fixed planets which make up the constellations in the sky. Rather, he and some other Roman astrologers, chose not to make this correction. At that time, the difference between the classical sidereal zodiac was only a few degrees. However, by the time astrology was rediscovered in the West, almost a millennium later, the difference had grown in size by over 10° and at the present time it is 24°. In some few hundred years, the signs in the tropical zodiac will be one whole sign removed from their original counterparts in the sidereal zodiac. Clearly, those failing to make this adjustment did not anticipate that development.

A narrow view of Astrology
Ptolemy's treatise on astrology, "Tetrabiblios" (Greek tetra means "four", biblos is "book"), was the most popular astrological work of the middle ages and had great influence in the Islamic world and the medieval Latin West. It was translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli. However, its later popularity also reflects the dearth of written sources on this knowledge at the time. The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on some principles of astrology that Ptolemy felt were important. That it did not quite attain the unrivaled status of the Almagest was likely because it did not contain a very rigourous treatment of the subject matter in terms of horoscopic astrology proper, thus eluding a comprehensive approach.

The great popularity that the Tetrabiblos did possess might be attributed to its nature as an exposition of the art of astrology and as a compendium of astrological lore, rather than as a manual. It speaks in general terms and avoids illustrations and details of practice. Much of the content of the Tetrabiblos was collected from earlier sources; Ptolemy's achievement was to order his material in a systematic way, showing how the subject could, in his view, be rationalized. At the same time, it reveals that Ptolemy was not an expert on the subject. Ptolemy was concerned with the influences of the celestial bodies which he believed travelled in the sublunar sphere, with a focus on planetary attributes in terms of their heating, cooling, moistening, and drying influences. In short, the astrology he described was a very limited expression of the horoscopic astrology of the day, as documented for instance in the contemporary Yavanajataka, the astrology of the Yavanas (Greek speaking people of the Indo-Greek world). This only points to the fact that Ptolemy did not truly understand the import of his woeful recommendation to calculate the zodiac without a precession correction.

Greek and Roman world
The introduction of the ancient astrology of India into the religious and philosophical milieu of the Hellenic and Roman world are also of interest. The mentaility of this time and location was different from the more ancient vedic civilisation. The nascent Western civilisation was more materialistic and positive in approach but also politheistic. While the Greek people saw the Olympic gods as supermen, rather than an all pervading single deity, the thinkers and heterodox religious leaders of the day debated various philosophical points including the role of gnosticism in religion. Already in the time of the Hellenic world, the ideological soil had become inhospitable to the original horoscopic astrology of Jyotish, as the sixth branch of the vedic science of enlightenment. Moreover, as the Western civilisation moved westward to the Roman empire, the distance between the source of this wisdom in India and its Western practitioners increased. As a result, even the horoscopic astrology began to change in terms of the graphical representation and the placement of the ascendant in the horoscope as documented in earlier articles on Roman Astrology.

During the rediscovery of astrology in the West in the Middle Ages, the practice of this nascent astrology incorporated the essential mistake of Ptolemy. Moreover, as astronomy began to develop into a proper science, even the modern view of astrology recast it as a quasi scientific law of physical causality, as opposed to a law of mysterious karma. Moreover, since Christianity of the fourth century had taken a hostile view of astrology, it had already then been pushed into the shadows and been slowly taken over by lesser practitioners. During the final centuries of the Roman empire astrology had become something of an art for swindlers, soothsayers and fortunetellers. By comparison, in India, astrology kept its moorings in a God centered world view including the theory of karma and the saintliness of the practitioner.

Isolation of Europe in the Middle Ages
To understand this development further we should note that following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, the Middle Ages were born. This was a period of European history until the 15th century when the early Modern Era began. The term "Middle Ages" was coined in the 15th century and reflects the view that this period was a deviation from the path of classical learning, a path supposedly reconnected by Renaissance scholarship.[2] A part of this period, the early middle ages, has been termed the "Dark Ages“, noted for its cultural and economic deterioration as well as the major disruption in Western Europe. Importantly, the singular outside contact of European civilization was with early Islam of the Middle East and Northern Africa, and not India.[3] While this civilisation had protected some of the knowledge of the Roman and Greek worlds, it proved to be a not so hospitable to its internal consistency, by subjecting it to further speculative development.

To compound the problems further, astrology, had begun to fall out of favour in Rome as early as 321 A.D., when the Christian Emperor Constantine issued an edict threatening all Chaldeans, Magi, and their followers with death. As a result astrology disappeared for centuries from the Christian parts of Western Europe. Moreover, the early Christian legend distinguished between astronomy and astrology by ascribing the introduction of the former to the good angels and to Abraham while the latter was ascribed to Cham. Around this time, St. Augustine (354 – 430 A.D.), one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity, became active in the fight against astrology, moulding attitudes towards it for centuries to come. Even in Britain of the Enlightenment the practice of astrology was outlawed. Meanwhile, the original Vedic science of astrology has remained a part and parcel of Hindu society and is even openly taught at the university level.

Muslim invasions
The general decline of Western Civilisation during the Early Middle Ages was marked by trends of depopulation, deurbanization and increased barbarian invasion. North Africa and the Middle East, once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, were conquered by Islam. The islamisation of Spain took place from the beginning of the 8th century AD to the end of the 15th. Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation in the parts comprising most of what is now Spain and Portugal and governed by Berbers and African Muslims (given the generic name of Moors), at various times in the period between 711 and 1492.[4] The Moors were religious fanatics who subjugated these European territories as a part of the caliph of Damascus which was the capital of the Muslim world. Already in the 8th century the Christian Reconquest began, with the last vestiges of islam being pushed out in the Spanish Inquisition from 1478. The reaction resulted in the Crusades. In part, this cultural trend shows a singular focus of Westerners on the Biblical setting of the life story of Jesus Christ.

The Crusades
In the 10th century, the feudal system was established, which allowed a return to systemic agriculture. This trend was followed by sustained urbanization in northern and western Europe. During the High Middle Ages (c. 1000 – 1300 A.D.), Christian-oriented art and architecture flourished and Crusades were mounted to recapture the Holy Land.[5] The Roman Catholic Church sanctioned wars to be undertaken in pursuance of a vow and directed against infidels, i.e. against Muslims, pagans, heretics, or those under the ban of excommunication, called the Crusades. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century. This exclusive interaction with the Arab world during the Middle Ages was only broken with the voyage of Columbus to the New World, but its influence has proved especially long lasting in the field of astrology.

Conclusion
Ptolemy made many contributions to science by documenting valuable astronomical, cartographical and astrological information. However, he was not an expert on horoscopic astrology or its history and his limited understanding of the visible zodiac of the fixed stars and constellations resulted in his adopting an erroneous astronomical representation of a moving zodiac, which, along with a removal from its authentic vedic source during the Middle Ages, had devastating implications for the development of astrology in the West, by undermining its efficacy as a true science of human karma. In fact, by altering the axiomatic principles of astrology itself, Ptolemy's mistake plunged Western astrology far into the shadows as the Age of Enlightenment rose. Fortunately, the classical principles of the original Greco-Indian horoscopic astrology were preserved in Hindu civilisation, even during the periods of Islamic (Mogul) and Christian (British) colonisation.

References
[1] Wikipedia: Ptolemy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy
[2] Wikipedia: Middle Ages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
[3]"Archaeological Findings Point to Ancient Indo-Roman Trade". India Journal, July 15, 2010.
http://www.indiajournal.com/pages/event.php?id=11753
[4] Wikipedia: Al-Andalus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus
[5]Wikipedia: Crusades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades