Astrology Explored

September 2, 2007

This article was referenced in a blog called Anne’s Anti Quackery and Science Blog in which :

Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that Intelligent Design is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.

The courtroom tittered when:

Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of “theory� was so broad it would also include astrology.

Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton . . . told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.�

Now here is the explanation of a scientific theory in Wikipedia:

In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation.

A theory is tested by the scientific method: (Again from Wikipedia)
Scientific method is acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on:
a.) gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence
b.) the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and
c.) the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

All this etymological hair splitting shows the cleverness of lawyers and skirts the real issue, is science a science just because the scientists say so?

If a hypotheses is not an actual “theory” according to the NAS then it is “not scientific”? Of course not. We can not further our understanding of the universe without proposing a hypotheses and then testing it. So many fields of scientific inquiry started as “what if”, followed many false starts and leads, tumbling through “if not this, then” scenarios to finally gelling to a conclusion, only to be stood on its head by another hypothesis. A good example is String Theory.

The derision of a lawyer and the titters of a courtroom audience only serve to show how very little the general public understands of science and the scientific method.

Astrologers have:
a.) observable, empirical and measurable evidence of relationships between the motion of the planets and events, physical or psychological, in people’s lives.
b.) the collection of data through observation and experimentation, (over two thousand years of data collection, to be more precise)
c.) the formulation and testing of hypotheses (done by individual researchers, because there is little if any government or business funding of these projects)

For the skeptics out there, just by saying Astrology is a pseudo science doesn’t make it so.

astrology, zodiac, horoscopes, skeptics, pseudo science