Astrology and Science – Reasons for Rejection and Acceptance

Astrology is rejected from among Sciences for a well established reason: it is not falsifiable. When an astrologer affirms that a certain planet at a certain location has such and such influence, he cannot prove it. However, nobody can deny it. An astrological proposition is simply not falsifiable. Falsifiability is a concept introduced in Philosophy by Karl Popper [1] and, in broad terms, it reflects the fact that a truly scientific concept must have a limited truth. A scientific concept, or a scientific theory in general, naturally covers only a limited portion of our knowledge, outside of which it can be invalidated – is falsifiable.

The platitudes offered by today's Astrology as predictions are anything else but predictions. They are generalities of the common sense, seasoned here and there with "scientific" phrases. For instance: "The universe is in a more snarly mood than yesterday. Mercury makes an abrasive 135-degree link to Pluto (2:50AM PDT) while the Sun in Leo makes an awkward, 150-degree association with Uranus in Pisces (1:29PM PDT)" (Mark Lerner for Astrology.com). It is then concluded that "These two celestial alignments do not constitute a smooth and easy path to success". This deterministic correlation between the alignments of celestial bodies and the path to success is an assertion that can neither be proved nor disproved. It is simply not falsifiable, therefore is not scientific.

A scientific explanation in this case would have to start with the unambiguous definition of the "path to success" and that is impossible, because there are as many paths to success as many successes are, and the successes are subjective matters. But this is the actual point of Astrology: one needs nothing in order to be an astrologer, especially in the modern era of computers! How can one prove that if "Mercury makes 135 degree association with Uranus in Pisces", be it even "abrasive" (whatever abrasive may mean), this is a rough path to my success? May be 'abrasion' is the whole idea here, because it leads generally to roughness…

Science agrees that the celestial bodies act upon each other but, in order to describe this action it uses the concept of force. This concept is based on the Third Law of Dynamics as a principle to measure the forces. This gives the possibility of a quantitative evaluation to the influence of bodies themselves, of which Astrology cannot speak, in spite of the bombastic use of unwarranted words by astrologers. Phrases like "powerful influence of Jupiter from Aries" or "forceful influence of Sun from the house of Gemini" have no quantitative meaning: the influence they are talking about has not been quantified (yet).

On the other hand one shouldn't have too much confidence in Science either, at least when it comes to the concept of force. Indeed, the Third Law, as accepted today, is just as unfalsifiable as the astrological assertions: there is no possibility of finding situations where it is false. Everything starts here with the observation that, when acting upon matter, a force is always resisted by a contrary force. The Third Law states that the two are equal in magnitude. As long as we limit its dominion only to matter, the Third Law is always true by its very nature: this is how it came to our senses!

Unfortunately, this law was also extended to action and reaction in general, no matter if they are done in the same point or not, and even to non-material structures. Indeed, we can imagine equilibrium of forces in a space point in general, even without considering it a material point. There is really no way of finding situations where the Third Law is false, if we extend the concept of force to include the action at distance. A situation appropriate for the falsification of the law in the sense of Popper is the action of two forces in two different points of space with no matter joining them. This is the essential attribute of the action at a distance, where the principle is usually supposed to work by default, just because we think of the force as of an independent concept. For instance, according to the Third Law the force of action of the Sun upon Earth must be equal with the force of action of Earth upon Sun, even though the first one acts at the location of Earth, while the second acts at the location of Sun. They are action and reaction!

Newton surely felt the danger here and he tried to prove the existence of force of gravitation by improving our secular experience, in his good manner of reshaping this experience. Only, this time he came up with something we don't have at all in our experience, i.e. he invented a fact. In order to show that the gravitation is an inter-action (sic!) he imagined two globes rotating around each other and joined by a cord ([2], p.82), thereby asserting that we can feel the force in the cord, and that force will be an indication of the relative motion of the two globes which, by the way, is an entirely true and even realizable fact:

"For instance, if two globes, kept at a given distance one from another by means of a cord that connects them, were revolved about their common centre of gravity, we might, from the tension of the cord, discover the endeavor of the globes to recede from the axis of their motion, and from thence we might compute the quantity of their circular motions."

There is no question that such experiments can be effectively performed. The force in a cord connecting two globes which revolve around each other, like planets around Sun, can be measured by cutting that cord and inserting a device which measures the force. So, there is nothing here which is not part of our experience; everything is real or can be realized within reasonable experimental limits. But this entirely lawful situation was supposed to have a universal analogous, in the good manner of our habit of judging by analogy. Newton puts it in the following terms:

"And thus we might find both the quantity and the determination of this circular motion, even in an immense vacuum, where there was nothing external or sensible with which the globes could be compared. … But if we observed the cord, and found that its tension was that very tension which the motion of the globes required, we might conclude the motion to be in the globes…"

Well, we might, but we actually don't! While the fact that there should be a force in the rope is entirely true according to our experience, we have nowhere in reality around us two cosmic bodies joined by a cord, in order to notice that the force between them is secured according to the Third Principle at any point between the two bodies. The Third Principle is an expression of the secular scale of things, and therefore the scale of cosmic bodies is out of its area of application. This is a certainly a situation where the Third Principle of Dynamics is falsifiable. However, the existence of the force of gravitation is based upon assumption that a force is there even in the absence of the material agent sustaining it. This remained with the Science, thereby raising an imagined scenario – the cosmic bodies connected physically by a cord – to the rank of fact of experience. By accepting this we simply deny the falsifiability of the Third Principle: it is not a scientific principle, but an immanent law!

The repercussions of this fact are overwhelming for the Modern Science. It is the basis of the modern field theory which declares that there should be a force acting in every point of space, regardless if the fact that the point contains a piece of matter or not. Scientifically, we can even calculate such forces! From this moment, however, the Science gets into the safe hands of Mathematics which, as physicist Eugene Wigner poses it in an often-quoted essay [3], "is unreasonably effective" even if not always true.

Therefore the assumption of the existence of a force in every point of space is by no means more true than the claim of Astrology that there is an influence of the celestial elements upon the life of a man. Unlike Science however, the Astrology couldn't find a way to express such a law in equations. A natal chart for instance, no matter how much geometry was embedded in it, is nothing more than a dead sketch: you have to believe that what the astrologer says is true, because there is no mean to prove it! There is no mean to prove for instance that, if Mercury was in a certain house in the moment you were born, then in a certain period of your life you will make money. This affirmation is just as unfalsifiable as the Third Law of Dynamics. However, there is a sure way to prove that there is a force in every point of space, just by solving a differential equation (the Laplace equation) and this makes a huge difference for society. While Science can claim this as its own law; Astrology simply cannot file such a claim because, according to our experience, the concept of force is never directly related to money!

References:

[1] Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson & Co Ltd, London, 1975
[2] Isaac Newton, The Principia, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York 1995
[3] Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13(1), February 1960