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Books by Michel Gauquelin. Trivia About The Scientific Ba Further, James noted that response to criticism also relies on faulty logic, an example of which was a response to twin studies with the statement that coincidences in twins are due to astrology, but any differences are due to "heredity and environment", while for other astrologers the issues are too difficult and they just want to get back to their astrology. From the Quinean web of knowledge, there is a dichotomy where one must either reject astrology or accept astrology but reject all established scientific disciplines that are incompatible with astrology.
Astrologers often avoid making verifiable predictions, and instead rely on vague statements that let them try to avoid falsification.
What is Astrology? Science, Myth, Superstition, or Religion? | EVC Astronews
When specific predictions from astrologers were tested in rigorous experimental procedures in the Carlson test, the predictions were falsified. The Shawn Carlson's double-blind chart matching tests, in which 28 astrologers agreed to match over natal charts to psychological profiles generated by the California Psychological Inventory CPI test, is one of the most renowned tests of astrology, [24] [25] and was published in a highly prestigious journal, Nature.
Scientist and former astrologer Geoffrey Dean and psychologist Ivan Kelly [27] conducted a large-scale scientific test, involving more than one hundred cognitive , behavioural , physical and other variables, but found no support for astrology. A meta-analysis was conducted, pooling 40 studies consisting of astrologers and over 1, birth charts. Ten of the tests, which had a total of participating, involved the astrologers picking the correct chart interpretation out of a number of others that were not the astrologically correct chart interpretation usually three to five others.
When the date and other obvious clues were removed, no significant results were found to suggest there was any preferred chart. In 10 studies, participants picked horoscopes that they felt were accurate descriptions, with one being the "correct" answer.
Again the results were no better than chance. In a study of sets of people born within 5 minutes of each other "time twins" to see if there was any discernible effect, no effect was seen. No effect was seen.
Myth or Reality
In , astrologer [30] and psychologist Michel Gauquelin stated that although he had failed to find evidence to support such indicators as the zodiacal signs and planetary aspects in astrology, he had found positive correlations between the diurnal positions of some of the planets and success in professions such as doctors, scientists, athletes, actors, writers, painters, etc.
Geoffrey Dean has suggested that the effect may be caused by self-reporting of birth dates by parents rather than any issue with the study by Gauquelin. The suggestion is that a small subset of the parents may have had changed birth times to be consistent with better astrological charts for a related profession.
The sample group was taken from a time where belief in astrology was more common. Gauquelin had failed to find the Mars effect in more recent populations [c] , where a nurse or doctor recorded the birth information.
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The number of births under astrologically undesirable conditions was also lower, indicating more evidence that parents choose dates and times to suit their beliefs. Beyond the scientific tests astrology has failed, proposals for astrology face a number of other obstacles due to the many theoretical flaws in astrology [11]: The underpinnings of astrology tend to disagree with numerous basic facts from scientific disciplines. Testing the validity of astrology can be difficult because there is no consensus amongst astrologers as to what astrology is or what it can predict.
Georges Charpak and Henri Broch dealt with claims from western astrology in the book Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, and other Pseudoscience.
They commented on the example of Elizabeth Teissier who claimed that "the sun ends up in the same place in the sky on the same date each year" as the basis for claims that two people with the same birthday but a number of years apart should be under the same planetary influence. Charpak and Broch noted that "there is a difference of about twenty-two thousand miles between Earth's location on any specific date in two successive years" and that thus they should not be under the same influence according to astrology. Over a 40 years period there would be a difference greater than , miles. James, commented that attaching significance to the constellation on the celestial sphere the sun is in at sunset was done on the basis of human factors—namely, that astrologers didn't want to wake up early, and the exact time of noon was hard to know.
Further, the creation of the zodiac and the disconnect from the constellations was because the sun is not in each constellation for the same amount of time.
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The tropical zodiac has no connection to the stars, and as long as no claims are made that the constellations themselves are in the associated sign , astrologers avoid the concept that precession seemingly moves the constellations because they don't reference them. Some astrologers make claims that the position of all the planets must be taken into account, but astrologers were unable to predict the existence of Neptune based on mistakes in horoscopes. Instead Neptune was predicted using Newton's law of universal gravitation.
On the demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet , Philip Zarka of the Paris Observatory in Meudon , France wondered how astrologers should respond: Should astrologers remove it from the list of luminars [Sun, Moon and the 8 planets other than earth] and confess that it did not actually bring any improvement? If they decide to keep it, what about the growing list of other recently discovered similar bodies Sedna, Quaoar. Astrology has been criticised for failing to provide a physical mechanism that links the movements of celestial bodies to their purported effects on human behaviour.
Astrology and science
In a lecture in , Stephen Hawking stated "The reason most scientists don't believe in astrology is because it is not consistent with our theories that have been tested by experiment. Bok , Lawrence E. Jerome, and Paul Kurtz. They said that there is no scientific foundation for the tenets of astrology and warned the public against accepting astrological advice without question. Their criticism focused on the fact that there was no mechanism whereby astrological effects might occur:.
We can see how infinitesimally small are the gravitational and other effects produced by the distant planets and the far more distant stars. It is simply a mistake to imagine that the forces exerted by stars and planets at the moment of birth can in any way shape our futures. Astronomer Carl Sagan declined to sign the statement.
Sagan said he took this stance not because he thought astrology had any validity, but because he thought that the tone of the statement was authoritarian, and that dismissing astrology because there was no mechanism while "certainly a relevant point" was not in itself convincing. In a letter published in a follow-up edition of The Humanist , Sagan confirmed that he would have been willing to sign such a statement had it described and refuted the principal tenets of astrological belief.
This, he argued, would have been more persuasive and would have produced less controversy. The use of poetic imagery based on the concepts of the macrocosm and microcosm, "as above so below" to decide meaning such as Edward W. James' example of "Mars above is red, so Mars below means blood and war", is a false cause fallacy. Many astrologers claim that astrology is scientific. If the astrologer insisted on being inconsistent with the current understanding and evidential basis of physics, that would be an extraordinary claim.
Carl Jung sought to invoke synchronicity , the claim that two events have some sort of acausal connection, to explain the lack of statistically significant results on astrology from a single study he conducted. However, synchronicity itself is considered neither testable nor falsifiable. It has also been shown that confirmation bias is a psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology.
From the literature, astrology believers often tend to selectively remember those predictions that turned out to be true and do not remember those that turned out false. Another, separate, form of confirmation bias also plays a role, where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those that do not. Thus there are two distinct forms of confirmation bias that are under study with respect to astrological belief.
The Barnum effect is the tendency for an individual to give a high accuracy rating to a description of their personality that supposedly tailored specifically for them, but is, in fact, vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. If more information is requested for a prediction, the more accepting people are of the results. In Bertram Forer conducted a personality test on students in his classroom. The personality descriptions were taken from a book on astrology. By a process known as self-attribution, it has been shown in numerous studies that individuals with knowledge of astrology tend to describe their personalities in terms of traits compatible with their astrological signs.
The effect is heightened when the individuals were aware that the personality description was being used to discuss astrology. Individuals who were not familiar with astrology had no such tendency. These horoscopes make predictions in people's personal lives, describe their personalities, and give them advice; all according to the position of astronomical bodies. Let us break the original question into two separate, more specific, questions: These questions are both very different.
Both can be determined scientifically. Does the position of astronomical bodies affect a person's life beyond basic weather? The position and orientation of the sun relative to earth does cause seasons. Anyone who has shoveled snow off his walk in January when he would rather be at the beach can tell you that the astronomical bodies definitely affect our lives. Solar flares cause electromagnetic disturbances on earth that can disrupt satellites and even cause blackouts.
What is Astrology? Science, Myth, Superstition, or Religion?
The position of the moon causes ocean tides. If you are a fisher, the position of the moon can have a significant effect on your livelihood. The solar wind causes beautiful aurora, and sunlight itself is the main source of energy for our planet. But all of these effects fall under the umbrella of basic weather; not astrology. Astrology purports that astronomical bodies have influence on people's lives beyond basic weather patterns, depending on their birth date. This claim is scientifically false. Numerous scientific studies have disproven that astronomical bodies affect people's lives according to their birth date.
For instance, Peter Hartmann and his collaborators studied over individuals and found no correlation between birth date and personality or intelligence. In one of the most famous experiments, Shawn Carlson had 28 astrologers make predictions and then tested the accuracy of their predictions. Before conducting the experiment, he fine-tuned the method so that various independent scientists agreed the method was scientifically sound, and also so that all of the astrologers agreed the test was fair.
As published in Nature , he found that the astrologers could do no better at predicting the future than random chance. These results agree with fundamental science.