Astrology: An Abuse Of Astronomy

In recent times the controversy over the nature of astrology, whether it is ascientific theory or not, seems to be becoming more and more acerbic. While theastrologers are freely indulging in making personal attacks on scientists, thefollowing pertinent criticism of the theory and practice of astrology, is not inany way being answered by them.

To be called a scientific theory, any body of knowledge would have to answerthe question why at every level. Put another way, there has to be somefundamental interaction of basic elements of nature involved at the root of anyphenomenon. Venus in some position has a baneful influence, Jupiter in someother position is beneficial, born at such and such time a person may grow up tobe a criminal or a politician – WHY? What is the basic cause behind suchstatements?

When asked to pin down the fundamental interaction of the planets and starswith us human beings which would give rise to such effects, astrologers falterand mumble something about gravitation, electromagnetic radiation or tidaleffects.

Gravitation? The gravitational forces of the nursing home, gynecologist,pediatrician and the anesthetist who may be around at the time of birth of ahuman baby would be far greater than any gravitational force felt from theplanets, simply because they are so far away! Similarly, stray electromagneticradiations coming from your TV screen or sundry other electrical appliancesaround the house will be far greater than any that reaches us from distantplanets, how can the latter affect incidences in your life?

What say we of tides? A statement on an astrological website goes – ‘Ifthe Sun and Moon can exert tidal forces on Earth, which is so huge, to causetides, can they not exert enormous tidal forces on us puny beings?’ …something like that. The suggestion being that we do not know what forces couldbe the cause astrological influences, but maybe tides have the answer for us?

The point here is that the tidal forces on Earth, by the Sun and Moon arecaused precisely because it is so huge.

Where do tidal forces originate from? It is not a new or different kind offorce – it simply arises from differences in gravitational force felt by theextremities of an extended object – the gravitational force of the Sun or theMoon is larger on that part of Earth that is facing them and smaller on theopposite side. As simple as that. Now try imagining differences in gravitationalforces of the distant planets between the tummy and the behind of a baby justborn or maybe the head and the toes? Laughable. Tides do not have the answerthat astrologers need.

It is true that there are number of physical interactions that have not yetbeen fully understood from a very basic standpoint – the nature of the nuclearforces, for instance. At the level of complex interactions and chaotic phenomenathere are a number of examples where a full scientific understanding andpredictability through underlying physical laws is as yet incomplete. All theseare rich areas in science where a lot of progress has taken place and thereexists room for a lot more work.

However, at some level or the other these unsolved problems touch upon knownand experimentally verified nature’s laws. It is this that is lacking inastrology. The astrologers say – so what if we cannot predict the future veryaccurately, are scientists able to predict the weather or Earthquakesaccurately? The difference here comes in our basic understanding of thesephenomena, scientists have plenty of experimental verification for the basicinteractions they think underlie weather or Earthquakes or any such phenomenonthat is not yet understood in its full complexity. Does astrology have any suchbasic grounding? No!

So, we do not have a fundamental interaction or force that could explainbenign or malignant influences of the planets on our life. But, may be, thecancer of astrology has a way out … empirical evidence? Lacking a fundamentalunderstanding of certain natural phenomenon, we may yet find out some partialtruth about it by experimentally studying various aspects of it.

Most of the astrological predictions are worded in a deliberately vaguemanner. It is this inherent vagueness that turns out to be the biggest strengthof astrologers since it defies experimental verification, a basic requirementfor any science.

Anyway, let us try our hands at generating statistics to critically examineastrological conclusions. Positions of planets, Sun and the Moon against thebackdrop of the Zodiacal constellations at the time of the birth of a person issupposed to determine their destiny, right? Listed below are the birthdates of anumber of Nobel Laureates who have received the peace prize. Astrologicallyspeaking, we should expect to see some correlation in the planetary positions onthese dates, which we do not see:

Positions of Sun, Moon and Planets among the Zodiacal constellationsduring the birth dates of some Nobel Laureates for Peace.

This exercise can be endless. Try it for any such list of people and you aresure to see that no patterns exist in the planetary positions, if the birthdatesare unbiased.

(By the way, it is a a very simple matter to find out the planetary positionsfor dates in history. There exist a number of planetarium software, made freelyavailable by dedicated astronomers and educators, which do this job for you.There is a wonderful shareware called skyglobe, produced by KlassM Software, ademo version of which can be downloaded.

Using such software, you can look at the planetary, or stellar, positions inthe sky in history, as well as a few thousand years in future. All this isastronomy, or rather, celestial mechanics, nothing to do with astrology.

Anyway, trying to look at possible patterns emerging during birth-dates offamous people could be an interesting senior school statistics project to do andcould quickly demonstrate the falsehood of astrology. Students who may bethinking of enrolling for astrological courses, particularly, may do well tolook at such simple statistics before making a tricky careerdecision.

Several astrologers make claims that they have predicted events that havehappened. Lets' go through a sample - several astrologers are thumping theirchests saying that they had predicted the Gujarat quake – what have thesepredictions been?

Take a sample – ‘The nation may face a national calamity in the firstweeks of January’, ‘Inspite of many security arrangements the government maybe taken by surprise on the republic day’, and so on. These are statementstaken from claims being made on the net by astrologers saying that they hadpredicted the quake.

If the quake had not taken place, these predictions, however vague, wouldnever have been seen in limelight again, the case with innumerable otherpredictions these same astrologers would be making day in and day out, and whichdo not come out as predicted.

And then again, the predictions themselves are so vague, as can be seen fromthe motley sample above, that a person needs to be completely shameless to makesuch tall claims after the event – making moolah out of vague statements andlarge scale real suffering of people!

Is the harm not obvious? False alarms leading to stampedes in the quake torntowns and people re-building their houses with the right muhurtams andaccording to Vaastu Shastra rather than using mechanical engineering tomake their homes quake proof.

In any case, how would astrology tell you anything about a terrestrial event– through planetary positions and Lunar phases right? Let us repeat theexercise done above for the Nobel Laureates, but, this time for the dates in thelast couple of hundred years when major earthquakes have taken place in ourneighbourhood. Thislink shows the Zodiacal constellation in which theSun, Moon and the planets were located at the time of these earthquakes of thepast and present. Included also in this table is the Lunar phase for theepicenter and date of the earthquake.

It is abundantly clear from this table, that no pattern exists inplanetary positions on the dates of earthquakes in India’s recent history. Thesame will hold true of global earthquakes as well as for quakes in any otherregion.

A way out is thought by some astrologers faced with such clinching evidenceagainst them, when they say, no two events above are centred at the same place.But, surely, something in the planetary positions should be common to indicatethe event of an earthquake? Also, there are three events centred in Gujrat andthe planetary positions are seen to be wildly different for these.

There have been some claims also of a correlation of the lunar phase with theoccurrences of earthquakes. Lunar phase? True, the tides are correlated withthese. Tidal forces, as discussed, arise from the difference in gravitationalforce on the extremities of an extended object. Gravitational force on the sidefacing the Sun or the Moon being greater than on the opposite side. This will ofcourse be affected by the Lunar phases, or the relative positions of the Sun andthe Moon with respect to Earth. However, earthquakes are to do with movement ofneighboring tectonic plates, tidal force differences for which would benegligible.

It seems unlikely that earthquakes should be correlated with Lunar phases. Abetter clincher comes from the data. One can see the lunar phase on the dates ofthe earthquakes listed in the table above and it is abundantly clear that thephase distribution here is quite random, with no underlying pattern.

Let's go back in time. A story floating around refers to an astrologicalprediction of Bhaskara that his daughter would become a widow and its happeningexactly so! Now, at this period of time, since we do not have record to tell usthe exact times of Bhaskara to better than a century or two, where do we findrecords to verify the truth of this story? Is it not quite likely to be a legendperpetuated by astrologers to better their claims?

Following the style of typical astrological predictions, let's say, astatement made at birth of Leelavati that she would undergo a lot of suffering(which Indian woman does not?) may have been taken to mean this event after ithappened. If the event did not take place, a difficult childbirth may have beensufficient to meet the case.

The point being made is, one vague statement and a later event which ina roundabout manner may be interpreted as a vindication do not constitute ascientific proof of a theory. Correlations are notorious for showing up patternsout of random data.

One would have to go far deeper into statistical analysis before any tracepatterns that may be seen in planetary positions and human destinies can be usedas evidence. In addition, there do not seem to be studies done with any unbiaseddata that do show any such correlations.

As for the predictions by all the astrologers that may have been made thesefew thousand years and their vindication – what price precession of the axisof Earth’s rotation?

Our home planet goes through a variety of interesting motions – it spins onits own axis, moves along an elliptical orbit around the Sun, and participateswilly nilly in all the movements associated with the Solar system as a whole. Inaddition, its spin axis wobbles around like a top completing one precessioncycle in about 26,000 years.

At the time that the astrological concepts may have been crystallized theseconcepts were certainly not known or rationalized. But, yes, precession didtrouble astronomers and astrologers alike every few hundred years or so.Everytime the calculated positions of planets failed to agree with the observedpositions, corrections based on empirical observations were made which heldthrough for a few hundred years till the corrections were needed yet again.

The corrections were done by Aryabhata, several astronomers in the centuriesfollowing applied further corrections to Aryabhata’s work all the way tilllate medieval and modern times when these were done by Swai Jaisingh and SamantaChandrasekhar.

It is only later that all these corrections have been rationalized with theprecession of Earth’s axis of rotation. That has been progress in astronomicalunderstanding. Astronomers would have no problem in acknowledging that thisphenomenon was not understood earlier and it is only now that we are able topredict with good accuracy the positions of planets which will hold good wellbeyond a few centuries.

Through all these times what has the astrological updating been? Between 2000BC to 1000 BC, for instance, the Sun was seen in the Zodiacal constellation ofSagittarius during the time of a year that we now refer to as last weeks ofNovember and the first two weeks of December. This Zodiacal sign was assigned tothese times of the year, presumably, somewhere around this time. The same storyholds of course, for all other Zodiacal signs, Sagittarius was used only as anillustrative example.

Currently, at these times of the year the Sun is in the constellation Scorpioand almost moving over to Libra. So people born at these times of the year, whoconsider themselves as Sagittarians should actually be a cross between Scorpiosand Libras. Is this fact being taken into account by astrological predictions?Not taking it into account should not matter, since the whole foundation ofastrology is shaky anyway.

Some astrologers do come up and say, oh yes, we do take care ofprecession alright. There exists in the net world ample astronomical softwarethat tell you the positions of the stars and planets today, a few thousand yearsback and a few thousand years hence. These software have been made by dedicatedastronomers and provided freely for those wishing to use it for popularizationof astronomy. These software have now been appropriated by astrologers who areable to say, they have accurate positions of planets and stars taking precessioninto account. Now whose astrological predictions are correct – what have beenmade these thousand years or more, without taking precession into account orthat of a few savvy astrologers who are making use of these readily availablesoftware to obtain the correct positions only in these last few recent years?

If we do accept the basic premise of astrology, then it has to be these savvyfew who are right – then where does ancient wisdom of astrology come in? Oneonly needs to go through the predictions made by these few and it should be avery small matter to show that these predictions do not hold up to mathematicalrigour.

Another danger is being overlooked here. By harping on the authenticity ofcertain ancient notions as the absolute truths, we are detracting from the realachievements of these ancient observers.

The Vedas seem to be a celebration of life and the elements of nature. Thevedic people, apparently, needed to know the positions of planets against thebackground of distant stars, because they believed these positions denotedcertain times as auspicious or otherwise for the performing of sacrifices. Weare able to accept that the performing of sacrifices might not be quite thething … why can we not accept that they may have been wrong in other thoughtstoo?

Inspite of having certain wrong notions, the history of that period is richwith many an advanced, real, contribution to the progress of human civilization.One of these has been long and patient observations of the sky and attempts tofit the observations to a mathematical pattern. The pattern shifts withprecession and this was not incorporated. But, it was no mean achievement tohave obtained the pattern to this level!

Not only that, the concept of Ayanamsa as a measure of precession ofthe Equinoxes, was something which was observed, worried over, and observationalmeans of calculating and correcting for it were done by many Indian astronomers– notably, Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Nilakantha, Bhaskara, Trivikrama,Vatesvara, Jagannatha and Parameswara among others. This was a real achievementof the Indian Astronomers.

True, the Ayanamsa calculation was always done for that period to make theirpredictions of planetary motions agree with observations. The true rate ofprecession and its complete rationalization was not achieved in order thatcenturies later the same mismatch need not have troubled scrupulous astronomerslike Jai Singh and Samanta Chandrasekhar.

All of this can be seen as the progress of the science of astronomy in Indiathrough the centuries, a progress far ahead of many of its contemporarieselsewhere.

Superstition and orthodoxy, which have always been present simultaneouslywith progressive thinking, had prevented these advances from achieving fargreater progress in their times.

If we do not deify and proclaim from roof tops that Vedas contain everythingfrom cosmology to the human genome project, then a level-headed look at the realachievements of our ancients would become feasible.

Let us not wash away these unique signals from history in a lot of falsenotions and obscurantism.

The author is a director with Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi