Astrology and Science: According to the Famous Astrologer in Kolkata

According to the famous astrologer in Kolkata, Astrology is a collection of belief systems that assert that there is a connection between astrological phenomena and events or personality traits in the human world. The scientific community has dismissed astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe.

Scientific testing has discovered no evidence to back up the astrological traditions' premises or claimed effects. Astrology has been debunked in cases when it has provided falsifiable predictions. Shawn Carlson led the most famous test, which included a committee of scientists and a committee of astrologers.

As a result, it was determined that natal astrology performed no better than chance. Michel Gauquelin, an astrologer and psychologist, claimed to have discovered statistical support for "the Mars effect" in the birth dates of sportsmen, but his findings were not repeated in other investigations.

Later investigations stated that Gauquelin tried to sway their inclusion criteria for the study by recommending that some individuals be excluded.

Astrology has not been proven to be helpful in controlled experiments and has no scientific basis, making it a pseudoscience. There is no conceivable method of action that does not violate well-understood, basic features of biology and physics, by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect individuals and events on Earth in the manner astrologers claim they do.

Historical relationship with astronomy:

The Babylonians laid the groundwork for astrology's theoretical structure, yet widespread use did not begin until Alexander the Great stormed across Greece at the commencement of the Hellenistic period. The Babylonians were unaware that the constellations are not on a celestial sphere and are spaced far apart. The illusion of their proximity is deceptive. Through the eyes of the top astrologer in Kolkata, the definition of a constellation is culturally determined and differs amongst civilisations. Ptolemy's astronomical work was influenced by his ambition, like that of all astrologers at the time, to simply compute planetary movements.

Medical astrology associated what occurred to the planets and other objects in the sky to medical operations since early western astrology operated under the ancient Greek principles of the macrocosm and microcosm. This served as a further incentive to pursue astronomy.

The yearly publication La Connoissance des temps began a firm rejection of astrology in works of astronomy in 1679. Unlike in the west, Iran's rejection of heliocentrism persisted until the turn of the twentieth century, owing to concerns that it would jeopardise the country's strong trust in astrology and Islamic cosmology .Astrology provides the quintessential example of a pseudoscience since it has been tested repeatedly and failed all the tests.

Falsifiability:

The criterion of falsifiability is frequently used to separate science from non-science. Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, was the first to propose the criterion. Science, according to Popper, does not rely on induction; rather, scientific studies are intrinsically attempts to refute current theories through new testing. If even one test fails, the theory is disproven.

As a result, any test of a scientific theory must rule out some results that contradict the theory while anticipating other specific results that are in line with the theory. Astrology is a pseudoscience based on this falsifiability criterion.

Progress, practice and consistency:

Although progress is defined as the ability to explain new events and solve old problems, astrology has failed to progress, having altered little in nearly 2000 years. Astrologers, according to Thagard, are behaving as if they were involved in normal research, believing that the foundations of astrology were well established despite "many unsolved difficulties" and better alternative ideas (Psychology).

Irrationality:

Astrology is irrational, according to philosopher Edward W. James, not because of the numerous difficulties with mechanisms and falsification owing to experiments, but because an examination of the astrological literature reveals that it is laced with flawed logic and weak reasoning.

Quinean dichotomy:

There is a contradiction in the Quinean web of knowledge: one must either reject astrology or accept astrology while rejecting all established scientific fields that are incompatible with astrology.

Tests of astrology:

Astrologers frequently avoid making provable forecasts in favour of vague assertions that allow them to avoid being proven wrong. Despite decades of testing, astrology's predictions have never been more accurate than what could be predicted by chance alone. A blind experiment is one method for objectively assessing astrology. Specific predictions from astrologers were refuted when they were examined in the Carlson test using rigorous experimental methodologies.

Carlson's experiment:

Shawn Carlson's now-famous investigation used 28 astrologers using double-blind procedures to match over 100 natal charts to psychological profiles created by the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) test.

Dean and Kelly:

Scientist and former astrologer Geoffrey Dean and psychologist Ivan Kelly conducted a large-scale scientific test, involving more than one hundred cognitive, behavioural, physical and other variables.

Mars effect:

Michel Gauquelin, an astrologer and psychologist, stated in 1955 that while he had been unable to find evidence to support such astrological indicators as zodiac signs and planetary aspects, he had discovered positive correlations between the diurnal positions of some of the planets and professional success.

Theoretic obstacles:

Aside from the scientific tests that astrology has failed, proposals for astrology face a number of other challenges due to astrology's many theoretical flaws, such as lack of consistency, inability to predict missing planets, lack of connection of the zodiac to the constellations in western astrology, and lack of any plausible mechanism.

Lack of consistency:

Because there is no consensus among astrologers as to what astrology is or what it can predict, determining its validity can be challenging. Dean and Kelly cited 25 investigations in which the degree of agreement amongst astrologers' predictions was found to be as low as 0.1.

Lack of physical basis:

According to Edward W. James, astrologers attached value to the constellation on the celestial sphere where the sun is at sunset due to human reasons, such as the fact that astrologers didn't want to get up early and the exact time of noon was difficult to determine. Furthermore, the zodiac was created and the constellations were disconnected because the sun does not spend the same amount of time in each constellation.

Carl Jung attempted to explain the lack of statistically significant results on astrology from a single research he did by invoking synchronicity, the idea that two events are connected in some way. Synchronicity, on the other hand, is neither testable nor falsifiable. The study was extensively chastised as a result of its non-random sample, use of statistics, and lack of consistency with astrology.

Clearly, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to read the stars for guidance. Understanding the positions of the stars is the foundation of astrology, which appears to be a scientific discipline in and of itself. Is there any scientific evidence that astrology has an impact on our personalities and lives?

The short answer is: No. There aren't any.

But, since five minutes of this six-minute podcast to occupy, let's take a look at how astrology has been put to the test suggested by the best astrologer in Kolkata.