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.