- Astrology - RationalWiki
- WHAT'S YOUR SIGN? THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE ZODIAC
- You’ve Probably Been Reading The Wrong Horoscope
- What are the 12 signs of the zodiac?
- Where did zodiac signs come from?
Whatever the mysterious force may be that astrologists claim causes the effects of the positions and movements of celestial bodies on human physiology , it is not backed up by any current knowledge or research and certainly isn't real.
If there is a force, it can't be detected, and woo pushers tend to like that sort of thing — but this raises an important question; if it can't be detected in any way, shape or form , then how can it actually affect anything?
However, we can still be open to so-called " supernatural " explanations and only look at the efficacy of astrology, treating it as a purely empirical question. One force that almost certainly has an effect on people is the month they were born — though this has nothing to do with sun or star signs.
Not at all; it's simply a case of when the Australian school year begins.
Astrology - RationalWiki
Those born in January are nearly 12 months older than peers born in the following December, but are placed in the same school year — and the older ones are at a significant advantage at sports. When replicated in other countries with different distributions for the school year, the months where this trend appears shift accordingly.
In this case, the relative age effect is shown to have a cultural and location dependence, which would not be consistent with astrological predictions based on stars. The complexities involved in seasonal cycles to weather patterns, sunspots and food production, mean that time and date almost certainly correlate with a multitude of factors that can appear as very real trends.
The development of astrology may have been tapping into these observations, but then overextended the effect to things that were just plain wrong. What is certain, however, is that attributing these simple correlations to quasi-magical forces and star signs is wrong. Assuming astrology does work, then we should be able to get a reliable definition of what "astrology works" means.
In this case, it should provide a reliable source of accurate predictions and statements, and these should be better than randomly guessing once naturalistic explanations for any successes or in less politically correct terms, cheating has been controlled for.
This is an important aspect of testing astrology, as practitioners are highly likely to worm out of such conditions.
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One of the great successes of woo movements is convincing people that it's legitimate to ignore such misses, and to think that a technique works except for the times that it doesn't.
As a very good "technique works except for the times that it doesn't" is perfectly naturalistic guesswork, then holding up astrology to this standard is a perfectly valid way — indeed, it is the valid way — of testing its veracity.
As people happily read what they like into statements as vague as horoscopes, this never ends in astrology's favour. Six expert astrologers independently attempted to match 23 astrological birth charts to the corresponding case files of 4 male and 19 female volunteers.
Case files contained information on the volunteers' life histories, full-face and profile photographs, and test profiles from the Strong-Campbell Vocational Interest Blank and the Cattell P.
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Astrologers did no better than chance or than a nonastrologer control subject at matching the birth charts to the personal data; this result was independent of astrologers' confidence ratings for their predicted matches.
Astrologers also failed to agree with one another's predictions. While astrologers and believers may accuse science of being quite dogmatic over the "astrology is bullshit" line, rest assured it has been tested. If astrology was anywhere near as potent a tool as believers and astrologers suggest, results from even small-scale tests should end positively.
One of the more famous and better controlled studies is the one performed by Shawn Carlson and published in Nature in Astrologers were given the task of matching birth charts to personality types — a fairly simple task for a discipline that claims that your birth chart is "as unique as you are" and "reveals your potential in this lifetime and also where you are in that journey".
Indeed, what would those phrases even mean if such a task couldn't be performed by an expert astrologer. However, astrologers themselves weren't best pleased with such a negative result, citing various issues with the apparently simple test.
An article in the Astrology News Service is a curious example of kettle logic as it seems to simultaneously assert that the test was unfair and skewed, and so unlikely to show any effect, and that reanalysis of the data suggests the astrologers were correct [19].
At the beginning of , Galileo Galilei looked at Jupiter with his telescope. The planet was resolved as a disk, and it had three faint stars nearby. A day or so later, he looked again, and the stars had moved. He continued to observe the planet, and he noticed that these three stars, and a fourth one also, were moving back and forth relative to Jupiter.
He concluded that here were four objects that orbit Jupiter. The next year, a certain Francesco Sizzi of Florence made an astrological sort of argument that those moons cannot possibly exist.
Auctore Francisco Sitio Florentino in Latin ; lpetrich's translation of its title: In the macrocosm, there are seven planets: In the microcosm, the human head has seven openings: He also noted that there are seven days in the week, seven metals, etc.
Given all these corresponding sets of seven, there was clearly no place for the extra planets that Galileo had claimed to have discovered. So they do not exist. Conversely one has to wonder why astrologers did not discover the existence of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto -among other Solar System bodies not known to the developers of astrology- based on how their predictions were messed by the influences of several unknown bodies, before astronomers discovered them [note 2].
Except on a few cases as Orion , Ursa Major , or Scorpius , where some of the brightest stars that form a constellation are physically associated and at relatively similar distances to us [note 3]. Typically, said stars are at very different separations from Earth and appear to form a more or less recognizable pattern just from our vantage point.
In addition to this, as stars -the Sun included- orbit through the Milky Way said patterns change in a scale of many thousands of years becoming distinct with time [note 4]. In addition to that, not only the twelve zodiacal constellations are the ones that are visited by the Sun, the Moon, and the planets.
Ophiuchus is the best example, having been left out by the Babylonians as they had a twelve-month lunar calendar, but if one includes others the western Zodiac would have up to twenty-five ones [note 5]. Predictions made by astrologers vary wildly from the vague to the specific — though most often they are extremely vague or at least vaguely in line with what most people think based on looking at the world around them, rather than the sky above.
There will be more flooding than ever before, unexpected hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons and storms and towns and cities will disappear in the twinkling of an eye" [20] — which most climatologists suggest may well occur due to global warming. Indeed, other items mentioned in that prediction include "more products using nanotechnology ", as if the increased use of a scientific buzzword was somehow only predictable through reading the stars and "expect to see huge growth in digital information clouds.
Generally, the more vague a prediction, the higher the chance it has of coming true. More accurately, the higher the chance that it can be interpreted as having been true after the fact, or retroactively reinterpreted as having not occurred because of some good graces.
This can be seen most easily in the form of astrology that most people are familiar with; the horoscope. A horoscope is a prediction or advice based only on someone's date of birth, or more commonly in newspapers and magazines, for instance their zodiac sign , of which there are Given that there are more than 6 billion people on Earth, at least one horoscope in every publication applies to more than million people from the pigeonhole principle.
It is a clear fact that half a billion people do not have the same experiences each day, so the power of these predictions cannot be as widely and universally applied as is claimed. Another trick used by astrologers is to give information that almost sounds like a contradiction.
For example "You are an independent thinker who values the insight of others", or "You stay true to your plans but are very adaptable". If you are a Capricorn an introverted sign but you have a Leo moon very extroverted , you can relate to one or the other depending on whether you feel more extroverted or introverted.
WHAT'S YOUR SIGN? THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE ZODIAC
People are incredibly complex, so throwing out more adjectives for every planet position will certainly make people think that their birth charts mean anything.
If they disagree with any of the adjectives, the astrologer will simply say that a certain aspect of their chart causes them to differ. The Forer effect is where an over-generalised reading can be interpreted as very accurate by many people simultaneously. Often, Forer-type readings are very flattering or complimentary, but they can also mention hidden criticisms and insecurities that people realise they experience, but might not attribute to others and certainly like to hide.
Therefore, by including statements like "you try to be bold, but worry about what other people might think of your actions and hesitate" you can give the impression you really did figure out new knowledge. James Randi once replicated an experiment to demonstrate how people can basically be "tricked" into thinking a horoscope is accurate.
A number of students were asked their zodiac and given the appropriate horoscope to read. They were then asked to grade how accurate they felt the horoscope was regarding their selves and a significant number, if not the majority, gave their horoscopes scores ranging from 4 to 5 the maximum.
Later they were asked to pass along their personal horoscope to the person behind them where the "trick" was revealed; they had all been given the same horoscope.
With a careful selection of language, phrases and tone, it is almost impossible for a horoscope to not to be applicable to someone.
Like many protosciences , astrology provided the original foundation of a modern science, in its case astronomy. As scientists started trying to understand what the bright things we see in the sky are, where they are, and their relationship to each other, astrology was able to provide some thousands of years of observations to develop hypotheses from.
After all, mystics spent so much time gazing at the sky that it was inevitable some useful information would slip into human knowledge. To a lesser extent, horoscopes - which would include fairly accurate astronomical data - of figures in the past and clear mentions of what were then "astrological" events may help modern historians with efforts to assign accurate dates to the past.
Whatever you do, however, do NOT confuse astrology with astronomy when talking to an astronomer—you will be soundly rebutted and possibly insulted.
Even Chuck Norris wouldn't dare to mix up the two professions. Want ads in China have been known to discriminate against certain star-signs. If you are a Scorpio, good luck finding a job there.
We wish we were making this up. The earth rotates on an axis tilted about This is called Axial precession.
You’ve Probably Been Reading The Wrong Horoscope
According to the astrologers, the change from one age to the other can cause the rise and fall of civilizations, cultural changes, and all sorts of shit. There is disagreement among astrologers over whether this "age" has already started, or is forthcoming.
Some have interoperated astrology and apocalypse theories and claimed that Age of Aquarius will occur in , leading to all sorts of spectacular good shit such as free energy and "spiritual growth".
One clever thing astrologers have done is make each zodiac sign have a flaw that could lead to not believing in astrology.
What are the 12 signs of the zodiac?
The problem with all of this is that it gives astrologers an easy way to get out of an argument about astrology's legitimacy — "Oh, of course you don't believe! None of these links are endorsed by RationalWiki but are presented for your amusement only as examples of the genre.
See the main article on this topic: Yes that's right, that's right baby I read up on you The most philosophical of all the signs. But anyway, I don't believe in it. If you were born on this day, your Star Sign would be Gemini.
When I was learning Astrology, this illustration really helped me understand what a Star Sign means. Now, there's one important caveat.
Where did zodiac signs come from?
If you were born when the Sun was in the middle of a Zodiac's sector, where and when you are born doesn't really matter in terms of your Star Sign.
But if your Birthday is close to the day the Sun moves from one sign to another, it does The days around the moment the Sun moves from one Zodiac sign to another are called the cusp, and people born at the cusp of two Star Signs generally have attributes from both signs.
This is where most Magazines and News Papers get Horoscopes wrong. If you are born near the cusp, to get your exact Star sign you need to plug in the time and location of your birth into an Ephemeris. This is because time zones, your location and many other factors will determine what sign the Sun was actually in.
But remember, like I mentioned before and this belief is not just my opinion, it's shared by many published astrologers dating back hundreds of years , if you are born on the day the Sun moves from one sign to another, you should consider yourself of two Star signs.
My Star Sign calculator below will let you know if you are at a cusp, or if you have one whole sign. On the rest of this page I'll show some of the discrepancies in various Horoscope Date tables, and provide evidence to support my hypothesis that the only way to really know what star sign you are is to calculate it.
If you just want to know what Star Sign you are, you might want to just use the calculator above The following image is my favorite example that shows the sky split into 30 degree arcs, radiating from earth. It's from a book by Comte C. A Simple Method of Casting Horoscopes. It shows an ancient tool, with the planets in each Zodiac sign radiating from Earth in 30 degree arcs.