Astrologists: Facts And Fictions

Astrology is a set of traditions and systematic beliefs that are founded on the notion that the relative positions of stars, planets, etc. can explain or predict fate, personality, human affairs, and other earthly conditions and circumstances. The most relevant bodies are the sun, moon, and planets, and although astrology is commonly characterized as “reading the stars”, there are no actual stars involved in Western astrology. As a craft, astrology is a combination of basic astronomy, mysticism, divination, and prophecy. It is regarded by the scientific community as pseudoscience, for making predictive claims and connections which either cannot be falsified or which have consistently failed to be confirmed.

A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer. Some astrologers see astrology as a broadly symbolic language, one in which only general themes of life, love, and death are implicated; others see more direct and specific influences on human and mundane affairs. Some see astrology as prognostic, with the planets controlling human destiny; others see it as determinative, with the planets defining our personalities and who we are.
Numerous traditions and applications employing astrological concepts have arisen since its earliest recorded beginnings in the 3rd millennium BC. Astrology has played a critical role in the shaping of culture, early astronomy, and various disciplines throughout history. In fact, astrology and astronomy were often regarded as synonyms before the modern era, with the desire for predictive and divinity knowledge one of the motivating factors for astronomical observation.

Astronomy began to diverge from astrology, in the Muslim world during the turn of the second millennium AD, and in Europe after a gradual separation from the Renaissance up through the 18th century. Eventually, astronomy distinguished itself as the empirical study of astronomical objects and phenomena. In 2006 the U.S. You will not be able to find a single National Science Board member that will tell you that astrology is anywhere close to an actual, empirical scientific endeavor. There are psychological explanations for much of the continued faith in astrology as a matter of cognitive biases.