Astrology is pseudoscience.

Hello! Seems like an interesting debate. I will give it a try! I will argue that there isn"t enough evidence to claim that astrology is false. However, astrology doesn"t operate in a strict scientific way. When an astrologer reads your natal chart he or she doesn"t need to have to justify the conclusions reached that is within the realm of our current scientific knowledge since, I admit, astrology researchers are still in the process of trying to understand adn determine the cause of the causality that celestial bodies' movements have on humans. In studies where there have been poven causality between the said points to a potential cause. In fact, its on this premise that science operates; it makes knowledgeable attempts at developing theories that can account for observations. I will argue that whether or not astrology should be considered science or a potential candidate for being a domain of scientific inquiry, there isn"t suifficent evidence to say that it is "pseudoscience". Stephen Hawking once suggested that the universe might be curved and he was laughed at. Now that is the prevailing view among the scientific community. Even though something can"t be explained at the moment doesn"t mean that there is no explanation at all. We also need to define what astrology is. Astrology follows a set of rules about the relative positions and movements of celestial bodies have an effect on the moment of time. Astrology can thus make predictions about events on earth as well as to explain human personality traits based on the moment of birth. Though some astrologers work with stars and constellations, western astrologers work with the Sun, the Moon and the planets (including Pluto) within the Solar System. There are, however some distinct differences between different fields of astrology that is important to point out. Conventional astrology used by astrologers is not the same as the astrology you read about in the magazines used to foretell how your day is going to be. There has to be a clear distinction between what is real astrology and pseudoastrology in order for the us to set the debate in a constructive course. For an individual astrology is a psychological tool translated into a chart that includes all planets (as well as the Sun, Moon, and Pluto), 12 houses and 12 signs from which you can extrapolate information about a person`s personality traits. It is, however, - and I do want to stress this point - not the same as the astrology you read about in the magazines. There has to be a clear distinction between what is real astrology and pseudoastrology in order for the us to set the debate in a constructive course . Unlike what my opponent stated, Astrology is as old as 5000 years old and has been a tool used by many of the greatest empires we know of today. In fact, in 1988 Reagan regularly changed the dates of his top-meetings based upon the advice of his astrologers. To give an historic outline of how the knowledge of the origins of astrology and how it has progressed, the sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia between Euphrates and Tigris, were the first ones to avail themselves by astrology. The priests were the ones who took notes of their observations of the heavenly bodies and, based on which, they were able to make predictions about the constellations of the relative positions of the sun, the moon and the other planets. From Mesopotamia it spread to Egypt from which astrology was further refined and eventually spread to other areas of the world. Even though the knowledge of astrology weren"t known to many people at the time, some things that were seen as common knowledge actually emanated from astronomical observations. For instance, the knowledge that grapes were growing better when cultivated when Orion had reached its peak, was a great benefit for the ancient greeks . In fact the knowledge that has been put forth by astrology has been useful for several millennia and hence the knowledge has been protected, cherished and expounded upon over the course of time. The fact that heavenly bodies affect life on earth was known then as it is now. Even though some of the things that were unknown in the past are now under the scope of our scientific understanding, there are still things that we are not able to explain using the context of our current scientific understanding. In fact, several experiments have been performed that points to the fact that the heavenly bodies have quite a large effect on subjects on earth than perhaps sceptics would submit. One example of this is an experiment performed by Professor Frank Brown in the 60s that showed that oysters that were moved from Long Island to his laboratory in Evanston followed the rhythm of the moon. At Long Island they opened and closed in relationship to the tide. However, when they were in Evanston close north to Chicago, approximately 100000 miles from the coast, there was no tide. Thus, it turned out that the oysters in Evanston opened and closed simultaneously with the tide . In order to determine whether astrology is scientific we first have to look at what science is. If I look up the word in the Oxford dictionary it reads as follows: "The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." So basically, what constitutes science is a field of study that can be observed and tested in a concrete matter. Thus, in order for Astrology to be considered a "legitimate science" it must meet the definition of science, and conform to the rules of science. The scientific method sets out to descibe a theory in the following way: First, one has to be able to describe a phenomena observed in nature, establish an hypothesis to account for that observation, use that hypothesis to predict other events which would be tested by several experiments in order to ascertain whether the hypothesis can be reliable or not. Hence the first question is whether or not Astrology can be subjected to falsification by the scientific method. Before I set out to show that it can be, I must stress that it is extremely difficult to obtain sufficient accurate objective data. To isolate the huge number of variables involving astrology and human behaviour is not as easy task. To falsify an experiment the whole experiment has to be replicated. That would mean that the unique conditions of someone"s planetary positions during the moment of the persons birth has to be identical to a that of a new subject - the uniqueness of which has never been repeated within recorded human history. Another thing to emphasize is that the Experimenter effect, i.e. a cognitive bias by the researcher which unconsciously causes them to influence the performance or the subjects in the eperiment in a way that distorts the findings and affects the outcome of the experiment, is potentially stronger than in an experiment involving for instance chemistry or physics since the experiment involvs not something tangible as certain physical laws but human behaviour. Thus, the criteria that the experimenter uses, the data that he or she selects as well as the results are particularly open to conscious or unconscious biases. Statistics used in physics and chemistry is pretty straightforward. To put that in contrast to astrologic statistics, the data and the variables are more varied and complex, results can obviously be misrepresented and skewed . As phychology Profesor Hans Eysenck stated: "testing astrology is a complex and difficult field, as indeed all fields relating to psychological variables". However, astrology can be subjected to scientific testing. A comprehensive study conducted by Gauquelin (1984) collected data from over 20,000 eminent individuals from various European countries and United States. What he detected was that successes in different areas was statistically correlated with certain out of the ordinary diurnal positions of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and the moon. In one of his findings, a phenomena now commonly known as "he Mars effect, namely that Mars has either risen over the horizon or passed its upper culmination, was documented and was found to have played a significant role for not only athletes but for military leaders, chief executives and physicians. Generally he found that certain planetary positions at birth when the planets had reached their upper culmination was associated with exceptional professional accomplishments. His findings thus corroborates what astrologers have pointed out for several millennia, namely that certain angles planets (or the moon) manifests prominently in the individual. 1.http://astrology.about.com... 2.http://www.horoscopeswithin.com... http://www.historyworld.net... 3.http://cecaust.com.au... 4.http://www.astrologer.com... 5.http://www.scientificexploration.org...