num_pages: 336
description: An illuminating look at the surprising history and science of astrology civilizations first system of algorithms from Babylon to the present day.Humans are pattern-matching creatures and astrology is our grandest pattern-matching game. In this refreshing work of history and analysis data scientist Alexander Boxer examines classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific and mathematical framework. Astrology he argues was the ancient worlds most ambitious applied mathematics problem a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of historys most brilliant minds from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler.A scheme of heaven or horoscope is recognized as pseudoscience today but was once considered a cutting-edge scientific tool. Not only does Boxer trace different applications of horoscopes back to their origins he also puts them to the test using modern data sets and statistical science arguing that todays data scientists do work similar to astrologers of yore.At once critical rigorous and far-ranging A Scheme of Heaven recontextualizes astrology as a vast technological projectspanning continents and centuriesthat foreshadowed our data-driven world today.
language: English
title: A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company