The Rational Wiki Versus Astrology — Part Three of Three
By: Timothy James Lambert
Tags: Four Fundamental Forces, Astrology, Quantum Entanglement, The Rational Wiki

The Rational Wiki Versus Astrology — Part Three of Three

Reasoned Responses to the Strongest Arguments Against Astrology: Fundamental Forces

The Ptolemaic cosmography — Image Credits

This is the third of three articles, in which I respond to the arguments put forth on the Rational Wiki concerning astrology.¹ Let us continue with a review of the best arguments against astrology from the sharpest minds that contribute to Rational Wiki.²

Potential forces

Fundamentally, astrology is the assertion that stuff happening in space affects us here — astrologers may suggest that it allows for predictions, but such predictions would not be possible if a connection did not somehow exist. This section explores whether such forces could exist. Astrologers may claim straw man here, but if there were a theoretically possible way to determine future events (or dictate personality types), there would be some connection whether they like it or not.

There is no known mechanism whereby a person could be significantly influenced by distant celestial bodies. A psychological explanation — where pretty shapes in the sky sub-consciously alter people’s moods, perceptions, or desires, like an accidental form of advertising or brainwashing — is unlikely as stars and celestial objects don’t tend to be visible during the day and, with the exception of very dramatic events such as eclipses, all look the same to the untrained eye. In addition, viewing the stars (in order to be psychologically influenced by them) isn’t a prerequisite for astrology as a predictive mechanism to work.

This is a fascinating approach. Here we have the skeptics trying to work out how astrology might possibly function. The first suggestion above is so absurd as to be embarrassing, which is that the pretty pictures in the sky somehow influence people’s moods.

More “physical” explanations are equally unlikely — this requires briefly looking into the physics that could possibly be behind it. The fundamental natural forces in nature are the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force. The strong and weak forces are nuclear forces and are not applicable to interactions between people and objects such as planets or stars — their strengths tail off so dramatically that they barely have any effect outside the nucleus of an atom, let alone at the macroscopic scale. Similarly, the electrostatic force — while acting at greater distances than nuclear forces — becomes completely negligible at a modest distance, and does not act in any way over astronomical distance.

A solar prominence erupts in August 2012 — Image Credits

Then, in a somewhat misconceived attempt to appear scientific, three of the four fundamental forces are dismissed as being applicable. This is, however, erroneous. Indeed, if the earlier parts of this article have shown us anything, it is that the Sun is a fundamental component of astrology. The entire logic of the zodiac is based on the interplay between the Sun and the tilt of the Earth. The Sun’s influence on the Earth is primarily due to the energy that the Sun produces through nuclear fusion, a process that could not occur without both the strong and weak nuclear forces.

This leaves us with the one remaining “long-distance” force; gravity. However, despite working over far vaster distances than other forces, it is still practically impossible for planets to influence actions on Earth. Gravity follows the inverse square law, that is, that gravitational strength is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance. As distance increases, gravitational pull decreases very dramatically; something that moves to twice as far away exerts a quarter of the gravitational pull, something three times further away exerts a ninth of the gravitational pull. Newton’s law of gravitation can be used to show that, at its closest approach to Earth, the planet Mars exerts approximately the same gravitational force on a person as a 50-ton fully-loaded big rig placed 15 yards from that same person. The star Alpha Centauri A has a mass of 1.1 solar masses and is one of the three stars closest to Earth, yet its gravitational pull on a person is comparable to that of a 100-gram cellphone at 9 meters. The moon and sun, being closer, exert more force on the earth and result in the changing of tides (although this system is a little more complex than “the moon pulls water towards it”). Astrology is often not limited to just these two objects with the highest degree of gravitational interference and even so, these should — like with water in the tides — affect everyone equally.[Scientific American — Lunacy and the Full Moon]

The great distances of these objects produce a further problem. Their pull on us is very close to their pull on the Earth as a whole. This differential pull is the tidal force, and it goes as the inverse cube of the distance. Not surprisingly, tidal forces are even smaller than overall gravitational ones. The planet Mars produces as much tidal effect on us as a small sand grain (diameter: 0.1 millimeters) at 1 yard or meter, and Alpha Centauri as much as a small virus (diameter: 30 nanometers) at that distance.

Matter changes the geometry of spacetime, this geometry being interpreted as gravity — Image Credits

In the two paragraphs above, the skeptics explain how gravitation can not be the force behind astrology.

Astrological forces, furthermore, are allegedly powerful enough that they cannot be escaped by shielding or descent underground. It is possible to evade electromagnetic radiation of all kinds. Although it is possible to protect oneself from electromagnetic radiation (radio waves, infrared and ultraviolet radiation, visible light, X-rays) and ionizing radiation by shielding or going underground, astrological ‘forces’ supposedly can pass through lead-lined shielding or several meters of rock or hundreds of meters of water — the latter not creating its own astrological effects. Going into a mine, tunnel, cave, or submarine in an effort to avoid ‘unfavorable’ influences in one’s horoscope gives one no protection (not that mines, tunnels, caves, and submarines are without their own dangers).

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.

What is this impossible force? I do not claim that there is a real force at work. However, if I were put in the position of having to defend astrology, I would put forward one hypothesis: Quantum entanglement.

The generation of an entangled pair of photons — Image Credits

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance.

When we look back at the formation of the solar system, we find that it began as a cloud of stellar dust. This cloud eventually condensed through gravitational forces to form our solar system. All of the material was mixed into a soupy broth, 99.86% of which went on to form the Sun. The remaining material became the planets, their satellites, as well as the comets, asteroids, and dwarf planets. As this material was thoroughly mixed during the gas cloud phase, the material, on the whole, is sure to be entangled on the quantum level. Material that was destined to become part of the Earth interacted with bits of material, most of which ended up in the Sun, but a significant amount of which found itself swept up into the other planets.

Artist’s concept of a protoplanetary disk — Image Credits

From this perspective, all of the members of the solar system are linked in a network of quantum entanglement. This suggests that the mechanism behind astrology, if one is inclined to think in those terms, is less a force and more a transmission of information among a network of interconnected nodes.

Finally, we come to the most relevant criticism of astrology from the members of Rational Wiki. The fact that it simply does not work.

Testing of predictive value

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. The American Federation of Astrologers suggests that astrology is “all in the timing” [American Federation of Astrologers — main page] which can be read as a tacit admission that a prediction that happens to be wrong was just badly timed, and therefore shouldn’t count. 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.

Simple tests of horoscopes can be made by cutting the predictions and scrambling what signs they refer to — or perhaps asking astrologers and/or amateurs to match the description with the sign. As people happily read what they like into statements as vague as horoscopes, this never ends in astrology’s favor.[Paranormal Encyclopedia — Astrology Experiment] A test titled “A Scientific Inquiry into the Validity of Astrology” had this to say in its abstract, demonstrating a fairly easy test protocol that should differentiate astrology being reliable and being bullshit:

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 16-P.F. Personality Inventory. Astrologers did no better than chance or than a non-astrologer 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.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

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 1985.[A double-blind test of astrology, Nature 318, 419–425][Skeptical Studies in Astrology] Here, astrology was “given every reasonable chance to succeed,” according to the author, but it failed. 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[Astrology News Service — Support for Astrology from the Carlson Double-Blind Experiment].

There we have it. Astrology does not seem to work. Frankly, it would be rather shocking if the results came out otherwise. Some of this stuff, like the photos of the people, how much influence, honestly, could astrology have versus, I don’t know, let’s say, hereditary traits passed down from one’s parents? Imagine if an astrologer could match case files and photos to astrological birth charts. That would be incredible, but it is not likely to ever happen. At least not unless the members of the study group were familiar with their birth charts and had come to take on those qualities either consciously or unconsciously. Even then, it is unlikely that physical characteristics are going to correspond to one’s horoscope. For instance, redheads are supposed to have a strong Mars in their charts, preferably in the rising sign. A more likely cause of red hair is once again to be found in one’s genetic makeup.

Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash

And yet, for myself, I find my birth or natal horoscope to be incredibly accurate. Is this a result of confirmation bias, the Forer effect, or some other phenomenon? We will return to this question in an upcoming article.

If astrology does not define a person’s character, nor predict future events, what good is it at all? We will explore astrology’s considerable value later.