Is Astrology a valid science

Answer 1

No, Astrology is not a science at all.

Astronomy is a science.
All the different types of Astrology (Sun sign, Vedic, archetypal, natal, Horary) are based off of the same assumption that there is some force I the heavens that affects our lives on Earth. There are lots of different attributions for this force (some say gravity, some say electromagnetism, some say a force that cannot be measured), but it all boils down to the planets and stars having an effect on people.

If there is an effect, and it's real, it can be measured. That's pretty much by definition. Maybe it's not directly measured on an individual basis; maybe there is only a statistical effect. In other words, the effect cannot be shown for an individual, but only for groups of people.

First, let's see if there can be any effect from the planets and stars as astrologers claim. we'll take a look at the claims astrologers make about measured effects.

Farce of Nature

For just a moment, let's say that there is some force from the planets that can affect us here on Earth. What could it be?

Our choices are limited. Planets are big balls of ice, rock, metal, and other stuff. Their ability to affect us is weak because they are pretty far away. As far as we can tell in science, there are only four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two forces called the strong and weak force. Those last two only work (more or less) on the nuclei of atoms and subatomic particles. It's hard to see how they could affect us on a macroscopic scale (the strong force weakens so rapidly with distance that it's essentially gone by the time you're a few billionths of a meter from the source!).

So we're stuck with either gravity or electromagnetism. Let's look briefly at both.

We know quite a bit about how gravity works on large scales, scales like that of the solar system. Basically, the gravity of an object depends on two things: how much mass it has, and how far away it is. The more massive an object, the stronger its gravity. The closer it is, the more its gravity affects you.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter has about 25,000 times the mass of the Moon. That's a lot! But it's also about 1500 times farther away than the Moon at its closest to Earth. Which number wins in the game of gravity?

In this case, it's distance, by a long shot.

First, let me make something clear: there are two effects a planet can have. One is simply gravity, which basically means how hard that planet can pull on us. The other influence is tidal force, which is more complicated, but you can think of it as a stretching force rather than a simple pull. Think of it this way: a strong enough gravity could pull the Earth from its orbit, while a strong enough tide could rip it in half. Can the planets do this to us? Could they possibly send Earth flying into space, or rend us asunder (quick answer: no)? I will start with gravity, and then show why tides are even less important.

Gravity depends on two things: the mass of the object pulling on you, and its distance. The more mass something has, the stronger it pulls, and the farther away it is, the weaker it pulls. As a matter of fact, the strength depends on the square of the distance. If you double the distance, the force of gravity drops by 2 x 2=4. If you put something ten times farther away, the gravitational force drops by 10 x 10=100. You can see that gravity gets weak pretty quickly with distance.

The tidal force is much like gravity, but it drops with the cube of the distance. This makes it much less important in our case! Say you double the distance to an object. Its tidal force on the Earth drops by 2 x 2 x 2=8. If you increase its distance by a factor of ten, the tidal force drops by 10 x 10 x 10=1000! So tides are in fact much weaker than gravity.

So if we know the mass of an object and its distance, we can calculate the forces of both gravity and tides. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise to find out that the overwhelming winner in this game is the Earth's own Moon. It doesn't mass much (only about 1/80 of the Earth), but it is very close (Venus, the closest planet to the Earth, is at best 150 times farther away!).

Planet Mass(10^22 kg) Distance Gravity(Moon=1) Tides(Moon=1)

Mercury 33 92 0.00008 0.0000003

Venus 490 42 0.006 0.00005

Mars 64 80 0.0002 0.000001

Jupiter 200,000 630 0.01 0.000006

Saturn 57,000 1280 0.0007 0.0000002

Uranus 8,700 2720 0.00002 0.000000003

Neptune 10,000 4354 0.00001 0.000000001

Pluto ~1 5764 0.0000000006 0.00000000000004

Moon 7.4 0.384 1.0 1.0

Let's look at gravity first. Right away you can see that even mighty Jupiter, king of the planets, only pulls about 0.01 (= 1%) as hard as the Moon does (just to show how I did this, Jupiter masses 27,000 times the Moon, but is 1640 times farther away. The square of 1640 is about 2.7 million, and 27,000/2.7 million=0.01). Venus is next, with only 0.6 % of the Moon's force. After that, the numbers drop a lot. The total pull of all the planets combined is 0.017, not even 2% of the Moon's pull!

That ain't much. But is it enough to destroy the Earth?

No, it isn't. Think of it this way: the Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, which means that sometimes in its orbit it is closer to the Earth than others. At perigee, or closest approach, it is about 363,000 kilometers away, and at apogee, or farthest point, it is about 405,000 kilometers away. If you use these numbers like we did above, you see that the Moon's own gravitational effect on the Earth fluctuates by about 25% every orbit! The Moon orbits the Earth in about a month, incidentally, so it goes from apogee to perigee every two weeks. So every 14 days we see a change in gravitational effects from the Moon more than 10 times greater than all the other planets combined!

Now let's look at tides. Venus stretches us the most of the planets, simply because it is the closest on average. But look! Even Venus only stretches us 5 hundred thousandths as much as the Moon does! This is completely negligible, and the other planets have even less effect. The change in tidal force due to the Moon's elliptical orbit is hugely larger than the combined tides of all the planets. It's worth mentioning that the "alignment" in 2000 has all the planets on the far side of the Sun. This means that you can add 300 million kilometers to the above distances, and I think you can see that the numbers will drop even more. For example, Jupiter's gravity drops from 0.02 to 0.005, and Venus' tides drop by a factor of 500!

The bottom line is that at best, the gravity from the planets in our solar system is a tiny fraction of the Moon's. So if gravity were the force behind astrology, then the Moon would dominate all the planets combined. Yet it doesn't in any astrologer's horoscope.

So it's not gravity. Could it be electromagnetism?

Gravity depends on mass and distance. Electromagnetism (or just EM) depends on electric charge and distance. The problem here is that most large objects don't have an electric charge! Electric charges come from charged particles like electrons and protons. But opposite charges attract each other so well that it's very rare to find one without the other nearby, which means that a planet is electrically neutral overall.

An alternative astrological phenomenon

Some planets, for other reasons, do have magnetic fields. But these fields are only strong near their home planet. Jupiter's field is immense, but Jupiter is so far away it has no real effect on us. Furthermore, the Sun is far and away the largest EM source in the solar system. Its magnetic field directly affects us; when there is a gigantic flare, or other explosions on the surface of the Sun, vast streams of charged particles are sent sleeting out. These can interact with the Earth's own magnetic field, causing havoc (in 1989, such an event caused a blackout in Quebec). So if anything, the Sun should be the only source of astrological effects. However, astrologers tend to ignore it or still give the planets the lion's share of the astrological effect on us. Either way, the planets' combined force is miniscule compared to the Sun's. If EM is the force behind astrology, the planets could be safely ignored.

If gravity were the driving force of astrology, the Moon would dominate, but it doesn't. If EM were the driving force, the Sun would dominate, but it doesn't. We've run out of forces!

Astrologers' only hope is to posit some other force, unknown to science. However, that hope is bleak indeed. Why?

As far as we know, every force weakens with distance. An object farther away has lesser force on you than something closer. Yet astrologers claim that all the planets have equal (or at least comparable) effects, so nearby Venus and distant Pluto both exert some sort of measurable tug on you (at least, measurable in the sense that they can affect your life somehow). This means, by the astrologers' own claims, distance must not be a factor with this force. Obviously, mass mustn't either, or else Jupiter would dominate the planets, and poor tiny Mercury would be left out.

But this cannot be right! What about asteroids? These are chunks of rock and metal that also orbit the Sun along with planets. Most asteroids are closer to Earth than the outer planets (not that distance matters to astrologers, remember?), so they should have some effect. The problem is that there are many, many asteroids. My friend Dan Durda has calculated that there are a billion asteroids in the solar system larger than 100 meters in diameter. That's a lot of rock! So why don't astrologers include them in their horoscopes?

And it gets worse for astrology. Astronomers have now found about 150 planets orbiting other stars. These are very distant, certainly, but hey! Distance is no issue. So therefore these planets must affect us too. Now, these are only the planets we've discovered so far. Given how many we've found, and what kind of stars they tend to orbit, it's reasonable to assume that there are billions (billions!) of such planets in our galaxy alone. They're everywhere! Why don't astrologers include them in their horoscopes?

Here's another way to think of it. Astronomers (the real scientists) can determine that the planets are out there due to their real effects on their parent stars. If these planets affect us, as they must according to the astrologers' own set of rules, then why don't astrologers predict them? Why didn't any single astrologer 50 years ago say "There must be planets around other stars, because we can see it in our data!"? They didn't because they can't. Their "data" are meaningless. Again, by the rules used by astrologers, all those planets would simply overpower our own solar system planets, washing out their effects as simply and profoundly as the sound of a nuclear explosion would overpower a whisper.

Remember, and I keep repeating this because it's important-- this is playing by the astrologers' own rules. Either there is a known force, and we can show it doesn't work for astrology, or it's some unknown force that doesn't obey the laws of physics, in which case asteroids and extrasolar planets would dominate astrology, washing out the effects from our own solar system planets.

So it can't be a known or unknown force. That leaves nothing. Astrology doesn't work.

Inaccuracy We Trust

Another two-bit prediction I have talked to many people who claim their horoscopes are accurate. These people routinely say that it predicted something that came true.

But there are several possible logical missteps here! First, was the prediction really that accurate? Did it say something like "you will come into money today" and you found a quarter on the ground? Or was it something specific, like "you will find a quarter on the ground"? The difference is that a specific prediction is rarely right, while a vague one is rarely wrong.

Second, was that horoscope right in everything it said? Did an old friend contact you? Were you able to resolve a thorny issue today? Did you really find love today? In other words, how many predictions were accurate, and how many were not? People tend to remember the hits and forget the misses (which is precisely why "speakers to the dead" like John Edward and James van Praagh do so well.

Astrologers rely on our inability to remember when they are wrong, and our almost unfailing ability to see patterns in random noise (in other words, to pull out something that may just possibly kind of vaguely resemble something that describes us).

When investigated closely, and with a skeptical mind, astrological claims are smoke and mirrors.

Is there anything that really shows astrology is bunk?

Yes, there is.

In the spirit of giving the astrologers more rope, so to speak, let's assume that despite all the scientific evidence against such a thing, there really is an effect on us by the planets. If it exists, it must be measurable, and for astrologers to be able to use it to cast horoscopes, their claims must be consistent. After all, if a force cannot be measured, it cannot have an effect on us, and if astrologers say such a force exists, then all their claims must be based on that force, and should be consistent with each other.

Surprise! Astrologers' claims are not consistent. They're not even internally consistent.

So let's cut to it: astrologers claim they get results that are consistent. There have been studies, tests, experiments, all sorts of things to check this claim. The bottom line is, their claims are wrong.

How do I know? Because I read a wonderful paper, a very thoroughly researched, well-documented, and referenced paper, which shows precisely where astrology fails all its tests. This paper is titled Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi?" ( http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf ), and was written by Geoffrey Dean, a long-time astrology researcher, and Ivan Kelly, a professor of Educational Psychology and Special Education at the University of Saskatchewan.

The paper demolishes, utterly, any notion that astrology has any effect at all. They look at not only direct studies of astrology, but also "meta-studies", tests that are compiled together to improve statistics (a very powerful method that enables researchers to extract much better quality data from tests that are individually too borderline to give good results). As they say in their own paper abstract:

Many tests of astrologers have been made since the 1950s but only recently has a coherent review been possible. A large-scale test of persons born less than five minutes apart found no hint of the similarities predicted by astrology. Meta-analysis of more than forty controlled studies suggests that astrologers are unable to perform significantly better than chance even on the more basic tasks such as predicting extraversion [sociability]. More specifically, astrologers who claim to use psychic ability perform no better than those who do not.

In other words, astrology doesn't work. They detail the cases of people born at very close times and locations, what they call "time twins" (say, two babies born within minutes of each other at the same hospital). Astrologers, of course, would predict many similarities between time twins. But, as Dean and Kelly phrase it so succinctly, "The strong similarities predicted by astrology were simply not there".

This paper goes on with a very careful analysis of the studies, and also very carefully tries to discuss any flaws astrologers might bring up (for example, they use an astrologer's own definition of what a time twin would be). Simply put, the paper is devastating to astrology. It's also not terribly hard to read. Give it a try! I laughed out loud many times when reading it, it was so matter-of-fact in its dissection and eventual destruction of astrology

A Call to Harms

So what's the harm? Sure, astrology doesn't work, but it's all in fun, right?

Wrong.

For one thing, it's estimated that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on astrology every year in the United States alone. That's real money, folks, wasted on something that doesn't work.

For another, astrology promotes the worst thing in the world: uncritical thinking. The more we teach people to simply accept anecdotal stories, hearsay, cherry-picked data (picking out what supports your claims but ignoring what doesn't), and, frankly, out-and-out lies, the harder it gets for people to think clearly. If you cannot think clearly, you cannot function as a human being. I cannot stress this enough. Uncritical thinking is tearing this world to pieces, and while astrology may not be at the heart of that, it has its role.

For a third, and this one irritates me personally, astrology takes away from the real grandeur of the Universe. We live in an amazing place, this Universe of ours, and it's quite fantastic enough without needing people to make up things about it. Astrology dims the beauty of nature, cheapens it.

Hey, you might say, sure it's in the newspapers, but they put it next to comics, right? How seriously do newspapers take it then? My answer is, if newspapers don't take horoscopes seriously, then they shouldn't publish them in the first place. People know that comics aren't real, but not everyone understands astrology has as much legitimacy as "Blondie and Dagwood". Saying their location indicates their rationality is a cop out. Most newspapers in this country don't even have a science section, and science is critical to our daily lives (you're reading this on a computer, right? Do you wear glasses, or clothes, do you brush your teeth, take medicine, invest in tech stocks, drive a car? Thank science for all of those things then). They don't have a science section, but they'll publish horoscopes.

Also, back in the 1980s, Nancy Reagan, President Reagan's wife, consulted an astrologer to make sure that meetings and such were planned on auspicious dates astrologically. Her husband -- the President of the United States -- went along with it. Still don't think this is harmful? Arguably the most powerful man in the world, and he based his calendar on the random and unsubstantiated claims of an anti-scientific nonsense peddler.

Summing Up

I had a lot to say here! So just to make it easier on you, here are the main points of this page:

There is no force, known or unknown, that could possibly affect us here on Earth the way astrologers claim. Known forces weaken too fast, letting one source utterly dominate (the Moon for gravity, the Sun for electromagnetism). An unknown force would allow asteroids and extrasolar planets to totally overwhelm the nearby planets.

Astrologers tend to rely on our ability to remember hits and forget misses. Even an accurate prediction may be simple chance.

Study after study has shown that claims and predictions made by astrologers have no merit. They are indistinguishable from chance, which means astrologers cannot claim to have some ability to predict your life's path.

There is harm, real harm, in astrology. It weakens further people's ability to rationally look at the world, an ability we need now more than ever.

Sources:

badastronomy

seds.lpl.arizona.edu

imprint.co.uk

Answer 2

No, astrology is not a science. It doesn't meet the criterion to be considered a science. What astrology says it does it cannot do repeatedly, and repeatability is a fundamental concept of science.

Answer 3

Yes

The "Study of the Stars" is a very complex science.