In addition to Phil Plaitt’s Bad Astronomy post on the rejiggering of astrological signs and the possible addition of Ophiuchus, can I just add that the constellations themselves are an arbitrary, human construct? Ptolemy had 48. We have 88.
For example, it’s our convention that the three stars in Orion form the belt of a warrior, but we could have combined some asterisms in that general area together differently to form, say, two separate constellations. Anyone who’s spent time with a star chart can see that some of the groupings are more-or-less a random collections, or at least they appear that way without a history lesson. So, of course, it’s beyond silly to think that the position of the sun traveling through our imposed arrangement of stars could have any impact on human life.
No matter. We’re still going to have to listen to a bunch of “why have scientists done this” horseshit about a constellation that’s been named since the dawn of civilization, apparently because whoever’s in charge of the astrological mumbo-jumbo just discovered precession.
jibeaux
I enjoy learning about obscure news bits and controversies here, but hrm. Possibly a bit too obscure for me.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
First they came for Pluto, remember.
mistermix
@jibeaux: It’s a big topic in local news “what will they think of next” features – don’t worry, you’ll hear about it soon.
cathyx
I always thought that when I read my horoscope in a magazine that all of the different signs could apply to me and my situation.
mistermix
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Science ruins everything.
SP
My high school science teacher was talking about how there were really 13 zodiac constellations in the early 90s. He preferred “jetology” wherein you look up the flight patterns that occurred on the day of your birth, since the gravitational effect of jets is much larger than that of starts billions of miles away.
evinfuilt
For some reason astrologers still think we should take them serious. I would hope that some people realize it’s all BULL after this, but people love their make believe.
Oh, you should have plugged Phil Plaitts last book Death from the Skies, now that’s a fun read. Sometimes hard to remember that you’re actually learning real science while giggling at his stories.
Poopyman
IIRC, the IAU redrew the constellation boundaries a couple of times, in part to keep up with precession, but that obviously couldn’t continue.
I for one welcome our new Ophiuchan overlords. (FWIW, I was taught the same pronunciation as Dr. Plait.)@cathyx: Yep! About as specific as fortune cookies. And pulled from the same source.
morzer
Is this Tom Delay’s next excuse? Shall we hear pleas that he committed his crimes because liberals messed with his star sign?
Sly
So are planets. Planet comes from the Greek word planetes, meaning wanderer. For the ancient Greek astronomers, a planet was anything that moved against the background of “fixed” stars. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, the Sun. When we figured out that the Moon and the Sun were different, they got their own category.
The result is that we have a word that has lost its meaning as out methods of observing space have become more sophisticated. When all you saw were little lights in the sky that appeared to move, and didn’t know what those lights precisely were, grouping them all together under one term was easy. But now we know not only what they are, but how they are different from one another. And an object like Mercury does not have a lot in common with an object like Jupiter.
Neil Degrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium (and one of my favorite speakers) gave a great talk about the inadequacy of the word “planet” in the context of Pluto and the new category of “Dwarf Planet”.
Redshirt
I’m all for dismissing hokum, but I think it’s important to note that Gods, constellations, the zodiac, animism, etc, collectively, were mankind’s first attempts at science. That is: Something is happening/observed, we want to know why, we’ve made a hypothesis for a reason, now let’s find out.
Thus, the first Medicine Men/Priests/Mojo workers in human history we’re also very likely the first proto-scientists too.
It’s just that now, we’ve got better tools, and don’t need to invent an angry man to explain lightning. Or at least, most of us don’t.
Redshirt
Also, “sunrise” and “sunset”.
The sun is doing no such thing.
shortstop
I have a dear friend whose wife is absolutely obsessed with astrology. Everyone loves her husband, but when she enters a room, people flee. They know that she will haul every single conversational thread around to Capricorn rising or the moon in the sixth house or whatever. Ironically, she enjoys complaining about the presumption of Jesus freaks who insist on talking to her about Christianity.
We all entertain ourselves around her by misrepresenting our birthdates and nodding gravely at her earnest explanations of why we’re perfect examples of whatever the fake birthday’s zodiac sign is.
Poopyman
BTW, the Globe points to this WaPo BlogPost with the new astrological dates. Great! Now I’m a Taurus! I ain’t no damned Taurus! I’m a Gemini! I want my zodiac back! Waaa!
jeffreyw
I was born under a bad sign, but thanks to modern astronomy my sign has gone from bad to “meh”.
Scott
I prefer making up my own constellations. When we were kids, we used to like stargazing in the summer and once managed to find a collection of stars that looked like a shopping cart. Thus was born Cartius…
PurpleGirl
@SP: Ophiuchus has been known for many years. My science teacher told us about the 13 constellations back in the 1960s. When I took astronomy classes in college we talked about it also and the constructs developed by people.
Poopyman
@Redshirt: Exactly. Based on the science available at the time, Genesis is an accurate account of the beginning of the universe. Of course, as science became more sophisticated, some of us have moved on.
stuckinred
I never believed in this and I always fit the bad boy scorpio to a t.
Poopyman
@Scott: Beats Antlia.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I did my 7th grade science project on Astrology, actually interviewing an astrologer. I asked her about Ophiuchus, and her answer was that it didn’t matter.
The best sign about the arbitrariness of the zodiac is when you look it up on Wikipedia. There’s a chart about half way down comparing the astrology dates for the signs versus when the sun is actually within the signs.
I’ve had to look this up a lot because my youngest has gotten very, very interested in astronomy.
shortstop
@Sly: You make good sense there, pal, but I’m still privately grieving over the downgrading of Pluto. We go to all this trouble in second grade to learn the mnemonic poems — and for what?!
You saw this, of course? Fascinating stuff.
jibeaux
@Poopyman:
I don’t want to be a Virgo either. I’m switchin’ over to that Chinese calendar that’s on menus. Strictly basing decisions on the YEAR of my birth from here on out.
Lihtox
In any conversation about constellations, I am compelled to mention H.A. Rey’s book The Stars, in which he redraws (most of) the constellations so that they look like what they’re supposed to look like. It’s still in print after 50+ years, and I’m always amazed that it hasn’t been universally adopted.
Here it is on Amazon.
MattF
This is, um, old news. The technical term for the rotation of the earth’s orbit with respect to the fixed stars is precession of the equinoxes, and is an effect that has been known since ancient times. If there’s a question here, it’s “Why is this particular reality-based item appearing right now?”
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@jeffreyw:
Ha!
Chris
The interesting thing is, I already knew about Ophiuchus. Ten or elven years or so ago I remember going to a planetarium and having the constellations explained to the audience; when they hit upon the signs of the Zodiac, the person giving the lecture explained that they’d been changed; in the original construct, there were thirteen not twelve signs, the thirteenth being the sign of the Serpent (which is what Ophiuchus is). This isn’t an addition, it’s a restoration.
Am I the only one who’d heard all about this before…?
EDIT: correction, Ophiuchus isn’t the Serpent, it’s the Serpent-Bearer (the person grasping the serpent constellation), so it isn’t the same constellation and wouldn’t be a restoration after all. My mistake.
Punchy
Finally, Senor Mix speaks for me. I’ve loooooooong looked at the sky and wondered, “Just how in the fuck do they get a BEAR out of 4 stars and a satellite?”. I hate constellations. More subjective than a pr0n movie review. And then to ascribe horror-scopes based on a 30-day window in which you’re born? Redunkulous.
Gravie
No one’s going to want to be an “Ophiuchus.” It just sounds too silly.
stuckinred
@MattF: Who cares?
Jack
@evinfuilt:
Fixed for you…
R-Jud
@Lihtox: This, this, this. A wonderful great-uncle bought me that book when I was eight and I destroyed over the years because I used it so much. I’m on my third copy. It’s so wonderful to go out in the night and spot stars at a glance.
I give it out to young stargazers I know and all of them love it. It also gives concise explanations of the equinoxes and other astronomical phenomena (say those two words four times fast).
I believe it’s also where I learned about Ophiuchus being in the Zodiac, although not “in” the “Zodiac”.
shortstop
Yeah, MISTERMIX, it’s called precession, which you can find on Wiki. Learn something, dude.
Dork
Both sides do it, ya see. This is clearly an example of star libel.
Chris
@Gravie:
As an Ophiuchus, I agree. But call it the Serpent-Bearer, which is what that means, and they sure as hell will!
Poopyman
@jibeaux: Ditto. I’m a Horse!
Omnes Omnibus
The “new” sign is a snakehandler? Mebbe it is appropriate.
R-Jud
@Chris:
Actually, it’s the serpent-holder. Ophiuchus was a healer who cured snakebites.
Poopyman
@Gravie: Actually, when I was in college back in the 70’s one of my astronomy classmates always answered the question “What’s your sign?” with “Ophiuchus”. Never failed to shut them up.
The guy never got any dates, either.
cmorenc
This is literally true, not a snark, although it is a fun factoid that utterly ridicules astrology:
A 16 oz beer in your refrigerator 20 feet away from where you’re sitting on your couch exerts MORE gravitational influence on your body (via its mass) than the ENTIRE planet of Mars ever does at any position in its orbit relative to Earth. (Mars is one of the key planets in astrology).
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus:
“If there were a snake here I’d apologize”
groucho
Poopyman
@Lihtox: Call me old fashioned, but I’ll stick with Uranometria.
giltay
To be fair, Orion is a pretty compelling asterism. Many cultures have a constellation of a man there. The Big Dipper, too, although non-Sumerian-Egyptian-Greek derived constellations don’t include the stars that make up Ursa Major. (Seriously, a bear with a tail?) But dimmer, less compact, less anthropomorphic constellations are just whatever caught on in whatever region. I still have a problem with Boötes or Auriga. Or the Great Square of Pegasus. They were just making things up to fill out the sky at that point, I think.
Fun fact: Scorpius’ claws originally extended much further, until they were replaced by a new constellation, Libra. The names of the two brightest stars are Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, Arabic for southern claw and northern claw. (Most star names are Arabic.)
I was surprised that all this kerfuffle came from an astronomer making a remark about precession*. It’s not a new thing at all. The Greek astronomer Hipparchus figured it out in the second century BCE, and it’s common knowledge in astronomy, but not, apparently, astrology (to be fair, there are some astrologers who are aware and do take it into account; I’m sure there are Tolkien fans who take precession into account in Middle-Earth astronomy).
The thing is, astrology has nothing to do with actual stars (besides the sun). It’s all about plotting the course of the planters through the houses of the zodiac (ie the area around the ecliptic—the plane of the solar system projected into the sky). Those houses were named in ancient times after the prominent zodiacal constellations in them, but the houses have moved.
*Precession: The north pole moves in a 22,000 year circle. If you spin a top, you’ll notice that there’s a second, slower spin, as its axis turns about. The Earth does the same thing, for the same reason: torque. (At this point I wave my hands, because fuckin’ torque: how does it work?)
Poopyman
@cmorenc: Well, that certainly explains the attraction.
Mmmmmmmmm, beer!
piratedan
and all this time I only had David Weber’s call to them in one of his space opera series to go by as a reference…. thanks for broadening my horizons ;-)
Superluminar
I was once set up on a date by a female aquaintance (who i really wanted to get with) with another incredibly attractive girl. We had a ten minute walk to the club we were going to during which she spent the entire time babbling about astrology. I couldn’t take anymore and had a rant about how much bullshyte it all was, to be told “oh that’s just typical Aries behaviour” (my sign).
/didn’t get laid ‘cos im an idiot
giltay
I’ll also point out that “I’m an Ophiuchan” is an old astronomer’s joke. It gives me warm fuzzies that Ophiuchus; a large, dim, diffuse weird constellation; is trending on Twitter.
scav
@jibeaux: Careful, that’s the Chinese year you’re playing with. Gotta get a high-class placemat to do the conversions carefully. Then there’s the whole Cat or Rabbit controversy.
Poopyman
@giltay:
Odd that you should bring that up, because at least one of the Native-American nations had the same asterism as a long-tailed bear.
And of course, there’s a tale about how bear lost his tail.
Face
Word. One minute the satellite is the nose, then 10 minutes later it’s his asshole. Then you gotta wait 4 days till shit lines up again where it’s back to being his nose.
Lynn Dee
When I was little, I loved looking at pictures of the constellations. But I also remember looking with great perplexity at what the constellations supposedly depicted, with the figures drawn in by hand, and thinking: “I don’t get it. I’m not seeing it.”
Wouldn’t it be great for kids if adults admitted this up front?! “Yeah, we don’t see it either. But we love that humans have been studying the stars from the beginning.”
:D
Poopyman
@giltay:
At this point, I hope you’re only waving your right hand. (Physics joke. Sorry.)
Omnes Omnibus
@jibeaux: According t the traditional calculations, I am a Leo and a Dragon. It is like being a Leo squared (or Dragon squared). Since it is all BS, I shall stick with the traditional way.
shortstop
@Poopyman: I love that story, and I think there are some other folkloric versions out there as well. But at one point, bears — which are sort of cousins to dogs — actually did have long, bushy tails, similar to foxes’ tails.
Lymie
So, am I the only one who thought this was an Onion piece because I thought “Ophiuchus” would be pronounced “Oh-fook-us”??
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Holy shit you’re my father. I don’t think that combination is merely squared: it’s cubed or hyper-dimensional or something. Parabolic.
peach flavored shampoo
@cmorenc: You’re full of shit. Nobody has 16oz beers in their fridge.
batemapa
Astrology dates are wrong at least part of the time any way you slice it. Why not just make up your own constellations and make them mean whatever you want them to mean? Some asshole(s) did a couple thousand years ago and created an entire industry of pseudo-science, why can’t you?
Poopyman
@shortstop:
Yes, but the tails were gone by the time humans came along. And yet we have two cultures half a world apart seeing long-tailed bears in the sky. I love these mysteries.
mistermix
@Poopyman: What’s your Bayer designation, dude?
Less Popular Tim
@Lihtox:
Well, I’m not very interested in constellations, but I might get a pet monkey on the basis of his other books– Looks like great fun!
Disclaimer: Do not get a pet monkey.
mistermix
@shortstop: Damn, I should have linked to that.
Poopyman
@mistermix: Whoa! I can’t help but read that and think “What’s the frequency, Kenneth.”
Bob In Pacifica
It was unrealistic that 1/12 of humanity woke up to the same predictable events. 1/13 is more likely. Plus, people can either check their old sign or their new sign and choose which horoscope is better.
Poopyman
@mistermix: I am neither the alpha nor the omega, so there’s that.
giltay
@Poopyman: That puzzles me, too. I’m tempted to think that this is some dimly-remembered evolutionary ancestor to a modern bear that had a tail, or some other animal who became a bear in retelling the stories, but I have no evidence, so they’re both just-so stories.
shortstop
@mistermix: I trust you’ll do better next time, sir.
shortstop
@Poopyman: Now, you know that’s not true, or Jesus wouldn’t have ridden a dinosaur, and we know that He did.
(Seriously, I love these mysteries, too.)
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Luke?
scav
@scav: Seriously, he was the only one in the family who’s character came anywhere near the traditionally ascribed one and he was a rabid physicist and programmer. We could wind him up til he’d be spluttering. That and auras.
Paul in KY
@shortstop: Y’all are so bad!
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m keeping the hand.
Paul in KY
@Punchy: I could never see how those star patterns made up the creatures either.
Omnes Omnibus
Since Obama’s birthday, is one day (and a couple-three years) off from mine, something occurs to me. Wingnuts will like this “scientific” calculation because it “proves” that Obama is a Cancer.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I’d say the refridgerator also exterts more mass. Also. Too.
Hedges Ahead
This isn’t anything precisely new, discovering precession. People who study astrology seriously (yes they exist) have to take into account the differences between tropical (Ptolemy era date span calculations) and sidereal (contemporary calculations) calenders to get at the ‘true’ relations of ascendancy amongst the planets and constellations. It’s similar to including the Coriolis effect in your ballistic calculations for say, ship-board fire. But the whole thing is rubbish, because they haven’t yet taken Rupert into account.
Paul in KY
@Less Popular Tim: I knew some people who had a pet monkey once. Much, much more difficult & time consuming than having any cat/dog.
One example: If monkey needs to be taken to vet, you cannot take monkey. Must get some other person to take monkey, as monkey will remember who took it to vet & will not like that person, ever. Stuff like that.
Poopyman
@Paul in KY:
Well, no. But you’re not a shepherd sitting out under the stars night after night after night and drinking … whatever. Wine, I guess.
R-Jud
@Hedges Ahead:
I’ve heard it’s mostly harmless. Oh no, wait– that’s us. Never mind.
Winston Smith
@SP: Ophiuchus is a traditional part of the Zodiac. It was eliminated in the 19th Century, I believe.
Greco/Roman Astrology has nothing to do with gravitational fields. It has to do with the belief that the planets and constellations give us hints into what the gods are up to.
So, if you believe that the position of Jupiter means something about your life or what’s going on in the world, it ought to be because you believe that tells us something about what Zeus is up to.
Astrology is part of an ancient polytheist religion. The pseudo-science we have today was concocted in the 19th Century in response to a growth of scientific knowledge and the new fad of giving legitimacy to things by making them “scientific.”
Paul in KY
@Poopyman: Excellent point. Hadn’t thought of that. Also, except for a few times when I was out at sea, I have never seen the night sky without light pollution. Might be gas clouds up there that helped define a particular constellation.
Citizen Alan
I still think the whole “13th Zodiac sign” thing is an elaborate hoax that no one has debunked yet simply because serious astronomers don’t give a shit about astrology and so they haven’t been paying any attention to the hub-bub. I could accept that due to the progression of the equinoxes or whatever that the dates for the Zodiac signs have shifted and even that there is now room for a 13th sign. But I CANNOT accept that the new sign just happens to look like is should be pronounced “O fuck us!”
Poopyman
@Citizen Alan: When one is giving presentations to the public one needs to be very careful with pronunciation.
Cyrus
As people have said, this is nothing new… and if even CNN has noticed that this is nothing new, then it’s really, really not new.
cmorenc
Astronomically, there are lots of interesting objects to look at with a telescope in Ophiuchus; several bright globular clusters in particular (M10, M12, M14, M19) easily visible even in modest-aperture refractor telescopes e.g. 90mm, plus a swarm of less bright, but still beautiful globular clusters around its southern border with Scorpius. Globular clusters are roughly spherical clumps of 100k to a million extremely ancient (10-12 billion year old) stars averaging roughly 100 light years across, and strongly resemble the explosion of a 4th of July fireworks floret. They are incredibly beautiful from darker skies using a telescope with enough aperture and quality to resolve hundreds of the brighter individual stars. Most of the ones visible from earth lie anywhere from 7500 to 40,000 light-years away. They are satellites of the Milky Way itself.
Cyrus
@Poopyman:
Mystery? How about “bears are important to any culture where people still get eaten by them, people look for shapes of important things in random or pseudorandom things like stars, and one big collection of stars is kinda bearlike and even more bearlike if you assume a bear with a bigger tail than usual”? Some species of bears do have tails naturally, they’re just small.
RSR
The Maya have their own astronomy; same stars, different myths:
mayaskies.org/
Davis X. Machina
Was just running this through with my Greek class. It’s a happy accident that when the standard dingbats-and-symbols were being gathered for fontification, the astrology signs went in, of course, but also the snake-and-staff of Asclepius, god of healing. So there’s no need to concoct a new glyph for the new sign. Unicode U+2695 and Bob’s your uncle. The staff is unconnected with Ophiouchos, who’s pretty sketchy, truth be told, but at least there’s a snake.
Me, I think the symbol should be a little picture of Samuel L. Jackson….
Properly speaking the two-snake staff, the caduceus, is associated with Hermes, god of commerce, negotiations, etc. The US Army — and once the Army does something it can’t be undone, ask Hiram Ulysses Grant — caused the confusion when it adopted Hermes’ staff for the Medical Corps insignia at the turn of the last century
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: How are those extremely ancient stars in the globular clusters able to shine with their intensity billions of years longer than our sun?
Winston Smith
@Davis X. Machina: The deal with Ophiuchus is that he was given the power to heal and raise the dead.
This pissed off Hermes because often he would arrive to take some newly-dead to the underworld only to find that Ophiuchus had resurrected them. That was all fine and good until Ophiuchus decided to start charging for healing people. This pissed off Zeus and he sent to giant snakes to take out Ophiuchus. They may or may not have been on a plane. There is also debate over whether this is truly related to the staff-with-snakes icon.
This is why Obamacare is un-Christian. It’s a polytheist plot hatched by Zeus-worshipers.
Redshirt
@Paul in KY: They’re small. Smaller = longer life in galactic terms.
cmorenc
@Paul in KY:
The stars in a globular cluster are able to shine (sustain their hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion reactions) over immensely longer time periods is because they are of a type that are burning their fuel at a much less energetic rate than our sun is. The burn rate is exponentially sensitive to star mass and star type (color)…most stars in globular clusters are reddish (cooler), and most within a globular cluster are not that color because they’ve arrived at the late “red giant” phase where they’re beginning to exhaust their hydrogen and in phase transition toward beginning to burn their helium (as the sun will be in another 5 or so billion years). Hypothetically, some of the stars within globular clusters are among the closest things to immortal without actually being such that exist, with projected lifetimes on the order of 100 billion years.
shortstop
@Davis X. Machina: I have had it with these motherfucking constellations.
Alex S.
So I am supposed to be a Leo now… I don’t know, Virgo felt alright to me.
And noooo! The constellations are not always arbitrary. See, Orion was a hunter and you can see his hound dogs (Canis minor and Canis major) next to him. He was sent to the stars after Hera, the wife of Zeus, killed him with the scorpio you can also see in the sky. The mythical wonder doctor Asclepius tried to heal Orion but didn’t succeed. Asclepius became Ophiuchus. At least, Orion is now able to hunt the Pleiades, the cluster of stars right above Taurus. So you see, it all makes sense..
Lurking Canadian
Does this mean somebody’s going to have to re-imagine Battlestar Galactica again, so it has thirteen colonies, or do we just assume Cylons come from Ophiuchon?
RobZ
By my calculation, it’d take around 14000 pints of beer at 20 feet to match the gravitational attraction of Mars at its closest approach.
Winston Smith
@Lurking Canadian: Ophiuchon went Galt.
David Brooks (not that one)
@giltay:
Tell me about it. When aligning my telescope, and thumbing through star names to tell it which guide star it’s pointing to, it takes forever to get through the A’s. Alaknar, Albireo, Alceistes, Alcrapper, Aldebaran, Algenib, Rigel Kent, Alrogers…
What?
Rigel Kent is Alpha Centauri. Software bug.
I think I’ve learned that 17 presses gets me to Bellatrix.
Lovely fact for those who think Ophiucus sounds rude: its 5th star is called Yed Posterior.
bob_is_boring
So…perception is subjective?
Who knew.
Origuy
As far as I can tell, no one who calls themself an astrologer is actually changing the way they do astrology. The Star-Tribune article is quoting an astronomer who pointed out what was known for a long time.
Some of the commenters in the WP version of the article point out that Vedic (Hindu) astrology does take precession into account. Of course the Hindus also figured out that the Earth is a lot older than 6000 years.
Chinese astrology is more complicated than just the 12 year cycle of animals; there’s also the cycle of five elements which changes every two years. The time of birth matters too, just like it does in Western astrology.
None of which has anything to do with reality, of course, but I think it’s interesting.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: Thank’s to you (and Redshirt) for explaining it.
Can learn alot on this web site :-)
Winston Smith
@RobZ:
Sounds good. I think this should be validated experimentally.
Who has 14,000 pints of beer they can donate to the cause?
canuckistani
According to the Exoplanet app on my iPhone, there are currently 518 reported planets orbiting other stars. Why don’t astrologers account for those planetary influences? The same question goes for the asteroid Ceres, which was once catalogued as a planet and has just as much claim as Pluto.
For extra trivia points, Ophiuchus the snake fondler is probably also Asclepius, the first physician; the guy with the stick with the snakes entwined around it you see at your doctor’s office.
Winston Smith
@canuckistani:
IANAA (I am not an Astrologer), but exoplanets, wouldn’t really have much Astrological significance because they don’t move relative to the Zodiac. Many of them aren’t even in the Zodiac, which occupies the orbital plane of the planets in our solar system.
AxelFoley
Man, I don’t care what no damn astrologer says. I was born a Taurus and I’m gonna stay a Taurus.
See, I’m even as stubborn as a Taurus. That ain’t gonna change.
Redshirt
All these Arabic names for stars makes me awfully suspicious of what’s going on up there.
I recommend we attack all Arab stars before they can attack us. Better fight them up there then here, right?
Aldebaran, you’re first on the list!
lllphd
oh my.
anyone here ever actually studied or practiced astrology?
i ask you then, on what empirical evidence are you basing its nonsense? the daily grafs in the paper on a sun sign?
here’s the deal. i am a cognitive neuroscientist. phd means something here. well-trained and experienced in empirical studies. well-trained and experienced in observing and diagnosing, along with the full spectrum of neurological behaviors, the full range of personality and emotional indicators.
thing is, i also study and practice astrology. because i’ve actually studied and practiced the oldest science known to humans, i can tell you with at least a wee bit of authority that there is something going on there. actually, quite a lot.
but it can’t be captured in a daily paragraph about a sun sign any more than it can be captured in this comment.
i won’t even ask you to trust me on this. i’ll simply point out that all the naysayers are rejecting the very idea that something as far-fetched as patterns in the sky (a bit like, oh say, patterns in microscopic cells) could describe a human’s behavior actually know nothing about what they are rejecting.
this, friends, is the epitome of NONscientific thinking.
(just ask galileo.)
licensed to kill time
I don’t give any credence to astrology. but when I saw this on teevee today and saw how “my” sign had changed my first thought was “No friggin’ way am I going from Sagittarius to Ophichus! I don’t even know how to pronounce it!”
Really, it looks like ‘O fuck us’. Or ‘O ficus’. Oh, fuck it.
Poopyman
@lllphd:
He’s dead going on 400 years. Not a very good reference for astrology, IMO.
lllphd
@Poopyman:
sigh.
um, the reference to galileo was regarding his having to face those who claimed he was wrong when they knew nothing about what they were rejecting.
THAT is the epitome of NONscientific thinking. not how old it is.
lllphd
@canuckistani:
fyi, most of astrology has been based on what planets (i.e., “moving stars”) can be seen with the naked eye. the outer planets (uranus, neptune, pluto… well…) have only been visible thru technology for the past century and, mm, about a quarter or so. most astrologers don’t give them much credence in personal charts because they move so slowly and appear – from observations – to have more to say about generations than individuals.
the larger asteroids are indeed included in consideration by most astrologers. however, these were also not visible to even the telescopic eye until within the last century.
as for the gravitational force of other bodies etc. as an argument against astrology, i don’t actually know of any astrologer who claims it is the gravitational force that has any influence. i’ve been practicing astrology for over 35 years now, and i honestly don’t know why it is viable. but, i have to tell you, it is.
so viable, BY OBSERVATION, in fact, that it SHOULD BE STUDIED EMPIRICALLY. however, BECAUSE THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY HAS NEVER ACTUALLY STUDIED IT, they know nothing about it and yet reject it.
as i said, this is the epitome of NONscientific thinking.
lllphd
@Winston Smith:
thanks for making this point.
the zodiac is the band of constellations against which the paths of the sun and moon and planets carve in the course of their revolutions. because the solar system is not a sphere but a very flat plate, from our vantage point, they’ll follow this path, referred to as the ecliptic, where eclipses take place.
it’s actually all very simple and quite cool, fascinating, in fact. i was stunned – still am – at how elegant it is. especially when you downgrade the zodiacal roles and concentrate on the planets and their angular relationships to one another.
powerful stuff. IF you bother to know anything about it.
evinfuilt
@lllphd:
The Galileo gambit, one guaranteed way to be taken as non-serious as possible. Because we know that everyone who compares them self to Galileo is obviously just as persecuted and as intelligent as he was.
How about just say, Stars are what we’re actually made of, and be happy that they effect us in that way. Why make up a bunch of hokum. Astrology is nothing but illusion.
I am what remains of a super nova, and that’s pretty damn cool.
Redshirt
@lllphd: I know enough about astrology to know there’s nothing but fluff to it. Patterns in and of themselves do not necessarily create meaning.
Show me how I am wrong. Burden of proof is on you.
morzer
@lllphd:
Speaking as one born under the sign of the Misanthropic Wombat, when the Weasel of Parking Lots was in the ascendant, I can only profoundly sympathize with your heroic endeavors to spread science in a darkened world. I really don’t have a choice. My stars made me do it.
Same goes for the bank job, by the way.
THE
My favorite authority on the subject is Dilbert.
David Brooks (not that one)
@Redshirt:
Not Alkaid (or Al-Qa’id)?
DPirate
What, are you nuts, Mistermix?
Well, everyone else looked at the sky and you know what came of that.
Since the sun governs pretty much all life on earth, it’s pretty silly to make blanket statements like that simply because it doesn’t fit into the mechanistic worldview of atheism. Seems quite unscientific to me.
Here is a question for you: If astrology made predictions on a rate comparable to quantum physics, would you consider it empirical?
Redshirt
@David Brooks (not that one): That would make logical sense to an Earthling. But I am employing a bigger strategy. Call it “The Knowing Unknown”.
Aldebaran’s gonna pay.
David Brooks (not that one)
@Origuy:
To be fair, so do contemporary Western astrologers. If anyone knows about the impact of precession on their profession (nice alliteration!), it’s them. It’s the lowbrows who read the daily predictions in their newspaper that are freaked out.
I’m not endorsing the astrologers’ practices here, of course. Just pointing out that they know more astronomy than most people give them credit for.
I’ve always been curious: it seems obvious to me that a child born in January (north of the tropics) will spend their first few months indoors. A child born in July will receive less attention for their first few months because of the parents needing to tend to the harvest. It’s possible that, over the centuries, observed differences in character, based on birth date, could have led to a post-hoc attempt to “explain” them. That’s a hypothesis that it would be easy to test; anyone?
Redshirt
@David Brooks (not that one): That’s a great example, and it would be fascinating to find out if there are predictable, general behaviors that result from being born in warm months versus cold.
Of course, this would have nothing to do with astrology.
AxelFoley
@Redshirt:
Didn’t Grand Moff Tarkin destroy it already? ;)
THE
All you constellation fans might like to know, if you don’t already,
that all the Star Wars movies are coming to Blu Ray in September 2011.
It is your destiny.
Splitting Image
@THE:
Considering he didn’t even re-master the original three for DVD, I can’t imagine their picture quality improving with Blu-Ray.
Are there other movies in the set I should be concerned about…?
AxelFoley
@THE:
Oh. Fuck. YES!
morzer
@AxelFoley:
Ahem. Alderaan. Not Aldebaran.
Shell Goddamnit
If astrology made predictions on a rate comparable to quantum physics, would you consider it empirical?
What does that even mean? “on a rate” – is that a term of art or something?
If you mean “at a rate” then no…the rate of predictions means pretty much nothing.
canuckistani
@lllphd:
nonscientific thinking, eh?
All right, try this bit of scientific thinking. How does astrology work? What is it about distant planets that affects our fate?
Why is it different from all the other known forces in that it doesn’t vary with the inverse square of the distance of the object?
Now, I will make this concession: in the days before planetary motions were understood, I can imagine a skilled amateur psychologist being able to “read” in random noise and extract information of which he/she may be subconciously aware. But since planetary motion became calculable, you might as well look at a clock and try and tell fortunes.
You know what would convince me of the truth of astrology? If in 1300, some guy predicted the crown prince would live a long an happy life, and when the prince was eaten by bears the next day, went back to his charts and said “wait a minute – this only makes sense if there’s an invisible planet in Aries” (or wherever Uranus was at the time).
lllphd
sigh. again. i should have known better than to open this can of worms.
i’m reminded of a conversation i had some 30 years ago with an astrophysicist at harvard. he’s an expert on the big bang, and i’d asked him ‘what banged,’ to which he responded ‘that’s a question for theologians,’ to which i wondered aloud ‘then why did you say we need to study the big bang in order to stave off superstitious thinking about it and our origins?’
we had a lively conversation, exceptionally smart guy, very bright. he was intrigued by my background in religious studies because he had been asked to give a talk on the connections between science and religion. at some point (forget the context) i made the mistake of mentioning astrology, and it was suddenly like i’d told him i had the plague. despite the fact that, up to that point, he’d thought i was quite intelligent and was asking me all sorts of questions.
a few years later when i was also at harvard i contacted him and reminded him of the story, and he laughed and apologized and volunteered how his response exposed a purely unscientific attitude on something he knew absolutely nothing about.
so. that said. morzer, your response is amusing; thanks for the humorous images. but i don’t know of any astrologer who feels the planets ‘determine’ anyone’s fate. no more than geneticists feel DNA ‘determines’ anyone’s fate. these are starting point indicators, that’s all. well, a bit more to it than that, but the metaphor is apt. sort of like being able to know where the rock fell in the pond by the rings on the water. or how much rain a tree got in a certain year by the thickness of that ring. and so on. you watch patterns long enough and they begin to make sense. that’s the first phase of a scientific mind, curiosity, and an openness to what you find.
redshirt, how much do you know about astrology? really, tell me. that would be helpful; we could have an honest debate. as for the burden of proof, as i said, no one is willing to fund studies, but not only have i observed astrology at work for hundreds of individuals, i did conduct a little study of my own.
in an abnormal psych class, i convinced a prof to give me the birth times and dates (and genders) for a dozen of his patients. actually, i suggested he throw in one or two “normals” so i would not pathologize everyone. fwiw, i described, in rather full detail, the characteristics and symptoms, and correctly diagnosed, every single one of them, and picked out the normal. fwiw. however, he would not allow me to use any of these data on his patients for publication, even with scrubbed names. personal stuff.
far more impressive, tho, is the work done by french statistician michel gauqelin, who set out to debunk astrology once and for all, and after his first study, became quite a convert. he’s on wiki.
evinfuilt, my humblest apologies if you thought i was equating my intelligence (never mentioned persecution, just rejection) with galileo. far from it. if you read the comment again, what i was emphasizing was the fact that all you people here are rejecting even the very notion of a viable astrology WHEN YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT. nothing, zilch, nada. galileo presented pretty strong data before pretty rigid – but unknowledgable – authorities at the time, and his ideas were rejected because these guys didn’t know anything about it. hey, i’m no galileo, i’m a coward. look at the response this idea is getting from truly very intelligent and clever people who nevertheless know nothing about it (why would i subject myself to that in a public way?). rejecting something as false when you know nothing about it is yet again and still and forever NOT scientific thinking.
canuckistan, not sure what your ideas are about science, but it simply does not always work the way you described. it’s a far messier, catch as catch can, tinkering kind of business than the public has a clue about. truth is, especially in medicine, lots of things “work” for reasons that are completely mysterious to us, but we go ahead and use them because they work and people need things that work. and if you think science in the generic is nailing down the four corners of reality in their glorified process, think again; look at how many times our sense of “reality” has shifted since, say, galileo. may i humbly suggest you read thomas kuhn’s “structures of scientific revolution” to get an idea of just how messy and chaotic the process can be. i say all this with a grave and persistent respect for the process, because it’s the best we got right now (um, see just a few sentences above in this graf, about how physicians use lots of things that work but they don’t know why). science works. not perfectly, but it works.
as for your query on how planets affect fate, see my response in this comment to morzer.
ok, enuff. i knew i never should have jumped in on this thread, but here we are. amazing how easily folks reject things when their minds are already framed a certain way, how they’ll not even show curiosity about what another perspective might be.
ahem. not that this has any parallel with the huge political topic that’s been dominating the news of late…..
but, it’s been intriguing and edifying and fun. thx for your comments.
stinger
@llphd: Have a PhD and were at Harvard? C’mon, what’s your real name — Frasier Crane?