Astrology: Beyond belief

Human resources development minister Smriti Irani’s private visit to an astrologer became another of those silly media controversies over the past week. Depending on where a particular commentator stood, the incident was used to disparage Ms Irani, the Bharatiya Janata Party, Hindu society, Indian society, the absence of a “scientific temper”, the victory of “senseless faith”, the failure of “reason” or some combination of these.

It is a fair bet that many of those who took public positions against Ms Irani have visited an astrologer or consulted a palmist, clairvoyant or horoscope reader at least once in their lives. They could have gone to a professional, a charlatan, a family elder or done it for a lark at a party. Yet, so wide-spread is curiosity about the future that it is the rare Indian who hasn’t had such an experience.

To say it is the “rare Indian” would be unfair and incomplete, for this curiosity and uncertainty about what the future holds is an essential human condition. As the history and ubiquity of astrology shows, it has and is widespread, including in Islamic societies and even the technologically-advanced Christian West, both very different from a predominantly Hindu India. Indeed, on the one occasion this writer visited Islamabad, he was introduced at a social event to a Pakistani gentleman described by a common acquaintance as “the best astrologer in the world”.

This person — the astrologer — is a television star in Pakistan and frequently consulted by politicians and businesspersons. Like his clients, he is a devout Muslim. Lear-ning I was from India, he excitedly told me he practised the “Hindu system of astrology” because he considered it accurate. I said I was none the wiser and simply knew nothing of how to chart or read a horoscope. It left my Pakistani interlocutor most disappointed. We moved to the next subject, which involved him (the astrologer) criticising BJP politicians for being hostile to Pakistan.

Is astrology a science or is it a hoax? This is a very different question from whether an individual astrologer is honest to his understanding of astrology or is a fraud. It is also a question that has been with us since the birth of humankind. As it happens, astrology is the mother of astronomy. The interest our ancestors showed in the stars and planets, and their conjunctions, was born of their desire to foretell the future and read what they imagined were the patterns of the cosmos.

The great medieval European scientists who added so much to our knowledge of the universe — Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Newton — were students of astrology as well as astronomy and saw the two as one discipline. The divergence was to come at a later stage, and had more to do with Church politics than scientific debunking of astrology. It could be argued that many of the same people — or their contemporaries — believed in alchemy, the alleged ability to convert a base metal into gold. We know now that alchemy is fiction, so why not give the same status to astrology? Certainly some would be happy to do so but others — and not necessarily those carried away by blind faith — are wary.

In 1975, some 200 scientists, including several Nobel laureates, endorsed a statement against astrology. The astronomer Carl Sagan — famous for his Cosmos television series — declined to sign. He had no time for horoscopes, but he was not sure astrology had no basis: “I find myself unable to endorse the ‘Objections to Astrology’ statement, not because I feel that astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt and still feel that the tone of the statement is authoritarian. The fundamental point is not that the origins of astrology are shrouded in superstition.

This is true as well for chemistry, medicine and astronomy, to mention only three. To discuss the psychological motivation of those who believe in astrology seems to me quite peripheral to the issue of its validity. That we can think of no mechanism for astrology is relevant but unconvincing. No mechanism was known, for example, for continental drift when it was proposed by (Alfred) Wegener. Nevertheless, we see that Wegener was right, and those who objected on the grounds of an unavailable mechanism were wrong.”

The quote above is taken from The Fated Sky: Astrology in History, a riveting 2005 book by Benson Bobrick, an American historian with a doctorate from Columbia University and an interest in historical themes as far apart as the American Revolution, Ivan the Terrible and the history of stuttering. Bobrick’s book is neither a defence of nor an attack on astrology. It is a collation and analysis of human fascination with the subject, and packed with delicious anecdotes, including how Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the governor of California took place “for strictly astrological reasons in the middle of the night — at 12.16 am to be precise, when Jupiter was high in the sky”.

More important, Bobrick writes of astrology’s “resurgence” and increasing attempts to academically study and verify it (which, it needs to be added, is not the same as starting diploma courses in astrology): “In a number of countries, including England, France, Rus-sia, Germany and the United States, astrology is once again being taught at the university level, for the first time since the Renaissance. In England, courses in the subject are now offered at Brasenose College, Oxford; Bath Spa University College; the University of Southampton; and the University of Kent. It can also be studied at Cardiff University in Wales, the Biblioteca Astrologica in France, the University of Zaragoza in Spain, Dogus University in Turkey, Benaras Hindu Univer-sity in northern India, and at Kepler College in the United States, among other schools. Scholarly journals have begun to establish themselves, while the prestigious Warburg Institute in London recently created a ‘Sophia Fellowship’ for astrological research.”

It is not Bobrick’s case, and not that of this writer, that everybody should forthwith swear allegiance to astrology and rush to have horoscopes made and interpreted. That is a personal choice. The purpose is only to point out the debate on and the epistemological study of astrology has acquired a character that is far beyond the trivial rational/irrational, superstitious/scientific labelling we rush to in India.
Ms Irani’s sanctimonious critics need to absorb that.

The writer can be
contacted at malikashok@gmail.com