[note crosspost; in the last 2 months or so all posts sent
solely to aam did not arrive, I suppose a problem on the
side of my ISP or something like that...]
Two quotes from the "Quotes that could have been astrological"
thread of this winter at aam...
Kjell wrote (9 March 2008):
: "There is really no astrological evidence that science is anything
: more than a medieval superstition"
:
: -- Stephen James
Apollia wrote (13 February 2008):
: "See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise
: you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget
: that."
:
: --Douglas Adams. Collected 21:47 2/14/2008.
The first quote looks like a witty reply to "There is really
no astrological evidence that astrology is anything more than
a medieval superstition". In that sense it is fine, but what
disturbs me a bit about it is that astrology is rather a child
of The Renaissance than of The Middle Ages.
Let me try to put this into perspective astrologically.
Basically, science puts reality (Earth) before anything else.
>From observation of reality, some laws (Air) are derived or
conversely first hypotheses are devised and then tested in
experiment. In any case, nature/reality, i.e. Earth, "rules".
That apparently makes science "Earth with a bit of Air", i.e.
Virgo, the middle Earth sign, ruled by Mercury.
In http://www.exactphilosophy.net/odyssey.zip
=> discoveries.pdf
I postulate that Astrological Ages are primarily influenced by
the respective sign, but also, to a lesser degree, by the opposite
sign in the zodiac, both by design and as a natural counterreaction
to too much bias caused by one sign. Naturally, one would also
expect the opposite sign to show more in the second half or so
of each Astrological Age.
For example, that ancient Greek philosophy and other rather airy
constructs emerged in the second half of the Age of Aries could
be seen as a counterreaction to Aries. Similarly, after the
first 1000 years CE/AD religion had gained lots of influence and
books (Mercury) and other knowledge from antiquity had been
almost completely lost in the "Dark Ages" in Middle Europe, it
was during the Renaissance that people started to look more
concretely at nature again.
Naturalistic paintings, scientific analyis, and so on...
This explains maybe also the ****ft in science during the previous
100 years or something like this and also especially during the
last two decades or so, with Uranus and Neptune passing through
Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius is approaching and with it a more
airy and fixed view of Science, where a cohesive uniform view of
science takes more and more precedence over direct observation.
Not officially, of course, but ideas that do not fit in find it
apparently more and more difficult to get interest and funding.
Science has in many respect become just a slave of technology.
Only what appears to be useful for the next wave of technlogy
(Aquarius' zeal to distribute the knowledge of "the Gods" like
rain distributes water to everybody), almost only that has it
easy to get funding and attention.
Ouranos in greek mythology banned the creatures that he did not
want to see to Tartaros, to the underworld. (Not forever, as they
came up again during revolution). Maybe the view crafted by Freud
and Jung of a conscious mind above a (collective) unconconscious
with a rather rigid and fixed border between the two, is mainly
aquarian, was maybe not so much how things have been at other
times in history.
So, is "see first, think later" (Virgo) a thing of the past, and
it the future merely a succession of fa****on trends?
It must be noted that although science has been very successful
in a pragmatic sense (predict concrete events, built technology)
and it has also given lots of insights into the workings of
nature, fundamentally, answers have not been very usefuly.
For example, the ancient Greeks put up the question of whether
there are "atoms" things that are "indivisible". If you divide
a block of material into smaller and smaller pieces, do you
reach an end at some time (atoms) or can you continue forever?
For some time a bit more than 100 years ago, the answer seemed
to be yes, there are atoms. But not so much later, further
experiments showed that atoms are composed of electrons, protons
and neutrons, and today even the latter two are know to be
divisible. Future experiments may reveal even smaller ones.
Similarly fundamental questions like whether the future is
predetermined in principle (if you knew all measurable quantities
of all things in the world at one moment, could you predict the
future?) have been answered differently by science over its
history and there is no quarantee that an experiment conducted
tomorrow is not going to change it all again the next day...
So, from an astrological perspective, one would conclude that
science has its bias, is colored by the time it was invented and
is thus more suitable to judge and be used in some situations
than in others. Shortcomings are e.g. negligence of Water and
Fire, except during the process of finding new theories of
devising hypotheses. Astoni****ngly it is especially hypotheses
that get a harder and harder time in "this Age" to get some
serious attention except resistance - but I guess this has always
been a bit like that, it is a natural consequence of learning
that people start then to replace the reality (Earth) on which
the theories (Air) are based by the latter, especially so in
the Age of Aquarius, though... :)
Also, the scientific division of the world into observer and
the observed world, is a bias that is hard to overcome for some
considerations.
But, turning things around again, is it really only so that
astrology is a full superset of science, that only science is
bound in its time, while astrology is timeless?
Not necessarily and certainly not in all details. Many aspects
of astrology as we use it today have apparently emerged during
Hellenistic times, i.e. not far before 0 CE/AD. So one would
expect astrology to be "Late Age of Aries" or "Early Age of
Pisces", although its roots are most likely a lot older.
Obviously astrology has changed over history and will continue
to do so, and different astrological methods and items (signs,
aspects, elements, houses, house systems, progressions, midpoints,
you name it...) have also their symbolic bias and are thus maybe
best applied used in similar situation. Maybe even birth charts
of different people should generally be investigated with the
method(s) that best fit the chart. (Obviuously, such things make
it difficult to formalize and formally proove things in astrology).
What about other cultures. They have different astrologies and
other systems like the I Ching etc. Are they all just the same
thing seen from a different angle or are some more "true" or
more "complete" than others and should the "better" ones rather
be used to take a look at the more biased ones... ?
Finally a word on Cancer. Gemini is the child that plays, that
looks at many things or at one thing from many sides. But at some
point one no longer wants to see everything, curiosity has been
satisfied, the butterfly who used to fly from flower to flower
has brought the pollen to the flowers and fruit start to grow.
A bit more abstractly, the different things that have been seen
and learned are brought into contact in the head and from this
new things start to grow. That observation (new things emerge when
two things are brought together that have before than or at least
not recently been considered together), is from the physicist
Gerd Binnig, in a book he called "Aus dem Nichts", "out of nothing".
Not too astoni****ngly his birth date is: 20 July 1947.
(I posted a post with the same title too aam only yesteday, but
it does not seem to get to the moderation queue - luckily, because
this one is of much better quality, in my feeling... :)
)o+
--
http://www.exactphilosophy.net
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