The Principle’s Office: Astrology has more intellectual footing than you might think

I often wonder why it is that people are so averse to astrology. It is the butt of most intellectual jokes, and anyone who discusses it publicly opens themselves up to a hefty load of (albeit usually hilarious) ridicule — yet, simply put, stranger things have happened. 

The most common criticism of astrology is that the time and place of one’s birth alone has almost nothing to do with one’s personality. If we read this charitably, the criticism likely excludes the obvious socio-cultural ramifications of being born at a certain time and place within history and refers to the way astrology uses those measures alone to predict and describe one’s personality and life course. 

This is a mischaracterization of astrology, as it is not so much concerned with the time and place one was born as much as it is with the placements of the planets of our solar system in relation to oneself at birth and then over the course of one’s life. Astrology answers this question: What is the relationship between the huge masses called planets and our own minds and conscious experiences? 

The relationship between physical masses and consciousness that astrology posits raises a philosophical consideration known as the mind-body problem. This is a discussion of the nature of the relationship between the mind and body or, further, the physical and the conscious.  

There are three main conceptions of this relationship. The materialist perspective claims that there is no such thing as a standalone “mind” and that the mind is just an extension of the physical. The idealist perspective claims that there is no such thing as a standalone physical realm — it is just an extension of the mental. Finally, the wide umbrella that is the dualist perspective, which claims that both are real and cannot be absorbed by each other. A subsection of the many dualist perspectives, the interactionist view, posits that the physical and conscious can both causally influence each other. 

An interactionist framework for the mind-body relationship has some scientific backing. Physical states affecting mental states have been well-documented through the study of neurochemistry. There are millions and even billions of chemical reactions occurring in and out of nerve cells responsible for determining our moods and perceptions. 

Mental states affecting physical states have also been well documented, most notably through what has been dubbed “the observer effect” in physics. Briefly, the observer effect is the phenomenon of particles behaving normally when an observer is present but then behaving as waves when the observer is not present. The presence of a consciousness thus seems to alter the physical state of particles. These two facts together suggest that the physical and the mental can both causally influence one another. 

Now, the notion that big things far out in space can influence us here on earth has been documented as well. I’m not going to talk about the moon and the tides and the orbits and everything else you learned in your high school science class, though those are also relevant. I want to visit the specific line in an article published by Syfy.com about what is potentially the biggest black hole observed, created by the merger of two black holes, that inspired this train of thought: 

“On 21 May 2019, [the ripple of gravitational waves caused by the merger of black holes] passed through our planet. Did you feel it? Probably not; the expansion and contraction of space would’ve stretched you less than a millionth of the diameter of a proton.” 

This sentence makes the ongoings of big stuff in space seem a little more personal. We’re not talking about the weather or the tides; we’re talking about you. You were stretched by about a millionth of a proton because of a merger between black holes 17.49 billion light years away. 

How did that stretch of a millionth of a proton on one’s physical body affect one’s mind? There is no obvious answer to that question, but when considering the mind-body problem in an interactionist context, it is hard to say with certainty that this kind of a physical change has no effect on one’s consciousness. 

So if it is hard to confidently say that the result of an event between two massive objects far beyond our solar system had no effect on one’s consciousness, then it should also be hard to confidently conclude that the events occurring between large masses within our own solar system have no effect on our consciousness. Yet today, it is all too easy for most to very confidently conclude that astrology is a total farce. 

A fair question left standing is: How can we be sure that astrological predictions are accurate? We cannot. There is no empirical way as it stands to control for and measure all of the variables that astrology purports to predict, but astrology is more than 2,000 years old. Millenia of tracking the stars, making observations on corresponding personality traits and life courses and then inductively concluding certain assertions of the zodiac based on such observations is not nothing. Astrology is by no means an ironclad field of study, but it is not so unsubstantiated that it is worth calling the whole practice a joke. 

I want to make it clear that I do not believe the practice of astrology to be a science, as it decisively fails the tests of scientific credibility. However, I do feel that the widespread ridicule of the practice as entirely unintellectual is misplaced. I’ll end this article with some food for thought: Might there be any correlation between the undue dismissal of astrology and the fact that it is a predominantly feminine interest? 

Julia Leb is a junior writing about philosophy, politics and social issues. Her column, “The Principle’s Office,” runs every other Friday.