Have you ever felt that we are living in the age of Aquarius… and Aries, Taurus and Capricorn and basically all the other astrological signs?
Astrology seems to be everywhere. popular sites and huge social media accounts discuss the influence of stars and planets on our life and personality; The shelves of ordinary bookstores are filled with books about natal charts; Lifestyle magazines publish stories about celebrities and their zodiac signs.
And these celebrities talk a lot about astrology: for example Harry Potter Actress Emma Watson made headlines this week when she told her Instagram followers that she was now “well versed” in the astrological concept of the “Saturn return”.
Watson is far from alone. Polls by YouGov in 2022 showed that 15% of people in the UK – 9% of men and 22% of women – believe that “a person’s zodiac sign really affects their personality and compatibility with other people.” Of the rest, another 16 percent said they did not know if this was true. In the US, the number of those who say they believe in astrology is even higher: only 27 percent (25 percent of men and 30 percent of women). A US National Science Foundation poll shows that the percentage of American adults who consider astrology “not at all scientific” was 50 percent in 1979, rose to 66 percent in 2004, and dropped to 58 percent in 2018.
Like Watson’s Saturn Return – the idea is that every 29 years the ringed planet returns to the same celestial position it was in when you were born, coinciding with maturity, middle age and very old age – astrology seems to be yours. own wash. and wipe the template.
This may disappoint those who consider astrology to be a pseudoscience. Unlike other ancient but already debunked beliefs, such as alchemy or the reality of the city of Atlantis, astrology stubbornly lives with us in the 21st century.St. Century. And unlike existing pseudosciences, such as the flat-earth theory, which only a tiny minority of lunatics believe in, astrology, as we have seen, is surprisingly popular.
Therefore, it is useful to recall that the basic principles of astrology are wrong. Statements about the physical movements and positions of the planets themselves are often completely wrong. Given the way the earth “wobbles” on its axis, which changes the sky from how the zodiac signs were first calculated thousands of years ago, many people actually have a very different zodiac sign than they thought.
Whenever scientists have tried to investigate astrology, they have come to nothing. As a rule, the predictions of different astrologers are very different from each other. The relationship between birth charts and people’s actual personalities is really arbitrary. Any resemblance between your horoscope or birth chart and your life is either a coincidence or the result of predictions written using Barnum’s Proverbs – descriptions that apply to almost everyone, anywhere, at any time. These are statements that magicians use when performing mind-reading tricks: for example, “You are often outgoing, but sometimes you prefer to be alone.” Of course, this applies to you – because it applies to all of us.
What about Saturn Returns? Your life changes dramatically when you are 30 (perhaps having children and getting married), 60 (perhaps preparing for retirement) and 90 (perhaps your health is deteriorating and you are losing independence). I don’t understand why we have to refer to the influence of a planet 1.55 billion kilometers away to explain this.
So why do people believe in such obvious pseudoscience?
Perhaps, as has been argued here and elsewhere, this question is beside the point. Perhaps astrology is not really about believing in the literal claim that the position of the planets in the galaxy affects our personality. It may not even be as useful to ask people if they “believe” in astrology as in the surveys above. On the contrary, people’s views on astrology are much more vague: it is something that can be referred to or brought up in casual conversation, rather than a serious scientific statement.
In this respect, astrology could fill a niche that scientific psychology cannot cover. With today’s evidence-based personality tests, you can draw conclusions like “You may be depressed because you’re very neurotic” or “You probably like to party because you’re very extroverted.” This is realistic as we are not very good at making predictions on an individual level. But this is hardly very exciting – and can hardly be compared to the feeling of being caught up in the great, mysterious wobble of the cosmos that astrology offers. And if the statements of science are so vague, what is wrong with the vague statement of astrology?
And it doesn’t always seem so vague. Many people who only know newspaper horoscopes will be surprised at how complex and mysterious astrology can be. You have seen statements such as “If you are a Gemini, you are very analytical” or “If you are a Sagittarius, you are very cheerful.” But it’s much more than just the zodiac: take a look at any major astrology website and you’ll see endless bizarre details about “houses”, “retrograde planets”, “ascending signs” and “elements and modalities”. “All of this can apparently help make your life, your diet, and even your dog’s personality easier.
It’s possible that the existence of all this complexity – and the general confusion about what astrology is – makes people more likely to believe in horoscopes, or even consider them scientific. Even if you don’t pay attention to all the details, the feeling that there are so many things around can calm your mind that if you look at them, you will probably find an explanation for what is happening in your life.
This last idea – the idea of wanting an explanation – is an important possibility as to why people hold faith in astrology. It has been suggested that astrology is a way of explaining and organizing our lives, which can otherwise be disturbingly confusing and unsystematic.
Similar ideas have been put forward about why people believe in conspiracy theories. The President is shot. A new virus appears and kills millions. Many people just find it hard to believe that these things are random events: how can something so random come out of something so consistent? Surely there must be a secret plan – a conspiracy – of people behind the scenes that make it all work (by the way, while women are much more likely to believe in astrology than men, the opposite is true with conspiracy theories, where men are more sensitive). ).
Astrology is not a plan in itself, but an explanation – or at least it seems so. Why have I been so gloomy the last few weeks? Why did I fight with my best friend? Why is work going so well this year? Well, it has a lot to do with how the planets move. Not something I can control, but something I could figure out with a little star chart reading. Again, how does the real explanation, which probably involves a lot of unexplained arbitrariness, fit in with this?
You may have noticed that all of the above possibilities are the reasons why people usually believe in astrology, but not why they believe in astrology now. What accounts for the recent apparent surge in popularity? Some have suggested that this is due to the growing uncertainty in the world: with financial crises, pandemics and wars, people agree on anything that could be an encouraging statement. In this sense, astrology is a kind of self-help or even therapy.
Intuitively, this sounds plausible, but I’m not sure that astrology specifically explains this: why don’t we see a revival of, say, Christianity? Why not another “spiritual” belief system? As we have learned from astrology itself, we should not be deceived by seductive-sounding explanations for potentially completely random events. It’s just as likely that we’ll see a rather random surge in the popularity of a complex meme that is well distributed and easily sold online. In a few years it might be something else.
That doesn’t make it any less disappointing for scientists like NASA staff who have gone to great lengths to disprove astrological claims when they see so many people believing in astrology. Personally, I find it hard to disagree: it certainly makes me wish people had a higher level of critical thinking.
But perhaps I would say so. Because I’m a Gemini.
Source: I News
With a background in journalism and a passion for technology, I am an experienced writer and editor. As an author at 24 News Reporter, I specialize in writing about the latest news and developments within the tech industry. My work has been featured on various publications including Wired Magazine and Engadget.