[lbo-talk] science, objectivity, truth, taste and tolerance

boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
Mon Oct 2 22:58:37 PDT 2006



> Your analogy fails me. Botany is a sub-field of science. Reading tea
> leaves has nothing to do with it. However the nature of the universe is
> not an internal term or subject of science. People have been and
> continue to speculate about the universe before modern science arrived
> on the scene. Therefore they have a lot to say about the nature of the
> universe. And what they say is offered in terms of an explanation. For
> instance, the bible says, I believe, a few words about how the world
> came about.

That people speculate is not really important. Scientists speculate all the time. The difference is how you test your speculations. Testing them against mathematics and Nature is just superior if what you're after is an approximation of how the Universe actually works.


> Note that I did not offer the contrast between astronomy and astrology,
> and I assume that the original poster meant to contrast them (when using
> the phrase "nature of the universe") in the context of where they do
> intersect.
>
> Wikipedia provides this description of 'astrology', which I think is
> appropriate for our discussion:
>
> > Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs in which
> > knowledge of the relative positions of celestial bodies and related
> > information is held to be useful in understanding, interpreting, and
> > organizing knowledge about personality, human affairs, and other
> > terrestrial events.
>
> Astrology attempts to use the position of celestial bodies to understand
> and predict future events. That is what it has to do with explaining
> something.

No, Astrology does not use the position of celestial bodies to understand anything. To do that, it would have to use statistics and then it would be Astronomy. Astrology simply tells stories about the meaning of celestial bodies without any attempt at understanding. It is not an attempt to understand and explain. It's just conjecture.


> Now you may believe that it does a poor job of doing that, but I am
> afraid that would be an entirely different point or question.

It's not that astrology does a bad job. Astrology doesn't attempt to do the job at all.

Boddi



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list