from the beginning of our history, humanity has been fascinated with the unknown. with things operating beyond the basic physicality of our reality. we used to call it gods, or magic, which were in fact large parts of real life back then.
and then slowly, we started explaining them. we got smarter, more curious, more persistent. not all of the explanations were right of course, but they got less and less wrong over time.
what used to be magic, became explained by primitive science. unknowns became known- more than that, they became grounded aspects of physical reality. no longer were the huge unexplainable voids that popped up whenever something different or new happened, we simply rationalized what was happening and fit it nicely into whatever current model of reality or physics we had like a missing puzzle piece.
i think it’s inherent to the human experience, to crave some form of escapism. to delude ourselves into thinking that this basic, physical reality can't be all there is. because if it was, we'd know everything. curiousity would be obsolete. obviously this is far from the case currently, i'll get to why that is later.
but for a time, religion filled that void well. it gave us a common story to believe in, a community, plus a nice bit of escapism in the stories of heaven and hell, angels and demons, (or their relative equivalents in other religions), etc. and science of course, kept tracking on alongside it- albeit, while contradicting and attacking eachother once in a while, but still doing it’s job and explaining those last straggler unknowns that always seemed to pop up.
the thing about science though, to do experiments and to figure out those unknowns, you have to be able to y’know. experiment on them. naturally, the most physically accessible and common stuff is what got figured out first (plants, animals, rocks, you get the idea) while things like weather phenomena took a while to understand due to their transient and unpredictable nature.
astronomy has always been in an odd spot in that, because without some technology (telescopes, say) there are a very limited number of things you can figure out scientifically. it’s nearly impossible to actually understand and totally make sense of what you’re seeing, beyond very surface-level observations (admittedly, very useful observations in terms of navigating and such) without it.
astrology started as simply a way to make sense of, and give meaning to, what astronomy was seeing. which made a lot of sense back then, considering that science and logic was not enough to figure out what was happening up there.
until the advent of the telescope, and of modern astronomy, space was one of the largest remaining unknowns of the human world.
astrology, was sort of a way to explain that unknown- but not really. it explained it in the same way that saying ‘’zeus is angry’’ explains a thunderstorm. which for some people, or most people, was a sufficient explanation.
in 1543, Copernicus proposed heliocentrism.
in 1609, Galileo first built his telescope.
in 1687, Newton stated the three laws of motion.
by the 1700‘s, space had been explained. the void had been filled (or so we thought, at least). astrology had become a relic, it had become mostly obsolete.
‘’A 2005 Gallup poll and a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that 25% of US adults believe in astrology, while a 2018 Pew survey found a figure of 29%.’’
‘’Indian politics have also been influenced by astrology. In 2001, Indian scientists and politicians debated and critiqued a proposal to use state money to fund research into astrology’‘
‘’In Japan, strong belief in astrology has led to dramatic changes in the fertility rate and the number of abortions in the years of Fire Horse.‘‘
think about it. if i asked you what your horoscope is, the majority of you would know which month/period corresponds to which sign. in fact, according to a YouGov poll, 90% of Americans select a sign when asked.
how did something that was essentially dead, become insanely prevalent in cultures all across the globe? debatably, you could even say equally or close to as prevalent as the actual science that killed it.
my hypothesis, is that is was caused by two things. one moreso than the other, but both contribute to it i believe.
the first, lesser thing, would be this: increasingly throughout the past few decades or more, religion has been becoming less popular than ever. not just in america, but across most of the world, religion is on the decline. check any study, all the data points are there.
as i said earlier, religion was the greatest provider of a good unknown, of divine escapism- of a controlling force, a reason for the things that happen.
religion is declining, but we haven’t lost that primal desire for something beyond us. and to a degree, astrology does provide this. not quite as much as religion of course, but for the right people it also does the trick. if you believe that something not under our control- something beyond humanity, controls or at least influences us and our decisions and our personalities and everything that happens in our lives, doesn’t that sound familiar?
i can’t conclusively prove that there’s a link here. maybe someone else did, somewhere- i wouldn’t be surprised if so, but i can’t. all i can prove is that it’s possible, which it very much is.
my second possibility is to do with astronomy:
know how earlier, i said that we had unknowns? voids, where we had no information or data about a phenomenon and had to either leave it as an unknown or just come up with the most logical explanation we can think of (and with no data, this goes exactly as you’d expect)
these voids don’t exist universally. there are experts on obscure topics, in their minds the void is small, while for the rest of us the void is incomprehensible. we trust in experts on things like this, we know there are people out there getting rid of these voids even though we personally still perceive them.
astronomy was, in ancient times, something done by almost everyone. it was, firstly, beautiful- in many cases, one and the same with a religious experience. and secondly, it was necessary. navigation by stars was something almost everyone could directly benefit from knowing how to do.
throughout time the practice was alienated (pun unintended) from the public by multiple different things. the oldest things would probably settling, agriculture, etc, that made it less beneficial to learn to navigate by the stars.
another large one would be religion, as i said previously science and religion of course conflicted at many times and religion often won. religion also had closer ties to the ruling powers in most cases, giving it greater sway than individual scientists.
at this point capital s Science still continued; astronomy still did continue formally, but by the times where the large discoveries occurred and we figured out that ‘’space’’ knowledge void, the general public largely did not have any knowledge regarding astronomy. by the time the real technological innovation hit in the past couple centuries, astronomy has been relegated to the experts.
the reason i would consider this a bad thing, and the reason it ties into astrology, is because astronomy isn’t some very obscure topic that only a couple experts should even be considering.
by and large, for the general public and apart from those few experts, we’ve reversed the filling of a knowledge void.
a person from ancient times, would most likely know more about astronomy than the average person today- or at the very least, would definitely have more experience with it.
and now that there’s this huge unknown again, the alternatives that can explain it in a satisfying way are looking all the more appealing.
i propose mainly, that this knowledge loss in astronomy, has led to a high in the popularity and prevalence of astrology with the general public in the last few decades.
astrology isn’t based on any science whatsoever. we know this. even people that believe in astrology, know this. because that isn’t the point of it. science is what explains the unexplainable; of course something that’s trying to hold on to that last little thread of an unknown in our world, isn’t going to be remotely related to its antithesis.
to refute astrology using logic or science is absolute folly, because it isn’t even attempting to say that it adheres to the rules of either of those.
refute astrology by learning astronomy.
refute astrology by teaching others astronomy.
refute astrology by, little by little, filling that knowledge void we created. a fire dies without oxygen.
