How is a horoscope determined
Astrology isn’t science, but your horoscope is more real than you think
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people talk a lot of [ __ ] about
astrology
Eli's death I think it's a bunch of bull
and they've got a point we came up with
astrology ages ago back when science
meant looking up at the stars and making
up stories astrology is in science but
it is something lots of people identify
with and used to explain their feelings
their issues their relationships and
astrology may even be more than that
once upon a time astrology was really
useful for science and maybe science
could still learn a lot from astrology
even if you think it's [ __ ]
once upon a time astrologers were
scientists the ancient Babylonians were
clever enough to notice that Stars moved
in patterns and they seem to affect
daily life the moon seemed to control
everything from the tides to women's
periods it also just got really hot
outside when the Sun was in a
constellation that looked like a crab
well sort of like a crab maybe the
Babylonians figured they could resolve
the chaos on earth they understood the
Stars better so they started collecting
data and using that data to tell stories
they actually became really good at
predicting things like eclipses of
course they thought eclipses were omens
and they only cared about predicting
them so they could protect their Kings
from the angry gods side note if the
ancient Babylonians wanted to trick a
God out of killing their king they'd
hide the king a point if a king in his
place then sacrificed the fake King the
real King survived every time we think
the truth though is that the ancient
Babylonians were doing incredible
astronomy for their time astrology was
driving scientific discovery and this
was just the beginning
2,000 years later ancient people in
Greece and maybe India discovered the
earth revolves like a gyroscope this
movement is called precession and it
happens incredibly slowly but astrology
required such precise observations these
people were able to notice that the
earth is in fact revolving on a cycle
that takes tens of thousands of years to
complete the fact that they noticed this
is pretty incredible
a lot of these astrologers probably
understood astronomy better than most of
us do stay and the discovery of
precession changed astrology to Western
astrology started correlating Sun signs
to the seasons instead of to the Stars
it's white your Sun Sign is tied to the
time of year you were born that means if
you were born in the beginning of summer
you'd be a cancer regardless of where
the crab constellation actually is in
the sky astrology had evolved with
science but astrology had a problem
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astrology was all built around the idea
that the Sun planets and all the stars
revolved around Earth and as science
started suggesting otherwise the
astrologers made a bad bet and doubled
down
astrologers started ignoring science
enter the scientific revolution with new
tools like telescopes scientists were
redefining the way we understood the
universe but not everyone was on board
for years Europe's last official court
astrologer tried to defend astrology it
didn't go well it got so bad he started
openly predicting the deaths of former
friends scientists made him a public
laughingstock to convince the rest of
Europe that astrology wasn't real
science around the same time a college
student named Isaac Newton went to the
local fair and picked up an astrology
book it didn't make sense to him but he
wanted to understand it better so he
started studying mathematics and
eventually discovered that physics could
explain the connections between earth
and the stars far better than astrology
ever could astrology lost
today astrology is still something
scientists like to make fun of but
astrology is still a popular way to
understand the universe more than 40% of
Americans think astrology is at least
sort of scientific but astrologers
themselves aren't very good at
explaining how one astrologer tried to
tell me that quantum entanglement could
explain astrology astrology is
especially well-suited to the way we
communicate on the internet from memes
to horoscopes to personality quizzes
astrology has taken over web culture
it's also taking over the apps on your
phone that's pandu goulart co-founder of
co star a new social astrology app
coaster takes a NASA doodle on stars and
planets and turns them into personalized
predictions based on algorithms tuned by
professional astrologers goulart says it
doesn't actually matter if people
believe in astrology the better question
she says is whether it helps people
costar was really popular from the
moment it launched rising to one of the
most popular lifestyle apps in the App
Store
it's a download rates of nearly a
thousand and our Google art has a theory
about why versions of themselves but
using astrology they're having really
earnest conversations about who they are
and what kinds of people they love and
which kind of people break their hearts
and why they're having a like emotional
hard time having even a language to talk
about these things with it just gives
people a way to do that people don't
love astrology because it's scientific
they love it because it's a powerful
social tool but maybe astrology can
describe more than our emotional
well-being and how we relate to others
actually some scientists are trying to
figure out exactly how much of astrology
is grounded in physical reality and
they're doing some legitimate research
dr. Russell Foster is a circadian
neuroscientist at the University of
Oxford and he says there's something
about astrology that is actually pretty
scientific at its basic level astrology
is saying that when you're born will
influence your biology Foster has spent
years studying how the seasons affect
who you are it's one of astrology's core
ideas and he says there's real science
to back it up
for instance schizophrenia is more
common for people born during January
February and March seasonal affective
disorder is more common among people
born in March in April it could be
changes in your mother's physiology
depending upon when you were conceived
or the sort of signals that the mother
gave you after birth as a result of
feeding on breast milk there is
absolutely a statistical impact of when
you were born on a whole range of our
different parameters
when you're born can affect everything
from your lifespan to your height and
weight your birth season can influence
your personality and even your
likelihood of developing an eating
disorder or mental illness astrologers
have always believed some version of
that the stars and our bodies all follow
natural rhythms and actually that idea
has made astrology an important medical
tool for century this story starts
around 500 years ago astrology and
medicine had a long marriage that's
doctor learned Casal a philosophy of
science lecturer at the University of
Cambridge
Cassell studies from the earliest
surviving medical case books written
around the year 1600 medical records
written by doctors using astrology at
the time lots of doctors didn't actually
write things down they would simply
treat patients on the spot based on
their most obvious symptoms but doctors
who used astrology did things
differently they had to draw
astrological charts and in the process
they were done lots of information about
the patient and they used all that
information to make medical predictions
sort of like doctors do today they could
use strategy as a diagnostic to try to
work out how the timing of feel
nostalgia the art of prognostication is
what doctors do medical predictions
based on astrology
probably didn't lead to the best health
outcomes the medical astrology alleged
some of the earliest surviving medical
journals which methodically tracked
patient symptoms and that's a practice
central to modern medicine and Cassell
says there's another practice modern
doctors might want to take from those
medical astrologers the 17th century
doctors could sell studies treated
patients using remarkable amounts of
information from bodily functions to
family histories to the positions of the
stars today modern medicine is also
learning to embrace complexity that's
especially true in what's called
individualized medicine where doctors
study their patients down to the genetic
level to design treatments for them
specifically as we move into individual
medicine I think there are lessons
that it can learn from an older kind of
medicine can actually say the complex
number of factors that contribute to any
single person's health and whatever
illnesses they may suffer from rather
than these blanket correlations your
sunshine or whether Mercury's in
retrograde won't actually affect you but
that doesn't mean astrology has no value
astrology can tell us a lot about how
natural rhythms affect our health it can
help us reflect on our relationships and
on the way we make decisions and for
what it's worth you can help people feel
connected with ancient history in the
universe astrology isn't science but
maybe that's the wrong way to think
about it
