Is Astrology a Science?

This is a question which has cropped up occasionally over the years. The funny thing is that this is a question asked by many educated people. So, is astrology a science?
Well, simply put: no, it is not.

Is is fun reading your horoscope in the paper? Sure, if you have nothing else to do.
Is it fun reading Linda Goodman's Sun Signs? (What! You don't read it???) Sure, it's humorous and full of hyperbole and exaggerations.

Unfortunately, that's not where it stops. People take it far too seriously. The danger starts when people base decisions on astrological charts rather than rationale, especially when the latter is freely available and more straightforward.

One of the fundamental principles of science is that it is subject to experimentation. If it can be proved by experiment, it can be more credibly accepted. This is one place where astrology fails miserably. A prediction about the future has no guarantees attached to it. No astrologer will explain it in a way that makes any rational sense. "Tomorrow is a bad day because Mars is in the third house."
Now, what does that mean?
Upon further inquiry, you might find that Mars representing war, and the third house (whatever that is) representing X part of the body is a bad combination (or something to that effect). But that's where it ends. Why something is so, in the end, comes down to accepting a set of rules which are sacrosanct. No science works this way.

A certain set of rules may be sacrosanct in a particular science for a certain period of time, but if they fail to explain observations, it's time to change these rules. Not so in astrology.

Another premise of science is that if an experiment is repeated under identical conditions in any other place in our universe, the results will be the same. This is again not true in astrology. The same planetary alignment could be interpreted favorably by some person in India, as a portent of doom by an American astrologer, and as indifferent by an Arabic one.

There may once have been a use for astrology in ancient days, when science was not advanced enough, and people not educated enough to reason certain things out. Therefore, rules of thumb were more efficient ways to handle things. However, many of those rules of thumb are outmoded today.

But, there's a case to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Astrology, misguided as it is, did have some uses. Certain astrological warnings like: "Do not go out during a solar eclipse", do have a grain of truth attached to them. Staring at the sun during an eclipse is a highly dangerous activity, but not because Rahu is attacking, but because it is highly dangerous to view the sun at any time, even at a time when its brilliance is minescule, due to the dangerous electromagnetic radiation that can damage your eyes.

So, there's a simple scientific explanation. No hocus pocus, no jiggery pokery.
Similarly, as a friend and amateur astronomer pointed out, the position of the planets as captured in the horoscope is an accurate representation of the sky at that point in time.


So, does this mean that people will stop believing in astrology? That's like asking someone who has been using a crutch all his life to suddenly walk without it. Can it be done? Well, isn't that what education is supposed to be doing?