On 2005-07-26 10:43, stardust wrote:
... Jokes aside.
Astrology more than any other pseudo science is based on subjective perception of widely generalized and randomly applied platitudes....
oops, I forgot the thing in newspapers and on TV, sorry...
not that I want to be the next Galileo, but possibly I can give you a very simple example to clarify my pro astrology and con scientist statement.
I like to watch insects and always admire a dragonflies' maneuvers whenever I spot one in the forest. We know they have huge eyes, perfectly adapted to their task. We don't know how a dragonfly percepts it's sourrounding, but it's eyes must provide a reasonable spacial resolution (it moves in 3d) and emphasize movements (good for hunting).
Does the dragonfly notice me as an entity ?
Obviously not - I'm just an obstacle like any of the trees or rocks around.
One could say 'of course, the stupid thing has no brain and it's just primitive...', but wait - they do exist for > 200 million years and mankind is far from constructing an airplane with similiar capabilities
So there are 2 living beings, both prefering visual senses, yet they have fairly few 'ideas' about each other, but undeniably coexist in that situation.
One should avoid the common error to judge (I can write a book about insects, but the insects can't...) - this is not about quality, but just about existence.
you can extend the example in both directions:
replace the dragonfly by a bird, a rabbit , a dog, an ape and it gets closer to 'our point of view'.
replace it by a spider, a snail, a protozoa and it gets into the opposite direction.
you probably get the idea: who's to tell that it's any different for us ?
after the observations written above, as a scientist you have to accept the same situation for a human creature unless you have evidence that it's different.
but how could you ever tell with such limited senses ?
there are a lot of phenomena that cannot be explained by 'classical' scientific methods and they definetely happen.
astrology is usually misinterpreted as 'an influence a planet puts on us'
Mr. Science now points out that it's complete nonsense because the things are too far away - a complete nonsense statement in itself, as the solar system would just part into all directions if it would be different
but that's not even the point - if you (could) look at the solar system from a distance over a very long period of time, you'd see a constantly moving and ever changing picture - a mixture of regularities and deviations.
obviously there's a context between that picture and things that happen on earth - that's all the trick about it.
From our viewpoint it represents something similiar to
the human and the insect example above...
you don't need to believe that, but can you false proof the reasoning chain ?
cheers, Tom
