Subscribe It wouldn't take anything like that blissful cartoon in which a newsreader announces: In a major breakthrough for the science of astrology all people
By Admin
It wouldn't take anything like that blissful cartoon in which a newsreader announces: "In a major breakthrough for the science of astrology, all people born under Scorpio were yesterday run over by egg lorries." A statistical tendency, however slight, for people's personalities to be predictable from their birthdays, over and above the expected difference between winter and summer babies, would be a promising start.For us to take a hypothesis seriously, it should ideally be supported by at least a little bit of evidence.If this is too much to ask, there should be some suggestion of a reason why it might be worth bothering to look for evidence. Graphology, as a means of reading personalities, is not supported by evidence either, but here the possibility that it might work is not hopelessly implausible a priori. The brain is the seat of the personality and the brain controls handwriting, so it is not in principle unlikely that style of handwriting might betray personality. It seems almost a pity that no good evidence has been forthcoming. But astrology has nothing going for it at all, neither evidence nor any inkling of a rationale which might prompt us to look for evidence.Astrology not only demeans astronomy, shrivelling and cheapening the universe with its pre-Copernican dabblings.
It is also an insult to the science of psychology and the richness of human personality. I am talking about the facile and potentially damaging way in which astrologers divide humans into 12 categories. Scorpios are cheerful, outgoing types, Leos with their methodical personalities go well with Libras (or whatever it is). My wife, Lalla Ward, recalls an occasion when a more than usually brainless hanger-on approached the director of the film they were working on with a "Gee, Mr Preminger, what sign are you?" and received the immortal rebuff, "I am a do-not-disturb sign." We love an opportunity to pigeonhole each other but we should resist the temptation. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Does your body shape betray an endomorphic, a mesomorphic or an ectomorphic personality? "The ectomorph is much more of an introvert and more shrewd and calculating."Personality is a real phenomenon and psychologists (real, scientific psychologists, not Freudians or Jungians) have had some success in developing mathematical models to handle many dimensions of personality variation. POLLY Toynbee's article on genes and selection, ("Blame the genes of the poor, and pull up the middle-class drawbridge", 17 December), illustrates the odd preference of the media to choose people with little knowledge to discuss complex scientific issues in psychology and sociology, particularly with reference to intelligence. Reaction in the mail to the column had been quite interesting, too, and sufficient for me to decide that many people will accept and rationalise almost any pronouncement made by someone they believe to be an authority with mystic powers.
At this point, Zo-ran hung up his scissors, put away the paste pot, and went out of business."My case is that Randi was morally right to hang up his scissors, that serious newspapers should never give named astrologers the oxygen of publicity, that astrology is neither harmless nor fun, and that we should fight it seriously as an enemy of truth. We have a Trade Descriptions Act which protects us from manufacturers making false claims for their products. The law has not so far been invoked in defence of simple, scientific truth. Why not? Astrologers provide as good a test case as could be desired. They make claims to forecast the future, and they take payment for this, as well as for professional advice to individuals on important decisions.
A pharmaceuticals manufacturer who marketed a birth-control pill that had not the slightest demonstrable effect upon fertility would be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act, and sued by trusting customers who found themselves pregnant. If astrologers cannot be sued by individuals misadvised, say, into taking disastrous business decisions, why at least are they not prosecuted for false representation under the Trade Descriptions Act and driven out of business? Why, actually, are professional astrologers not jailed for fraud?The writer is the first holder of Oxford's Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science.The year ahead Real Life, page 6. His method was to cut out the forecasts from old astrology magazines, shuffle them in a hat, distribute them at random among the 12 zodiacal signs and print the results. This was very successful of course (because all astrology works on the "Barnum principle" of saying things so vague and general that all readers think it applies to them). He describes how he overheard in a cafe a pair of office workers eagerly scanning Zo-ran's column in the paper."They squealed with delight on seeing their future so well laid out, and in response to my query said that Zo-ran had been 'right smack on' last week I did not identify myself as Zo-ran ... On a famous occasion a few years ago a newspaper hack, who had drawn the short straw and been told to make up the day's astrological advice, relieved his boredom by writing under one star sign the following portentous lines: "All the sorrows of yesteryear are as nothing compared to what will befall you today." He was fired after the switchboard was jammed with panic-stricken readers, pathetic testimony to the simple trust people can place in astrology.The American conjuror James Randi recounts in his book Flim Flam how as a young man he briefly got the astrology job on a Montreal newspaper, making up the horoscopes under the name Zo-ran. This is not just silly, it is damaging, and the quacks concerned deserve our censure as strongly as their deluded victims deserve our pity.There are some stupid people out there, and they should be pitied not exploited.
The whole point of advertising in such columns is to increase the catchment area for meeting sexual partners (and indeed the circle provided by the workplace and by friends of friends is meagre and needs enriching). It is nothing short of ludicrous then to go out of your way to divide the available number of potential partners by twelve. Lonely people, whose life might be transformed by a longed- for compatible friendship, are deliberately encouraged, by their reading of astrological quacks in the newspapers, wantonly and pointlessly to throw away 11/12ths of the available population. It is a far cry from any mutually exclusive categorisation, certainly far from the preposterous fiction of astrology's 12 dumpbins. It is based upon genuinely relevant data about people themselves, not their birthdays.