From The
Philosopher, Volume 100 No. 1
Centenary Special 1913-2012
Centenary Special 1913-2012
GREAT PHILOSOPHERS
and their Starsigns
By Mark Shulgasser and Martin Cohen
Another look at the
ancient debate over the scientific credibility of the devilish science...
What we're supposed to think:
'Science has shown us through measurement, observation and
experimentation that there are four forces in the Universe:
electromagnetism, strong interaction, weak interaction and gravitation.
For reasons too detailed to go into in this article, none of them can
impact humanity purely from the positions of the stars in the sky or how
aligned the planets are.'
- Dr Mark Thompson, astronomer
- Dr Mark Thompson, astronomer
What
we're not to say:
'In the early stages of the human mind, these connecting
links between astrology and biology were studies from a very different
point of view, but at least they were studied and not left out of sight,
as is the common tendency in our own time, under the restricting
influence of a nascent and incomplete positivism. Beneath the chimerical
belief of the old philosophy in the physiological influence of the
stars, there lay a strong, though confused recognition of the truth that
the facts of life were in some way dependent on the solar system. Like
all primitive inspirations of man's intelligence this feeling needed
rectification by positive science but not destruction...'
- Auguste Comte, Cours de
Philosophie Positive, Vol. III, 1836
Philosophy has long had a dislike of astrology. It is, after all, irrational. And one of the most surprising, some would say alarming, facts about Ronald Reagan is that, as soon as he became the President of the United States, he appointed a personal astrologer to help him take decisions. But then, for thousands of years, all the Kings and Queens had their personal astrologers to do much the same thing. These were experts that they consulted on important state matters, such as when to invade the neighbouring country, when to harvest the crops - or how best to bring up baby.
Reagan had acquired the habit of consulting an experts in the Occult Arts when he was but a humble actor in California, doubtless the process helped him decide which role in which film he should accept - and we know where that ended: 'Breakfast with Bonzo (1951)'. But once he took high office, the role of astrology became even more in important*.
Reagan consulted his personal astrologer, Joan Quigley, about the personality and inclinations of other world leaders, and used these insights to help him assess the prospects of meetings succeeding. It seems, for example, that the stars looked favourably upon one Mikhail Gorbachev, the then leader of the otherwise Evil Empire, and hence Reagan was encouraged to attempt the rapprochement that in due course led to the end of the Cold War. In fact, the timings of all policy initiatives had to be squared with the movements of the cosmos, and White House staff were instructed to liaise with her in all their plans. She was responsible, in short, for the success of all that Reagan did. And these days, Reagan is counted as a pretty successful President, although that judgement is itself by no means necessarily a very scientific one.
Of course, Ronald Reagan came in for a bit of stick for consulting astrologers. Just as, more generally scientists and attached pundits love nothing better that to mock more humble folk who follow their forecasts in the newspapers and magazines.
Typical of the scientists opposed to astrology is one Mark Thompson, a writer and astronomy presenter for a TV show. Penning a little piece for a newspaper, (Astrology Rubbish? Don't Get Me Started, Daily Mail, Oct 29, 2010) he launches several torpedoes against the astrological dinghy.
First out, that claim that according to astrologers there are 12 signs of the zodiac. Wrong! Boom! There are 13 signs of the zodiac, reports Thompson, adding sardonically, 'Ophiuchus is the 'new' one yet for some curious reason I have never come across an Ophiuchian!' Likewise, until 1781, there were only five planets known to affect us in the minds of astrologers: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Now there are three more! Oh no, two more, since in recent years the astronomers decided they were wrong to have ever counted Pluto as a planet as it is very small and appears to be really just another asteroid.
Even allowing for a moment the traditional twelve signs of the zodiac, there are problems. Mark was born in July which astrologers would say means that when he was born the sun was in Cancer. But they're wrong again. Boom! Originally yes, the sun would have been in Cancer when the star/sun charts were produced about 2000 years ago. But in reality, the wobble of the Earth on its axis - which astronomers call "precession" - has led to them being all out of sync.
'In fact, says Mark cheerily, 'when I was born, way back in July 1973, the Sun was in Gemini. News Flash: you're all reading the wrong star signs! All those astrology columns you've read that seemed spot-on were a fluke. Surprising eh?'
Let's pause Dr Thompson there. Just think, what are the constellations? They are patterns in the starts that we see from Earth. The constellations are in reality made up of stars in very different positions in the universe. Typically, some of the stars are relatively close, and some are a long way away but may be rather larger and brighter. Some of the 'stars' may actually be distant galaxies! And the resemblance of the stars to anything like a lion let alone 'a goat with a fishes tail' is well, nil. So where the planets are in relation to these imaginary, wholly human constructed collections of bright points of light remains and may as well be wholly human constructed. Anyway, it cannot make any difference to the claims of astrology where the 'physical' zodiac is. Because there is no physical sense in which the signs are really there in the skies.
Mark then moves onto more philosophical arguments, saying that if there is some mystical force (other than the fundamental four above) affecting our lives from the planets, then clearly distance is no object for this force as it doesn't matter if a planet or star is near or far. And yet there are 'hundreds of exoplanets orbiting other stars?' And over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way! 'Surely that 'force' would also be affecting us. Thankfully it doesn't, otherwise we would all be running round as complete loonies with all these 'influences' flying at us from all directions.' Boom!
'As you can tell, I'm not fond of astrology', he confides in closing. 'It's all about telling people what they want to hear and we fragile humans' wanting something to believe in.' And that's bad, of course.
Reagan had acquired the habit of consulting an experts in the Occult Arts when he was but a humble actor in California, doubtless the process helped him decide which role in which film he should accept - and we know where that ended: 'Breakfast with Bonzo (1951)'. But once he took high office, the role of astrology became even more in important*.
Reagan consulted his personal astrologer, Joan Quigley, about the personality and inclinations of other world leaders, and used these insights to help him assess the prospects of meetings succeeding. It seems, for example, that the stars looked favourably upon one Mikhail Gorbachev, the then leader of the otherwise Evil Empire, and hence Reagan was encouraged to attempt the rapprochement that in due course led to the end of the Cold War. In fact, the timings of all policy initiatives had to be squared with the movements of the cosmos, and White House staff were instructed to liaise with her in all their plans. She was responsible, in short, for the success of all that Reagan did. And these days, Reagan is counted as a pretty successful President, although that judgement is itself by no means necessarily a very scientific one.
Of course, Ronald Reagan came in for a bit of stick for consulting astrologers. Just as, more generally scientists and attached pundits love nothing better that to mock more humble folk who follow their forecasts in the newspapers and magazines.
Typical of the scientists opposed to astrology is one Mark Thompson, a writer and astronomy presenter for a TV show. Penning a little piece for a newspaper, (Astrology Rubbish? Don't Get Me Started, Daily Mail, Oct 29, 2010) he launches several torpedoes against the astrological dinghy.
First out, that claim that according to astrologers there are 12 signs of the zodiac. Wrong! Boom! There are 13 signs of the zodiac, reports Thompson, adding sardonically, 'Ophiuchus is the 'new' one yet for some curious reason I have never come across an Ophiuchian!' Likewise, until 1781, there were only five planets known to affect us in the minds of astrologers: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Now there are three more! Oh no, two more, since in recent years the astronomers decided they were wrong to have ever counted Pluto as a planet as it is very small and appears to be really just another asteroid.
Even allowing for a moment the traditional twelve signs of the zodiac, there are problems. Mark was born in July which astrologers would say means that when he was born the sun was in Cancer. But they're wrong again. Boom! Originally yes, the sun would have been in Cancer when the star/sun charts were produced about 2000 years ago. But in reality, the wobble of the Earth on its axis - which astronomers call "precession" - has led to them being all out of sync.
'In fact, says Mark cheerily, 'when I was born, way back in July 1973, the Sun was in Gemini. News Flash: you're all reading the wrong star signs! All those astrology columns you've read that seemed spot-on were a fluke. Surprising eh?'
Let's pause Dr Thompson there. Just think, what are the constellations? They are patterns in the starts that we see from Earth. The constellations are in reality made up of stars in very different positions in the universe. Typically, some of the stars are relatively close, and some are a long way away but may be rather larger and brighter. Some of the 'stars' may actually be distant galaxies! And the resemblance of the stars to anything like a lion let alone 'a goat with a fishes tail' is well, nil. So where the planets are in relation to these imaginary, wholly human constructed collections of bright points of light remains and may as well be wholly human constructed. Anyway, it cannot make any difference to the claims of astrology where the 'physical' zodiac is. Because there is no physical sense in which the signs are really there in the skies.
Mark then moves onto more philosophical arguments, saying that if there is some mystical force (other than the fundamental four above) affecting our lives from the planets, then clearly distance is no object for this force as it doesn't matter if a planet or star is near or far. And yet there are 'hundreds of exoplanets orbiting other stars?' And over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way! 'Surely that 'force' would also be affecting us. Thankfully it doesn't, otherwise we would all be running round as complete loonies with all these 'influences' flying at us from all directions.' Boom!
'As you can tell, I'm not fond of astrology', he confides in closing. 'It's all about telling people what they want to hear and we fragile humans' wanting something to believe in.' And that's bad, of course.
What makes astrology bad
Mark is not alone. For many educated people, nothing better illustrates the gullibility and foolishness of the masses, and the need for the lead of a scientific elite than the continued activities of 'unlicensed' specialists in the influence of the stars and planets on human affairs. They don't seem to remember, or want to be told, that for a thousand years, Universities taught astrology as one of the core subjects, and that it was part of a sophisticated system of medical knowledge involving the different parts of the body and different herbs.
Even if that founding figure of sensible science, Isaac Newton, was brought upon a diet of esoteric knowledge, in which astrology ranked as one of the great studies of mankind, even if astronomy profited from the mystical approach of Pythagoras, even if that the best of modern medicine is borrowed from herbalism; and that chemistry is a side-shoot of alchemy. Even if, in short, in Paul Feyerabend's words, everywhere science is enriched and sustained by unscientific methods and unscientific results, today astrology is firmly fallen out of favour with philosophers, let alone scientists. Little remains of the subject other than the superficial popular and psychological forms, yet astrology, like many of the now much derided esoteric studies of the distant past, still has the potential to inform and underpin our understandings of the universe. Because thousands of years of thinking are contained in those ancient astrological myths and legends. Science is just a blip in this long history...
Astrology's origins are lost in antiquity, but it is usually said to have originated in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) before spreading, via Babylon, to the Greeks. The Ancient Greeks learnt avidly of the new studies in science and mathematics, and similarly of the interest in the 'patterns' in the heavens. It was the Greeks who developed the methods of personal horoscopes, a skill then borrowed by the Romans, whose Latin names for the signs have been used ever since.
That said, one rather compelling argument heard against astrology is that some of its practitioners, people who compose astrology columns for daily newspapers or magazines, don't actually 'do it'. Instead of carefully checking the positions of the stars and planets each day, these astrologers simply write stuff off the top of their heads, or ask other people 'in the office' what they would LIKE to be their horoscope for that day, or week.
Such glimpses behind the scenes look pretty damming, upsetting even for those who have up to then found a lot of thought-provoking insight into their most personal secrets in the relevant column. Yet even here, the astrological beast that is slain is nothing more than the 'stalking horse' one of supposed physical cause and effect.
Although occasionally astrologers mutter about possible physical mechanisms for planetary influence, be they changes in the Earth's magnetic fields, or be they still more mystical 'quantum ones', really astrology is not about that. It is about mystical correspondences. It is no less unlikely that someone could randomly generate wise advice for an astrology column than they could do so using those out-of-date zodiacal charts.
Astrology in the Petri dish
Mystical correspondences are difficult to test in laboratories. Yet even if we allow that astrology's workings are too mystical to be examined, far less understood, by scientists, the same cannot be said of the question of whether their predictions are accurate or not. Here, scientists are on their home ground. And indeed there have been many such scientific studies. Throughout the closing decades of the 20th century, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people - selected as they were of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, built upon the principle that our human characteristics are moulded by the influence of the sun, moon and planets at the time of our birth, the subjects should have had very similar aptitudes and characters.
The researchers patiently measured no less than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sports, mathematics and reading, and then looked for any evidence that people born under the same stars shared certain characteristics - as astrology would seem to require, if its forecasts are to make any sense.
Naturally, inevitably even, the scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the "time twins". They gleefully reported this in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, which is apparently where such studies belong, adding that: 'The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success ... but the results are uniformly negative.'
Summing up the findings, Geoffrey Dean, a scientist, based in Perth, Australia, where the constellations are all different anyway, and a renegade former astrologer himself, said that the results undermined the claims of astrologers, especially as they typically work with birth data far less precise than that used in the study. 'They sometimes argue that times of birth just a minute apart can make all the difference by altering what they call the "house cusps"' he said. 'But in their work, they are happy to take whatever time they can get from a client.'
The president of the Astrological Association of Great Britain, doubtless using his secret powers to see the causes behind events, accused Mr. Dean of seeking to 'discredit astrology'. But he needn't have worried, because anyway, all this is old hat. Astrology first heard and shrugged off that problem centuries, nay thousands of years, ago.
Even the Ancient Greek philosopher Carneades (219-129 BCE), had noted it, adding that if the crucial date for the influence of the stars on humans was the moment of conception, as opposed to birth (which, at least at the time he was writing, is necessarily always at least a few minutes apart) then the irrelevance of astrological influences for twins is even more marked. It was already clear back then that there was no answer to that, but equally, since Carneades was a philosopher who picked holes in everyone's claims to knowledge, and generally insisted that no certainty was possible about anything, in a sense he left astrology humbled but no more unreliable than any other study.
And sure enough, astrology quickly recovered from this blow to its prestige and was sufficiently influential that a few hundred years later, the Church needed to charge its top philosopher, Saint Augustine, with the task of attempting to discredit it. Augustine fell to with customary zeal and thoroughness. But his task was complicated as first he had to square frequent Biblical references to the stars (for example, guiding the wise men, who, more embarrassing still, were in fact astrologers, to Bethlehem) with warnings elsewhere in the Bible that astrologers are evil people who belong in the category of sorcerers and witches.
It was truly a formidable exercise for any philosopher, and his solution was in effect to allow the trappings, but outlaw the substance. God did indeed use the heavens to send messages - but humans could not tell the future 'in general', by looking at the stars. At this point, Saint Augustine gratefully resurrected the twins argument as evidence that the claims of astrologers were false. And not only false. Worse! In trying to read the future, people sinned grievously. It was with this guidance in mind that Dante depicted the poor astrologers burning in the Inferno in a particularly painful way. He has them with their heads twisted viciously round, so that they can only see in the one direction - backwards.
Other Church fathers (Jerome, Eusebius, Chrystostom, Lactantius, and Ambrose) all joined in the Crusade against astrology, and the great Council of Toledo prohibited it for all time. Many other critics, in all ages, followed Augustine's lead. By no means all of these were particularly devout, of course. Actually, astrology is one of the few things that religious folk and irreligious scientists can agree on. As the 'Dark Ages' lightened up a bit, Roger Bacon , Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, William Fulke), John Chamber and Sir Christopher Heydon ) published critiques. By the end of the Renaissance in Europe, there was such a good market for parodies of astrology that even respected writers like Jonathan Swift and Benjamin Franklin had a go!
Of all the Renaissance voices, Pico Della Mirandola is one of the most respected ones. And sure enough, his demolition of astrology rested upon a (re)discovery of the 'twins problem'. Actually, it seems that he had a particular grudge against the science, as he had once been advised helpfully by astrologers that he would die before the 33rd year of his life, due to Mars and the direction of his ascendant. Naturally he was pretty mad about that! And so he discredited their methodology. On the other hand, as some astrologers took unkind pleasure in noting, that unfortunate feature of his horoscope did indeed turn out to be fatal in his 32nd year. That's the story, anyway, and indeed it's a fine story to frighten scientists with, but equally, as has been pointed out, even if the story if true, the prediction is still not really within the proper scope of astrological judgement.
Science and religion combine to combat heresy
Such dire predictions of not only individual misfortune but collective human doom helped Christianity rebadge the ancient stud as a devilish folk art. But as with many other devilish folk arts, even as it condemned the pagan practices, it embraced other traditions of astrology with the other hand. That's why each Christmas the Church celebrates the 'sign' of the star over Bethlehem and has decorated its most important religious sites (in their masonry, stained glass windows and paintings) with numerous astrological symbols and motifs. That's also why, six centuries on, the dates of popes' coronations were determined by the zodiac; aristocratic prelates employed their own personal astrologers; and signs of the zodiac appeared all over church furnishings, tiles, doorways, manuscripts, and baptismal fonts. Such hypocrisy is worthy of science itself!
So there was plenty of scope for a new rediscovery of the 'Twins problem' by science proper, in 1975, this time by a group of '186 leading scientists', including 19 Nobel laureates. These worthies signed a statement called 'Objections to Astrology' which also revealed the problem to a still regrettably unenlightened world.
In a preamble to their critique, the scientists explained their motivations. They had asked themselves why people believed n astrology and concluded that it must be that in uncertain times many long for the comfort of having guidance in making decisions. 'They would like to believe in a destiny predetermined by astral forces beyond their control. However, we must all face the world, and we must realise that our futures lie in ourselves, and not in the stars.'
The 186 were 'especially disturbed by the continued uncritical dissemination of astrological charts, forecasts, and horoscopes by the media and by otherwise reputable newspapers, magazines, and book publishers' saying it could only contribute to the 'growth of irrationalism and obscurantism.'
The statement was organised by three experts in particular: Bart J. Bok, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona; Lawrence E. Jerome, a 'Science Writer' from California and Paul Kurtz‚ Professor of Philosophy at Buffalo, all regular 'skeptics' in the American sense of people who believe uncritically in the march of science and try to make money out of books discrediting all forms of esoteria and alternative medicine.
Lawrence Jerome, for instance, quickly followed up the petition with a 1977 book called Astrology Disproved, which offers as reasons why astrology cannot be true, things like the good scientific fact that: 'Correspondence is not causation: no matter how powerful a coincidence, there is no necessary causation behind it.'
But astrology is divination. Where tea leaves fall in the bottom of a cup does not 'physically' affect my future either. However, it is quite possible that there could be some significant correlations. Possible, but unlikely. One would need a tea-leaf expert to know. Or there's the ancient Chinese art of throwing yarrow sticks and seeing how they fall - the I Ching. There is no possible way, gravitational or otherwise, that certain arrangements of yarrow sticks could influence events on Earth. But the claim is that certain patterns in the sticks reflect certain patterns in the universe. Patterns that ultimately we are part of. But listen to the positivist (everything real can be measured) mindset, plodding relentlessly though its irrelevant critique:
*Astrology is based on your time of birth, but if there is any planetary influence at all, shouldn't it be at your conception?
*There is more gravitational influence on a child at birth from the attending doctor than from all the stars and planets combined.
*Astrology is based on a Ptolemaic, earth-centred, universe and was left high and dry after the Copernican, sun-centred, model was adopted.
Yet in the style, typical of those attempting to nail astrologers, Lawrence Jerome goes on to debunk his own idea of astrology by causation rather than the astrologers' idea of mystical correspondence. 'Astrology is out of sync with the stars', he complains, and the sun passes through those 13, not 12 constellations, on different dates and for different durations that traditional astrology claims.
The odd thing about this 'scientific' debunking is that if , as he and the other signatories all insist, there is no causal relationship between the constellations or the wanderings of the planets 'through them', then there is no significance in the 'actual' position of the stars either. Linking the two is, well. irrational. But then that problem is, as they pointed out, spreading.
Great Philosophers and their Starsigns
So now, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Philosophical Society of England, (a Society with a long tradition of thinking 'outside the box ', as it were), let us try a simple astrological experiment of our own and attempt to examine, if not exactly 'scientifically ', then at least without distaste, whether astrology really does tell us something profound about humanity.
Let us take as our starting point and experimental sample the special case of 'great philosophers ', along with the evidence of their published views and writing, and then compare this with conventional astrological wisdom to see if there are any patterns or tendencies that astrologers might have anticipated. This, mark you, is a tough test for the esoteric science, allowing as it does only the use of their crudest tool, the twelve zodiacal sun-signs. But we can afford a little experimental bias towards conventional science.
Aries philosophers . . .
from ego sum to the 'transcendental ego'
And starting our methodical inquiry with the first sign, Aries (March 22 - April 21), we immediately find a strange coincidence. Aries people are supposed to be exceptionally creative and insightful, but also very ambitious. In astrological lore, if each sign has a motto, the motto for Aries is 'I am '. In terms of the body, the sign governs and thus emphasises the head and brain. And Aries, it turns out, is also the birth sign of René Descartes (31 March), the great rationalist and fountainhead of modern philosophy, whose motto is… 'I think, therefore, I am'. Here in his celebrated one line argument is all the egoism you could wish for.
Cogito ergo SUM, ego sum, ego existo
Descartes himself admits that the cogito is not a piece of reasoning. The poet and philosopher Paul Valery calls it 'a fist coming down on a table'. He adds:
[It is] the explosion of an act, a shattering blow . . If the cogito turns up so often in his work, if it is found again and again in the Discourse, the Meditations, the Principles, it is because it is an appeal to his essential egotism. He takes it up as the theme of the lucid Self; it is the clarion call to his pride and the resources of his being. . . . I say that the real method of Descartes ought to be called egotism...
Aries represents the violence of birth, as well as the miracle. The infant 's screams must be accommodated. Descartes' 'I am' immediately confronts the Other and in so doing opens a Pandora's box of dualisms, the discords that will fly about causing harm for centuries: mind/body, subject/object, conscious/unconscious, self/other, certainty/doubt.
In astrological tradition too, Aries is ruled by Mars, the planet or god, and represents irresistible force, birth, emergence, sunrise. Descartes turns up a surprisingly martial swashbuckler in the familiar Frans Hals oil sketch. He carried a silver sword. He disarms a rival lover on the Orleans road. He defeats a band of brigands on a Freisland ferry. He attends battlefields all over Europe. His philosophical dream takes place in a military barracks, while directing munitions and studying ballistics. He has contempt for the past, the intellectual authority of the schools, dead languages, even books.
In the Discourse, Descartes often uses the metaphor of battle writing, for example: 'perhaps we should make the comparison with army chieftains' and that 'For to try to conquer all the difficulties and errors which stand in our way when we try to reach the truth is really to engage in battle; and to reach a false conclusion on an important issue is to lose the battle.'
To become 'masters and possessors of nature' he calls for an organised campaign of science. He calls for an army of paid mercenaries and forecasts the regiments of modern techno-science.
Truly, blood flows around Descartes. For a time, he purposely lives near a slaughterhouse. He defends vivisection in the name of knowledge, cuts out the heart of a living dog, and measures the pulsations along the aorta with his bare hand. 'I have spent much time on dissection during the last eleven years, and I doubt whether there is a doctor who has made more detailed observations than I. ' Blood then is the start of the zodiac, and the start of so-called 'modern ' philosophy.
There is one other canonical philosopher born under Aries: Thomas Hobbes (5 April) whose long life span enclosed Descartes' short one. Does Hobbes introduce the Political Subject as Descartes did the Philosophical Subject? The idea has been entertained. Hobbes, like Descartes, set philosophical debates in geometrical style, 'clear and distinct,' offering his own famously terse battle cries: 'war of each against all', and life, 'nasty, brutish and short'. His convincing justification of 'might makes right' make him politically incendiary.
Think of Hobbes as Descartes' henchman in the battle for reason. Like Descartes, Hume is rumored to be an atheist, even openly accused of causing the Great Fire of London by blasphemous writing. He is dubbed 'the monster of Malmesbury ' and forced into exile.
What astrologers call the natural belligerence of the Aries temperament is today too at the forefront of militant atheism, where reason is antagonist of God. All of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, Richard Dawkins (26 March), Daniel Dennett (28 March), Sam Harris (9 April) and the recently laid-to-rest Christopher Hitchens (13 April), vie with each other in abrasiveness.
Dennett, the professional philosopher among them, is famously rebarbative, holds closely to the Cartesian issues of mind and mechanism, pores over Descartes ' original illustrations, evaluates every possible 'meat robot ', mind-in-tank proposal, freely dissecting brains in imaginary thought experiments. Another leading light of philosophy of mind, David Chalmers (20 April) contemplates zombies. 'Automata' and 'artificial life' occur in the very first paragraph of Hobbes' Leviathan. And legend tells of Francine, an automaton constructed by Descartes, in imitation of his deceased daughter, thrown overboard on orders of the Captain.
Two other twentieth century Aries philosophers have also been impressive Cartesians: Edmund Husserl (8 April), who repeats or renews the radical Beginning, and Jacques Lacan (13 April) for whom engagement with the cogito is fundamental. So much for sign number one. Some curious similarities and affinities, undeniably. Next up is Taurus the Bull: polarity negative, element earth, modality fixed.
Taurus philosophers . . . the 'thing-in-itself'
Born under the sign of the Bull, sign associated by astrologers with strength, stubbornness and determination, we find the philosophers David Hume (7 May), Immanuel Kant (22 April), John Stuart Mill (20 May), Karl Marx (5 May), Ludwig Wittgenstein (26 April), and Soren Kierkegaard (5 May). What can they all be said to have in common, other than rare philosophical fame? A certain way of taking up space that might be called Taurean?
Six great philosophers is a big number to be found randomly corralled at random in one of twelve possible pens. Especially considering that out of our benchmark 'Twenty Greats ', drawn from the popular Leiter poll of philosophy, four - Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Aquinas - are without recorded birth-dates. Thus, six out of sixteen major 'thinkers with birthdates' of western civilisation were born under Taurus, around five times the statistical expectation. Could that be what good social science researchers call 'significant'?
For astrologers, Aries and Taurus together make up the primal pair, the first positive, the second negative. Scrying the source horoscopes of modern philosophy reveals that Descartes' sun was in Aries, his moon in Taurus, while for Kant it is just the reverse, his sun in Taurus and moon in Aries. The correlation of astrological emphasis with historical judgment here seems almost heavy-handed.
If Aries runs with blood and sword; the Taureans, by contrast, are mostly settled and steady. Indeed, Kant's regularity is legendary. Hume was purposive to a fault. As a youth, he committed himself to ten years of disciplined intellectual self-development, which he completed on schedule; likewise later he planned and executed a fifteen-year project, his mountainous History of England, which, as calculated, was an immense publishing success. Always a large man, he grew extremely stout.
The attachment of J. S. Mill to the reassuring authority of his felicific calculus fits too, as does the patient labour of Marx in his famous seat in the British Library, carefully jotting down the thousands of pages of notes that eventually would make up the multiple volumes of Das Kapital - all this is worthy of Taurus.
Hume places an immovable object in the path of Descartes ' irresistible force by setting strong limits to reason. 'The Passions which are and ought to be master of Reason', are products of the depths of unknowable, pre-rational physical nature. Hume has no need to prove either that he exists or that the world is not an illusion. In reply to Descartes' excited horn-blowing, Hume seems bovine, emitting great, placid moo-o-os, Recall this, from the Abstract of the Treatise of Human Nature of 1740:
Des Cartes maintained that thought was the essence of the mind; not this thought or that thought, but thought in general. This seems to be absolutely unintelligible, since everything that exists is particular . . a peach, for instance.
Moo-oo! And then too, a bit later, where he writes:
The odd thing about this 'scientific' debunking is that if , as he and the other signatories all insist, there is no causal relationship between the constellations or the wanderings of the planets 'through them', then there is no significance in the 'actual' position of the stars either. Linking the two is, well. irrational. But then that problem is, as they pointed out, spreading.
Great Philosophers and their Starsigns
So now, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Philosophical Society of England, (a Society with a long tradition of thinking 'outside the box ', as it were), let us try a simple astrological experiment of our own and attempt to examine, if not exactly 'scientifically ', then at least without distaste, whether astrology really does tell us something profound about humanity.
Let us take as our starting point and experimental sample the special case of 'great philosophers ', along with the evidence of their published views and writing, and then compare this with conventional astrological wisdom to see if there are any patterns or tendencies that astrologers might have anticipated. This, mark you, is a tough test for the esoteric science, allowing as it does only the use of their crudest tool, the twelve zodiacal sun-signs. But we can afford a little experimental bias towards conventional science.
Aries philosophers . . .
from ego sum to the 'transcendental ego'
And starting our methodical inquiry with the first sign, Aries (March 22 - April 21), we immediately find a strange coincidence. Aries people are supposed to be exceptionally creative and insightful, but also very ambitious. In astrological lore, if each sign has a motto, the motto for Aries is 'I am '. In terms of the body, the sign governs and thus emphasises the head and brain. And Aries, it turns out, is also the birth sign of René Descartes (31 March), the great rationalist and fountainhead of modern philosophy, whose motto is… 'I think, therefore, I am'. Here in his celebrated one line argument is all the egoism you could wish for.
Cogito ergo SUM, ego sum, ego existo
Descartes himself admits that the cogito is not a piece of reasoning. The poet and philosopher Paul Valery calls it 'a fist coming down on a table'. He adds:
[It is] the explosion of an act, a shattering blow . . If the cogito turns up so often in his work, if it is found again and again in the Discourse, the Meditations, the Principles, it is because it is an appeal to his essential egotism. He takes it up as the theme of the lucid Self; it is the clarion call to his pride and the resources of his being. . . . I say that the real method of Descartes ought to be called egotism...
Aries represents the violence of birth, as well as the miracle. The infant 's screams must be accommodated. Descartes' 'I am' immediately confronts the Other and in so doing opens a Pandora's box of dualisms, the discords that will fly about causing harm for centuries: mind/body, subject/object, conscious/unconscious, self/other, certainty/doubt.
In astrological tradition too, Aries is ruled by Mars, the planet or god, and represents irresistible force, birth, emergence, sunrise. Descartes turns up a surprisingly martial swashbuckler in the familiar Frans Hals oil sketch. He carried a silver sword. He disarms a rival lover on the Orleans road. He defeats a band of brigands on a Freisland ferry. He attends battlefields all over Europe. His philosophical dream takes place in a military barracks, while directing munitions and studying ballistics. He has contempt for the past, the intellectual authority of the schools, dead languages, even books.
In the Discourse, Descartes often uses the metaphor of battle writing, for example: 'perhaps we should make the comparison with army chieftains' and that 'For to try to conquer all the difficulties and errors which stand in our way when we try to reach the truth is really to engage in battle; and to reach a false conclusion on an important issue is to lose the battle.'
To become 'masters and possessors of nature' he calls for an organised campaign of science. He calls for an army of paid mercenaries and forecasts the regiments of modern techno-science.
Truly, blood flows around Descartes. For a time, he purposely lives near a slaughterhouse. He defends vivisection in the name of knowledge, cuts out the heart of a living dog, and measures the pulsations along the aorta with his bare hand. 'I have spent much time on dissection during the last eleven years, and I doubt whether there is a doctor who has made more detailed observations than I. ' Blood then is the start of the zodiac, and the start of so-called 'modern ' philosophy.
There is one other canonical philosopher born under Aries: Thomas Hobbes (5 April) whose long life span enclosed Descartes' short one. Does Hobbes introduce the Political Subject as Descartes did the Philosophical Subject? The idea has been entertained. Hobbes, like Descartes, set philosophical debates in geometrical style, 'clear and distinct,' offering his own famously terse battle cries: 'war of each against all', and life, 'nasty, brutish and short'. His convincing justification of 'might makes right' make him politically incendiary.
Think of Hobbes as Descartes' henchman in the battle for reason. Like Descartes, Hume is rumored to be an atheist, even openly accused of causing the Great Fire of London by blasphemous writing. He is dubbed 'the monster of Malmesbury ' and forced into exile.
What astrologers call the natural belligerence of the Aries temperament is today too at the forefront of militant atheism, where reason is antagonist of God. All of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, Richard Dawkins (26 March), Daniel Dennett (28 March), Sam Harris (9 April) and the recently laid-to-rest Christopher Hitchens (13 April), vie with each other in abrasiveness.
Dennett, the professional philosopher among them, is famously rebarbative, holds closely to the Cartesian issues of mind and mechanism, pores over Descartes ' original illustrations, evaluates every possible 'meat robot ', mind-in-tank proposal, freely dissecting brains in imaginary thought experiments. Another leading light of philosophy of mind, David Chalmers (20 April) contemplates zombies. 'Automata' and 'artificial life' occur in the very first paragraph of Hobbes' Leviathan. And legend tells of Francine, an automaton constructed by Descartes, in imitation of his deceased daughter, thrown overboard on orders of the Captain.
Two other twentieth century Aries philosophers have also been impressive Cartesians: Edmund Husserl (8 April), who repeats or renews the radical Beginning, and Jacques Lacan (13 April) for whom engagement with the cogito is fundamental. So much for sign number one. Some curious similarities and affinities, undeniably. Next up is Taurus the Bull: polarity negative, element earth, modality fixed.
Taurus philosophers . . . the 'thing-in-itself'
Born under the sign of the Bull, sign associated by astrologers with strength, stubbornness and determination, we find the philosophers David Hume (7 May), Immanuel Kant (22 April), John Stuart Mill (20 May), Karl Marx (5 May), Ludwig Wittgenstein (26 April), and Soren Kierkegaard (5 May). What can they all be said to have in common, other than rare philosophical fame? A certain way of taking up space that might be called Taurean?
Six great philosophers is a big number to be found randomly corralled at random in one of twelve possible pens. Especially considering that out of our benchmark 'Twenty Greats ', drawn from the popular Leiter poll of philosophy, four - Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Aquinas - are without recorded birth-dates. Thus, six out of sixteen major 'thinkers with birthdates' of western civilisation were born under Taurus, around five times the statistical expectation. Could that be what good social science researchers call 'significant'?
For astrologers, Aries and Taurus together make up the primal pair, the first positive, the second negative. Scrying the source horoscopes of modern philosophy reveals that Descartes' sun was in Aries, his moon in Taurus, while for Kant it is just the reverse, his sun in Taurus and moon in Aries. The correlation of astrological emphasis with historical judgment here seems almost heavy-handed.
If Aries runs with blood and sword; the Taureans, by contrast, are mostly settled and steady. Indeed, Kant's regularity is legendary. Hume was purposive to a fault. As a youth, he committed himself to ten years of disciplined intellectual self-development, which he completed on schedule; likewise later he planned and executed a fifteen-year project, his mountainous History of England, which, as calculated, was an immense publishing success. Always a large man, he grew extremely stout.
The attachment of J. S. Mill to the reassuring authority of his felicific calculus fits too, as does the patient labour of Marx in his famous seat in the British Library, carefully jotting down the thousands of pages of notes that eventually would make up the multiple volumes of Das Kapital - all this is worthy of Taurus.
Hume places an immovable object in the path of Descartes ' irresistible force by setting strong limits to reason. 'The Passions which are and ought to be master of Reason', are products of the depths of unknowable, pre-rational physical nature. Hume has no need to prove either that he exists or that the world is not an illusion. In reply to Descartes' excited horn-blowing, Hume seems bovine, emitting great, placid moo-o-os, Recall this, from the Abstract of the Treatise of Human Nature of 1740:
Des Cartes maintained that thought was the essence of the mind; not this thought or that thought, but thought in general. This seems to be absolutely unintelligible, since everything that exists is particular . . a peach, for instance.
Moo-oo! And then too, a bit later, where he writes:
But our experience in the past can be a proof of nothing for the future, but upon a supposition that there is a resemblance betwixt them. This, therefore, is a point which can admit of no proof at all, and which we take for granted without any proof.
Moo-oo!
It is not, therefore, reason which is the guide of life, but custom. That alone determines the mind, in all instances, to suppose the future conformable to the past. However easy this step may seem, reason would never, to all eternity, be able to make it.
Where Descartes frets over melting wax; Hume placidly observes 'When the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm'. Moo-oo! Moo-oo!
But what now, about the philosopher who wanted to make reason triumphant, Immanuel Kant? He was 'awakened' by Hume and continued to build with Hume's cement. The 'thing-in-itself,' the laying of Groundwork, the totalizing solidity of his intellectual project, the 'architectonic' plan, the monumental density, all these (for astrologers) bespeak the fixed earth sign. Remarkable too that centuries later, in the Vienna Circle, a bullpen clustered around a stubborn Ludwig Wittgenstein, including Bertrand Russell (18 May), Rudolf Carnap (May 18), Moritz Schlick (14 April), and Wilfred Sellars (May 20). The philosophical centre (a fact acknowledged explicitly by Russell) was the Chief Bull, David Hume.
Yet what shall we make of Kierkegaard? Surely less a bull than a lamb? Can we say that he also sets limits to reason and leave it at that? Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard are the foundation stones of the two dominant modes of twentieth century philosophy, the Anglo-positivists and the Continental negativists. Each of them posits an inexpressibility. The apodictic does not need dialogue. Why can 't it all just stop here, asks the cow in the meadow? Great plus has joined great minus: why go on? Why change? Why the why?
But what now, about the philosopher who wanted to make reason triumphant, Immanuel Kant? He was 'awakened' by Hume and continued to build with Hume's cement. The 'thing-in-itself,' the laying of Groundwork, the totalizing solidity of his intellectual project, the 'architectonic' plan, the monumental density, all these (for astrologers) bespeak the fixed earth sign. Remarkable too that centuries later, in the Vienna Circle, a bullpen clustered around a stubborn Ludwig Wittgenstein, including Bertrand Russell (18 May), Rudolf Carnap (May 18), Moritz Schlick (14 April), and Wilfred Sellars (May 20). The philosophical centre (a fact acknowledged explicitly by Russell) was the Chief Bull, David Hume.
Yet what shall we make of Kierkegaard? Surely less a bull than a lamb? Can we say that he also sets limits to reason and leave it at that? Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard are the foundation stones of the two dominant modes of twentieth century philosophy, the Anglo-positivists and the Continental negativists. Each of them posits an inexpressibility. The apodictic does not need dialogue. Why can 't it all just stop here, asks the cow in the meadow? Great plus has joined great minus: why go on? Why change? Why the why?
Kierkegaard, who designated God as 'the Unchanging ', introduces Anxiety to philosophy, as our intrinsic aversion to choice, freedom, dualism. Wittgenstein pursued 'deep disquietudes', the fly in the bottle a tormenting inner gadfly. Kant's fears left him imprisoned in his own routines, while his writing abounded with 'categorical imperatives'. The doubt that Aries briskly sleeps off in a night seems in Taurus to cast a longer shadow.
The philosophers born under the first two signs, doubtless by chance and selectivity, seem to establish a cornerstone. The cusp of Taurus and the next sign, Gemini, offers a surprise: Socrates and Plato are both said to have been born then, a generation apart (Socrates on the 6th and Plato on the 7th of Thargelion, roughly today 's 20-24 May).
Gemini philosophers . . . . from 'metaxy' to 'simulacrum'
For philosophers, the significance of the Plato-Socrates tandem is the argument that consciousness is not merely immediate perception, but lives in language and dialectic. Thus in Gemini - the Twins - originates not only Truth, but also the Lie, both representation and deception, intelligence but also cunning. The Ancient Greek Geminis undercut the certainties of the modern Aries and Taurean philosophers. Hermes/Mercury, tutelary of Gemini, is the god of thieves, having himself stolen the oxen of Apollo at an early age.
Indeed, Plato and Socrates are the Philosophical Guardians at the gate, checking our papers at the border of true and false. Yet, apart from these legendary birthday attributions, philosophy is sparse on the ground under Gemini.
In our source list of 'major ' philosophical birthdays only Jean-Paul Sartre (21 June), Jurgen Habermas (18 June) and Henry Sidgwick (31 May) occur under Gemini; and Sartre is only half a Twin, the sun at his birth being half-way into the next sign, Cancer. But the title Being and Nothingness is baldly dualistic and secures Sartre to Gemini. Ditto, his autobiography: Les mots. (The Words.)
Jurgen Habermas is a communication theorist and inter-subjectivist for whom 'the boundaries of truth are movable.' Henry Sidgwick's presence on this short and distinguished list is a puzzle, but if we wish to wear the scientific hat of objectivity, then that forces us to acknowledge him, a Cambridge utilitarian who died in 1900.
Does it tell us something about Gemini or philosophy that two Gemini thinkers of the highest grade, Blaise Pascal (19 June) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May), fail to make the cut in any of the conventional lists, being considered too unsystematic and peripheral? Of Pascal the world knows well his Thoughts and his Letters (through works like the Pensées, and Lettres écrites à un provincial), his anxious state of in-betweenity, the crucial sibling bond in his life, and his inventions: the mercury barometer, Paris's first postal system, an adding machine. Enough of Pascal. We know he would have written a shorter letter, but he did not have the time.
Emerson too advises us to 'Move fast on thin ice.' For him, 'The universe is only in transit, or, we behold it shooting the gulf from the past to the future' and, he adds: 'I am part of the solar system. Let the brain alone, and it will keep time with that, as the shell with the sea-tide.'
Emerson is an ecstatic binarist, nowhere more so than in the essay, 'Compensation'.
An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. . . . All things are double, one against another. Tit for tat . . . the absolute balance of Give and Take.. . Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation, . .
In a poem he chants, 'Balance-loving Nature / Made all things in pairs . . . '. And he muses:
It is strange how fast Experience and Idea, the wonderful twins, the Castor and Pollux of our firmament, change places; one rises and the other instantaneously sets.
Similarly, another Gemini philosopher to whom the hat must at least be tipped is Jean Baudrillard (20 June), no less a fine-grained dualist than Emerson, writing (unconscious, of course, of the astrological irony) that:
Everything which offends against duality, which is the fundamental rule, everything which aims to be integral, leads to disintegration through the violent resurgence of duality - . . . . No one seems to have understood that Good and Evil advance together, as part of the same movement. The triumph of one does not eclipse the other—far from it. . . Good does not conquer evil, nor indeed does the reverse happen, they are at once both irreducible to each other and inextricably interrelated.
What though shall we make of Henry Sidgwick, who makes it into the Leiter Top 40 of Great Philosophers - ahead of Whitehead, Ryle, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Habermas and Foucault? An early English admirer of Walt Whitman, Sidgwick 's utilitarian legitimations of concealment and asceticism seems to argue for a different kind of Gemini philosopher. But indeed, Sidgwick was also the founding president of the Society for Psychical Research, and 'spent more hours in search of ghosts, communications from the dead, and other paranormal phenomena' than on those Taurean efforts at ordering reality. Happy then that flexibility, balance and adaptability are said to be the hallmarks of his sign.
With the introduction of Gemini thinkers, the philosophical realm seems to broaden into considerations of social relations, language, communication, borders, margins and edges. There is less dogmatism, there is more examination, questions are raised more frequenty than answered.
Everything which offends against duality, which is the fundamental rule, everything which aims to be integral, leads to disintegration through the violent resurgence of duality - . . . . No one seems to have understood that Good and Evil advance together, as part of the same movement. The triumph of one does not eclipse the other—far from it. . . Good does not conquer evil, nor indeed does the reverse happen, they are at once both irreducible to each other and inextricably interrelated.
What though shall we make of Henry Sidgwick, who makes it into the Leiter Top 40 of Great Philosophers - ahead of Whitehead, Ryle, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Habermas and Foucault? An early English admirer of Walt Whitman, Sidgwick 's utilitarian legitimations of concealment and asceticism seems to argue for a different kind of Gemini philosopher. But indeed, Sidgwick was also the founding president of the Society for Psychical Research, and 'spent more hours in search of ghosts, communications from the dead, and other paranormal phenomena' than on those Taurean efforts at ordering reality. Happy then that flexibility, balance and adaptability are said to be the hallmarks of his sign.
With the introduction of Gemini thinkers, the philosophical realm seems to broaden into considerations of social relations, language, communication, borders, margins and edges. There is less dogmatism, there is more examination, questions are raised more frequenty than answered.
Crabby philosophers . . . . on to the counter-enlightenment?
And finally, a look at Cancer, the Crab, the fourth sign, and one without on the face of it any grand aims in life. In astrological lore, Cancerians instead love home-life, the family and domestic settings. They are said to be traditionalist and to like operating on 'a fundamental level'. Astrologers talk about those born under this sign as being fascinated with the beginnings of things - suggesting that everyday Cancerians will be interested in heraldry, ancestry and so on.
So how do our two stand-out philosophers here, namely: Gottfried Leibniz (July1) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June) fit with this astrological antecedent? An inveterate tinkerer, Leibniz represents well Cancer 's practical side. And Leibniz's grand (Pythagorean) philosophical project was to make the world rational by reducing it to numbers and forcing it to obey the laws of mathematics. Yet, like Pythagoras, his fundamental building blocks for the project seem anything but rational - indeed Leibniz's monads are among the most mysterious objects in the universe. The 'Universal Computer' goes from one Cancer to another, if it travels the road from Leibniz to Turing (23 June).
As for Rousseau, he aptly illustrates not only Cancer's practical side in his love of grand houses and homes, but also (in his philosophical appeal to 'life before property' and quintessentially romantic view of human nature) the Crab's 'moon' spirit. Quite simply, Rousseau speaks up for the claims of feeling.
Once again admitting the small-fry into the tabulation we find among the earlier philosophers Gianbattista Vico (23 June), who insisted that Descartes had no right to privilege the 'clear and distinct idea' beyond mathematics and physics. Then a cluster of continentals: Gaston Bachelard (27 June), who thought he could see in science the poetry and elemental psychology of Fire, Earth, Air and Water; Walter Benjamin (15 July), who looked for mysticism in historical materialism; and Jacques Derrida (15 July), eraser of the margins of the rational.
On opposite sides of the contemporary philosophic divide, two Crabby 'social constructivists', Thomas Kuhn (18 July) and the less well known Bruno Latour (22 June) both tried to undermine scientific certainty. Also on the analytic side of the fence is Willard Quine (25 June) whose strong objection to Derrida now resembles discomfort at sharing a zodiacal trait. If 'to quine is to repudiate a clear distinction' then Derrida is a champion quiner. Likewise Michael Dummett (27 June) both read tarot cards and joined the Catholic Church.
Indeed, it is easy and fun to scan the lives and works of our Cancerian philosophers for references to the traditional concerns of that sign: the element water, the Moon, seashells and enclosures, the womb, organicity, the erosion of the linear by the 'morphological'. And so it seems that once again, the astrologers perspective can yield a host of intriguing and subtle insights.
Quod erat
demonstrandum.
About the authors: Mark Shulgasser, is writing near New York , U.S.A. - Email: mshulgas@hughes.net
Martin Cohen, is writing in Aquitaine, France - Email: docmartincohen@yahoo.co.uk
This article was updated on June 6 2013 to reflect the fact that all of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism movement are Aries, and not three as originally stated.
