Not a combination of words that I had expected to see together — yet, as I learned today, it’s apparently something of a movement. (As one might gather from the second word, the first word isn’t exactly being used in a scientific way.)
Not a combination of words that I had expected to see together — yet, as I learned today, it’s apparently something of a movement. (As one might gather from the second word, the first word isn’t exactly being used in a scientific way.)
zuch says:
Sounds like what the Republicans are in to:
Cheers,
March 10, 2010, 9:56 pmneurodoc says:
Bullsh*t by any other name is still bullsh*t, and not surprisingly smells exactly like bullsh*t, which is different from how a rose smells.
March 10, 2010, 10:09 pmEugene Volokh says:
But under other names, it could be highly commercially valuable fertilizer, no? Not that I’m defending astrology, mind you.
March 10, 2010, 10:14 pmsubpatre says:
Excellent point, but that only works if it’s buried deep and allowed to decompose.
Zuch’s ‘point’ misses the point, that astrological dynamics is just as speculative —and just as significant— as climate science. It’s got to be true, since it’s the law. How apropos too.
March 10, 2010, 10:35 pmChris Travers says:
I personally like Plato’s theory of astrology. It’s the only explanation I have ever found (along with those who largely paraphrase him) that doesn’t rely on unseen influences to work.
March 10, 2010, 10:56 pmSyd Henderson says:
My opinion of Astrology:
(1) The house the Sun is in when you are born might well have an effect on you. Not for any astrological reasons, but because if you are born in January fairly far north from the equator, then during the first few months of your life, you will experience substantially more night than day, and six months later, substantially more day than night. If you are born in July, it’s the reverse. This could have an effect on you, especially in the days before electrical lighting. Especially if you’re Swedish.
(2) The Moon might have some minor effects since it’s close and prominent. Especially if you’re a lycanthrope.
(3) No other celestial body has any effect on you, except for the comet that’s about to collide with your mother.
March 10, 2010, 11:53 pmd says:
I knew a Celeste once. Man she seemed nice and then as soon as she didn’t get her way, she was a miserable person to be around. I know you said celestial… but I interpreted it as “of or related to” being Celeste.
March 11, 2010, 1:36 amneurodoc says:
I wasn’t suggesting that either bullsh*t or astrology were of no possible value. As you have pointed out, bullsh*t may be put to use as fertilizer, and a minimal conversancy with the lingo of astrology may facilitate the seduction of not so intelligent women.
March 11, 2010, 2:27 amMike G in Corvallis says:
Glass houses, anyone? … Exhibit A: a City College of San Francisco job posting (PDF) for which one qualification (middle of second page) is:
March 11, 2010, 3:22 amDonBoy says:
In the gym I once saw a woman with a book called “Medical Astrology”. I was scared.
OT, but I don’t know where else to put this: with two different RSS readers, I’m getting feeds from the blog, and only this blog, 4 hours later than the articles are posted. Anyone else?
March 11, 2010, 8:37 amerp says:
I’d be willing to bet it’s a typo and they’re referring to astronomy, not astrology.
March 11, 2010, 9:52 amGaryM says:
erp: My guess is it’s someone who doesn’t know there’s a difference between astrology and astromony.
March 11, 2010, 10:14 amPintler says:
In fact, Zoo-Doo is so valuable the local zoo allocates the chance to buy it by lottery. Disclaimer: the reports that using elephant zoo-doo will make your tomatoes gigantic have not been scientifically verified.
March 11, 2010, 10:19 amgeokstr says:
Oh, you mean like all those people who don’t know there’s a dime’s worth of difference between socialism and utopian fantasy?
March 11, 2010, 10:23 amerp says:
I believe I said I bet it was a typo.
I’ve been an editor for many years and have made my share of them. In fact just the other day I sent off something in which I typed the word “agency” instead of the word, “agenda” and I assure I know the difference between the two.
I think I’ll make another bet and that is that our host had the same idea. ;-}
March 11, 2010, 11:32 amMaryanna says:
Wait. Doesn’t Nancy Reagan believe in Astrology? Presumably, she advised her husband of what she learned from her Astrologers. Presumably, he listened to what she had to say (in the name of marital bliss, if nothing else). And Ron is widely hailed by conservatives as the greatest national leader in the history of national leaders. And he undeniably accomplished some pretty good stuff. Presumably while being advised, at least indirectly, by Astrologers.
Therefore, Astrology caused the fall of Communism. Q.E.D.
March 11, 2010, 11:45 amPintler says:
It seems, like Alice’s Restaurant, to be a movement, complete with wiki page.
March 11, 2010, 11:45 amerp says:
Pintler,
Please explain the connection between “Alice’s Restaurant,” a Wiki site about Evolutionary Astrology and my typo comment.
Thank you.
BTW – I’m a Virgo so make your answer very detailed and analytical — the way I like them.
March 11, 2010, 12:07 pmEugene Volokh says:
Why bet when you can Google?
March 11, 2010, 12:15 pmray_g says:
If you strike that one word, nothing else in the resolution implies anything about astrology, so I think it is a bit unfair to characterize this as “..a resolution to “urge” public schools to teach astrology”. On second thought, it is more than unfair, it is a purposeful distortion of what they are really trying to say (which is pretty obviously paraphrased as “don’t teach catastrophic AGW as an established fact”).
To me, this is a good example of where our public discourse has gone wrong. Agree or disagree with someone’s position, but don’t play “gotcha” with mispoken of mistyped words.
March 11, 2010, 12:19 pmerp says:
Eugene, Pintler has already googled and will presently explain it all to me.
Apparently you weren’t funning with us and believe that the word astrology was not a typo. Sorry for being presumptous. :-(
March 11, 2010, 12:28 pmPintler says:
The phrase ‘evolutionary astronomy’ caught EV’s eye somehow (he didn’t specify). My reading of your comment was that you thought he must have seen a typo where ‘evolutionary astrology’ was substituted for ‘evolutionary astronomy’. I had not heard the term, googled it, and it turns out that (truth is stranger than fiction!) there actually is such a thing as evolutionary astrology. I was guessing that EV actually saw the phrase somewhere, not as a typo, but who knows.
Alices’s Restaurant is of course a reference to the famous movement, cf. the eponymous album by Arlo Guthrie, known to at least some VC commenters because I saw a reference to the group W bench recently. Other key references would be ‘Father rapers!!!’, ’14 8×10 color glossy photos’, ‘American blind justice’, ‘I wanna KILL!!!’, and many others.
I am a capricorn, which tells you very little about my inclinations :-). (our newspaper once ran horoscopes from two different astrologers side by side for a while. It was hilarious to see the lack of correlation between the two)
March 11, 2010, 12:28 pmzuch says:
Oh, I don’t think they really wanted to teach the impressionable little tykes about astrology. I think they were simply showing their unfamiliarity with the subject matter by passing a resolution that confoozed “astrology” with [presumably] “astronomy” and none of the 36 people voting for this resolution or their staffs had the the wherewithal to spot it. I will concede that it is possible that some subset of these may in fact not have been able to explain the difference, but I have no evidence of such.
I do note the substantial similarity of this resolution (and the ‘arguments’ behind it) with similar efforts urging “equal time” or pushing “ID”/”scientific creationism”.
Cheers,
March 11, 2010, 12:29 pmerp says:
Pintler, my original comment was that I bet it was a typo. At the time, thought Eugene probably did too, but his comment above seems to imply he doesn’t.
That being said, the fact there is apparently such a movement doesn’t mean there wasn’t a typo in article.
I am not as faithful a reader of VC as others who comment because a lot of the posts are too legalistic for me, so I don’t get your references to other strings.
I know and like the song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” even if I can’t follow its connection to our discussion.
Thanks for the interesting discourse.
March 11, 2010, 12:55 pmjab says:
To be fair… the City College of San Francisco did NOT make this mistake… that is apparently the official name of that credential. It should also be noted that those credentials no longer are given out and haven’t been so for over 20 years.
March 11, 2010, 1:23 pmDesiderius says:
Here you go. They’re serious.
March 11, 2010, 2:29 pmMike G in Corvallis says:
It is indeed the name of the credential. How do you think I knew about it? ;^)
Nixon was a Capricorn.
[If others can bring up Alice's Restaurant, then I can invoke Dick Smothers.]
March 11, 2010, 3:09 pmerp says:
Mike G – since you bring it up, I’ll reveal to the world, or at least the readers of these comments, that it’s a well known fact (written in the stars even) that Capricorns are dark and brooding and are partial to Prussian style uniforms for their palace guards.
March 11, 2010, 3:23 pmzuch says:
Pastafarians are dark and brooding and are partial to pirate outfits for their Holy Colander guards.
Cheers,
March 11, 2010, 3:45 pmPintler says:
So it seems were Mao, Rush Limbaugh, and MLK. I guess the stars really are destiny!
Good point. I have the Imperial Tailor hard at work as we speak.
March 11, 2010, 3:48 pmGeoffCapp says:
Not exactly as authoritative a source as Plato, but:
“In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that’s now been taken away and hidden. The graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology’s nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just to do with people thinking about people.”
March 11, 2010, 4:41 pm— Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless)
Marc Blitz says:
I’m disappointed. When I saw this post, I thought “evolutionary astrology” was a movement to update everyone’s zodiac sign to account for the fact that sun’s place in the sky for a given part of the year (e.g., March 21-April 19, the dates that make you an Aries) changes as the earth wobbles around it’s axis every 25,800 years — and for some reason, current-day astrologers have decided to stuck with the sun locations that were correct 2,200 years ago. (See Pedro Braganca, Your Astrological Sign May Not Be What You Think It is, Live Science — http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/your-astronomical-sign.html ). Alternatively, I thought evolutionary astrology might be a movement to reconfigure and rename the stars in the sun’s path into new constellations, each representing a species that for some reason didn’t make it to the present day (e.g, the Dodo bird, Dimetrodon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Trilobites) — so that instead of adhering to the outmoded view that constellations like Orion were placed in the sky by a guilt-stricken member of the Greek pantheon (See http://comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/orion.html ), we might adopt the more modern and respectable view that the sky is where species go when they can no longer deal with how things work down here on earth. The evolutionary astrology movement seems to be neither of those things.
March 11, 2010, 5:33 pmjab says:
My reason for providing additional information was twofold:
March 11, 2010, 5:52 pm(1) To clarify that it was NOT a typo or mistake on the part of the City College of San Francisco.
(2) To point out that the mistake was made well over 20 years ago.
Eugene Volokh says:
jab: Thanks, very interesting — do you have a pointer to something describing the credential itself?
March 11, 2010, 5:56 pmChris Travers says:
You do realize that the “house” that the Sun is in is determined by the time of day you are born, right?
March 12, 2010, 1:19 amChris Travers says:
Just in case anyone is interested in Plato’s approach.
In Timaeus, he basically constructed a theory about the model of the self and cosmos. In his model, both the self and cosmos are divided into 8 bands, one of which is the same for everyone and the other seven are different. It doesn’t take a genius to see where Plato’s going with this even before he mentions it explicitly: the band of sameness in the universe is the orb of the fixed stars, while the seven bands of difference are the paths of the planets. He says that the same structure occurs in the self.
What we immediately take away from this is what I call the synchronized clock theory of astrology. Basically a good analogy is that we typically eat lunch between 12 and 1 pm or so (your time may vary) but usually at the same time each day. Just because you get hungry around the time the clock strikes one doesn’t mean the clock is exerting some sort of hidden influence on you. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that the clock isn’t a useful source of information about what to expect in the next few hours of your life.
Many astrological thinkers followed Plato on this. Paracelsus is often credited with the idea that the astrological planets were metaphors for internal conditions but he was largely paraphrasing Plato here.
Astrology makes perfect sense in a somewhat Platonic worldview. That doesn’t mean I would suggest hidden influences of a scientific kind…..
March 12, 2010, 1:28 amjab says:
Prof. Volokh,
Well, the credential has been out of date since before the internet… so you won’t find anything online about it… however, I am a professor of astrophysics in San Francisco (not at CCSF), and am good friends with many in the department at CCSF. California no longer gives out credentials for community college teaching, and hasn’t since the 1989-1990 academic year.
Here is a link to the FAQ for California Community Colleges.. if you scroll down, they say that that discontinued the credentialing process 20 years ago.
March 12, 2010, 2:57 amjab says:
sorry, forgot the link:
https://www.cccregistry.org/jobs/miscelaneous/faq.aspx#Question29
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April 17, 2010, 2:59 am