Chronicle of a Debate
By
Born in 1962 and I have been an
astrological counsellor to individuals,
couples and businesses for almost thirty
years. After experimenting different schools
of Astrology, ten years ago I resolved to join
Ciro Discepolo's astrological method and
school, named Active Astrology -- based on
the active relocation of the Solar Returns
(Mr. Discepolo calls them: Aimed Solar
Returns or Aimed Birthdays) and the
exorcism of the symbols, as originally
conceived by Swiss psychiatrist Carl
Gustav Jung. I am the founder and current
moderator of the newsgroup of astrological
discussion and information in Italian
language it.discussioni.astrologia.
Website
http://digilander.libero.it/drusetta/
Blog
http://lucianodrusetta.blogspot.com/
Luciano Drusetta, Italy.
Translated and partially rewritten into
English by the Author
Reviewed by: Pamela Jablonski U.S.A
Article originally published in Ciro
Discepolo’s magazine Ricerca ‘90 issue 43
F
rom time to time the fascinating
(but sometimes well-worn) debate
on the topic of Astrology vs. Science
comes into fashion on the Internet.
Among the hackneyed sentences that you
can read on those occasions, it may be
difficult to disagree with this: the
opponents of astrology often do not have
the humility to try to understand what
astrology really is, what astrology really
deals with, and how our discipline really
works. Discussing astrology with them is
like talking to stone walls. I don’t think
that any of them has ever opened a
handbook of astrology and/or has learned
to cast a natal chart to verify its practical
utility. It is true that some people tried to
test certain horoscopes in a so-called
‘scientific’ way: but they did so in bad
faith, often resorting to, as they say in
boxing jargon, sensational ‘hits below the
waist’.
I remember for example the classic case
(with which sceptics claimed to have
definitely ‘demolished’ the astrology) of
five natal charts of five celebrities: the five
nameless charts were sent to five ‘well-
known’ astrologers in order to have their
readings. The 25 resulting reports were then sent back to the five celebrities. Each celebrity
was asked to identify which were the five readings that referred to him/ herself. The tester
claimed that, if astrology had worked, each celebrity would have selected the correct five
readings out of the 25. Obviously the result was below the average, i.e. none of the celebrities
was able to recognize which astrological report actually referred to his or her personality or
character.

Self-claiming ‘defenders of science’ occasionally propose similar experiments also in the

virtual groups of discussion on the Internet: but the result can only be ‘scientifically’
irrelevant, because what they proudly define as a scientific experiment is rather like a
deliberate mockery with the intent to ‘frame’ the naïve astrologers who wish to collaborate
with the sceptics (possibly because they hope to convince them that astrology does work
indeed). At most, such a test can only put in evidence two aspects that any experienced
astrologer should have already known quite well, and that they can never ignore. That is to
say:

1) The clients’ difficulty in knowing and recognizing himself in what the astrologer conveys
to him. Often people even tend to refute the astrologer’s reading at first, but later on they
may change their mind admitting that indeed, things are exactly as the astrologer reads from
their natal chart!

2) The astrologer’s difficulty conveying a holistic, logical, coherent and plausible description
of the clients’ character and general situation, starting with a myriad of seemingly
disconnected details (a phase of the reading of the chart that is particularly difficult for
beginners, and it proves to be critical even for expert astrologers).

Indeed, the above described ‘experiment’ does not test any of the deepest mechanisms, any
of the most basic assumptions of our discipline. Certainly there is no use in discussing with
people who have already have a bias against astrologers and whose sole purpose seems to be
to lay insidious traps. But further reflection on certain aspects of astrology can be useful to
those who deal with astrology and who, knowing its mechanisms and its limits very well,
use the incongruence sometimes seen to research why and how astrology works, and
whether our discipline can or can not be considered a ‘science’ . But to do so, we must also
understand what science is, and why today science enjoys an undisputed authority. We should
also consider whether the authority of science is, or is not, justified by the facts. In other
words we should consider both science and astrology under a critical and epistemological
approach (which is what I wanted to suggest by titling my previous article on this subject:
For the Application of Epistemology to Astrology).
Is astrology a science? It is hard to answer this question when we do not agree even on the
definition of science. Many agree in specifying that there are two ‘types’ of science: the ‘hard’
or exact sciences (mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy...) and the ‘soft’ or non-exact
sciences (medicine, psychology, sociology, meteorology...). However, be they exact or not, be
they hard or soft, in both cases the listed disciplines are commonly judged to be real science,
with the official stamp or the power of authority and the effectiveness that the word science
entails. The exact sciences describe precise laws; following these laws it is possible to
reproduce a given phenomenon in laboratory conditions and to foresee its taking place in a
natural environment. The non-exact sciences describe complex events based on theoretical
models that adapt more or less precisely to reality (perhaps they neglect certain factors
considering them virtually irrelevant) and they allow to forecast those events by means of
simulation (usually performed through powerful computers and with the help of
sophisticated software packages). Sceptics tend to stress that astrologers often fail their
predictions, but let me underline that sometimes even the forecasts of the non-exact sciences
fail: everybody laughs at the approximation of the weather forecasters, who may predict a
sunny day in a particular area and the following day that area is devastated by the most
violent hailstorm of the last decade...

Astrology is based on theoretical and practical assumptions that, in my very humble

opinion, can be defined as ‘scientific’. I refer to everything you need to calculate, cast and
draw a horoscope: the concepts of astronomical geography, the trigonometric formulas of the
house systems and our precise ephemerides, which differ from the astronomical ephemerides
only because they consider other points of reference. However, scientists and sceptics
usually deride the phase immediately subsequent to the casting, i.e. the interpretation of the
astrological chart, because it is judged not to be enough (or very little, if any) scientific. What
is the reason of such scepticism? Among the reasons that one can read from time to time in
the group of discussions on the web, frequently are the ‘naïve’ attempts to explain that
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science is a method of knowledge which is much more reliable than any other , because it
assumes the following:
a) The existence of a real world, external and independent from the observer;
b) that this world works the same way constantly over time, and that the phenomena are
reproducible; and
c) that every event has a cause (the principle of cause and effect).

Some sceptics, in the mood for enflaming, stress that the above listed three points pose
‘serious problems’ for astrology. But they forget that these three principles pose serious
problems also for science itself, because they open the door to a sequel of problems that are
not easy to solve. Here are some.

Point a): the direct observation of the external world and its interpretation by the human
being implies huge limitations and is not always possible. Those who claim that thanks to
science “we know what happens inside the Sun, about 150 millions km from here”, they seem
to be unaware that if we know it (or if we think we know it) this hasn’t certainly been
achieved by means of direct observation or measurements. For what thermometer in fact
could ever measure the temperatures of our star? None. We infer based on a complex set of
scientific assumptions, which of course are considered valid and undisputed. And how do we
know what the world was in the Devonian age? We do not know; we can only have a pale
idea of it, based on the fossils that we collect digging rocks, and based on our present
knowledge of geology, we believe that those rocks belong to that particular age. And how do
we see that the universe is expanding? We do not see; we deduce it from the fact that most of
the galaxies observed through the prism lens, show a distinct ‘red shift’, which is interpreted
as Doppler Effect and which we explain as the effect of the light source moving away from
the observer. Some of those theoretical premises are probably based on direct observations
(observations might be false or might lead you to false conclusions, but discussing these
issues is out of the scope of this article) but a good deal of them derive from other theoretical
assumptions, in a sort of logical skein that we could not easily disentangle in a few lines.

As for astrology and observation, I have already expressed my scepticism about the
prevailing theory claiming that astrology was developed out of the spirit of observation of
the goat herders in Chaldea or Babylon, who first noticed some sort of correspondence
between the time of year in which one is born and his or her character. At the time when the
basic astrological assertions were presumably encoded, nobody certainly even dreamt of
looking at reality with a ‘Galilean’ eye. This is why I would exclude that astrology was
deduced from a number of observations and practical tests, and then organized in a logical
and complex theory. In fact the origin of astrology itself is shrouded in the same aura of
mystery that covers the origin of many other typically human activities and fields of
knowledge (language, cooking, breeding, art, religion…). Since the evolutionary theory (the
one prevailing these days) does not explain it thoroughly, we can only make conjectures on
their origin. Maybe Italian astrologer, Lisa Morpurgo, realized this fact when she developed
intriguing hypotheses about the extraterrestrial origin of the concept of zodiac.

Point b): not all phenomena are reproducible; nevertheless science still deals with them too.
It is impossible to replicate storms, tornadoes and earthquakes to our liking either in nature
or in laboratory: at most we can do simulations and build up theoretical models of them, yet
the disciplines that deal with this kind of phenomena are considered to be science. For
example, it is not possible to apply the Galilean method to study the biological evolution of
the species, because biological evolution is believed to develop in times too long for humans.
Scientists tried to reproduce a sort of biological evolution in laboratory, bombarding
countless generations of Drosophila (fruit flies) with X rays to induce those genetic
mutations that, in nature, are supposed to incite the birth of new species within a few
generations, evolutionists claim. The flies’ reproductive rhythms are so impressive that in a
few years they can produce many generations equivalent to those that less frequently
reproducing species may procreate only in millions of years. But despite such ‘induced
development’ scientists did not succeed in creating any new species of flies: only entire
generations of deformed and sterile Drosophilas, or whose offspring becomes ‘magically’
2
normal in the successive generation . The very origin of life on Earth is a non-reproducible
event. Many times scientists have tried to reproduce it in laboratory condition, but their best
result ever was the forming of some chains of amino acids and proteins. Creating life from
inanimate matter in a laboratory, it’s another kettle of fish and no one has succeeded yet. Yet
no one denigrates the scientists working on this issue.

Are astrological phenomena repeatable? Some are, some are not. When it comes to verify
the astrological assertions relating to the fast planets, no problem: we have thousands of
examples allowing us to carry on broad and well-documented statistical researches. But if we
try to verify the assertions on the slow planets, things are different. In an article I once
happened to read the following statement: Every passage of Uranus in Aquarius tends to bring
out evidence or indication that everything evolves and transforms. This statement, due to its
intrinsic characteristics (the presence of the verb ‘tends’ and the lack of concrete examples as
3
support of this assertion), is hardly falsifiable and it is therefore generally considered as
‘unscientific’. To verify this affirmation, the author should have described at least two or
three specific examples of passages of Uranus in Aquarius in different historical periods,
proving them to be correspondent to changes or evolution of historical importance.

On the other hand, we have emphasized that many scientific hypotheses are also expressed
in such way that can not be refuted. In order to be falsifiable (i.e. refutable) a hypothesis
must be stated in clear and unequivocal terms, certainly not in terms of probability. The
scientist claiming “We have 96% chance that at any moment a positron appears in the area
X of the accelerator Y” does not produce a ‘scientific’ prognosis because the assertion retains
its validity whether the positron appears or it does not appear. In addition, to prove the
falsity of scientific theories, they should not be modified only for the sake of preserving or
protecting them against all kinds of rebuttals. This is an important point, because
evolutionism has been moving away gradually from the original Darwinian Theory by
incorporating a sequel of self-adjustments which epistemologists define as ad hoc
4
modifications .

Item c): the principle of cause and effect is certainly the most prevalent scientific principle
today, but it proves insufficient before the epistemological-philosophical paradox of the
‘uncaused cause’. If we claim that everything has its own cause, sooner or later we must go
back to an initial cause, to the principle of all, to a factor not caused by anything. The
evolution is based on the same logic: mammals have evolved from reptiles, reptiles have
evolved from amphibians, amphibians from fishes, fishes from invertebrates, invertebrates
from mono-cellular organisms, mono-cellular organisms from chains of amino acids, amino
acids from simple protein... But to what extent can we bring back the evolutionary chain? At
a cosmic level, assumptions are made about a solar system that has evolved from a cosmic
cloud, which has evolved from... from what? If everything evolved from something prior
and (who knows why?) more primitive, then there must have been something absolutely
primary, poor, essential that evolved... out of nowhere!

In fact, science has made assumptions about the Big Bang: an exciting theory but with a
fundamental limit. In their discussions against astrology, our opponents claims that science
should not limit to describe – it should also explain the world, it should be able to tell us the
why of things, thus giving a factual contribution to the development and to the welfare of
mankind. However, this view does not reflect the sad reality. The Big Bang theory in fact
does not explain why matter has felt the ‘need’ or the ‘spur’ to explode, instead of remaining
in the state of equilibrium in which, presumably, it was. And evolutionism does not explain
why some species have ‘had’ to evolve in order to survive, while so many other species (ants,
sharks, certain reptiles, medusae) have remained unchanged to this day.

There are also certain purely descriptive sciences, such as comparative anatomy and Linnaean
classification. Thanks to them, for example, we can know exactly what are the differences
between the owls and the hawks, but nothing they say (because clearly it is not their
purpose) on the why the living beings show such a variety of organs and organisms.
Nevertheless the scientific community does not laugh at the classification of living beings
by calling it useless.

Does astrology limit to describe a certain reality or does it also help us to explain it? It
depends. There is certainly a practical astrology, an applied astrology, which proves to work.
Whoever deals with counselling can safely ignore the problem of how and why astrology
works. Years ago, in a message sent to an Italian newsgroup of astrology on the Internet,
astrologer Ciro Discepolo described himself as a ‘radio-repairer’ who knows how to repair a
radio set but who can not argue with the sage and the experts when they dissert on the most
hidden features of the Hertz waves. I find that this is a very clever example, but I knew that
Mr. Discepolo, whom I consider one of the most important Italian astrologers, was too
modest. In fact in his recent works he gives us his own opinions and theories on how and
why astrology works, and I guess that everyone who deals with astrology has eventually
asked himself the same questions and has also found his own personal answers.

Is astrology based or not on the principle of cause and effect? I think it is not. So it seems to
me pointless trying to explain how and why the planets or constellations ‘influence’ the
nature and/or the life of somebody: perhaps there is no influence at all. Although the
astrologers make statements like: “Nick is so and so (say romantic, lazy, hesitant…) because
his moon is in Pisces” in reality we know very well that things are not in these terms. Nick
is not so and so because his moon is Pisces, but surely the moon in Pisces tells us that Nick
was born so and so. It's a bit like the road sign warning the driver of a crossroad: the
intersection exists, but not because there is a road sign indicating it. We know that if all the
fingers of our watch point to the number 12 is noon (or midnight); but certainly it is not
noon because the fingers points to the number 12. Just like the road signs or the position of
the fingers in the old-fashioned clocks, also the combinations of planets, luminaries, signs
and houses give us useful insights into the life and character of people, while they are not the
cause of it.

Again let us talk of falsification: an epistemological approach claiming that one can never
prove the absolute validity of a thesis, we can simply prove it to be untrue. Although it is a
5
fairly reasonable attempt to overcome the limits of the so-called ‘naïve’ inductivism , even
this approach is to some extent based on the same assumptions as inductivism. Among
them, the repetition of the phenomenon and its direct observation. The promoter of
falsification, Popper, argued that one single test proving the falsity of a theory is sufficient
to dismiss (refute) it. Alas, reality is slightly different. The defenders of a given theory can
(rightly) consider a single proof to the contrary as a mistake, an error, a misunderstanding
that falsifies the theory ‘only apparently’. The truth of a theory, they claim, may also depend
on the level of technology achieved: what seems absurd today, tomorrow could be
acceptable. Suppose I keep two heavy objects in my hands and then I drop them, suddenly
turning my hands upside down. Suppose now, however absurd it may seem, that the two
objects do not fall down, as everyone expects, but remain floating mid-air. By doing so have
I shown that gravity does not exist? Of course not, nobody with a good practical sense
would believe so: they would rather believe that I've simply proved to be a good magician.
Sceptics would challenge me to repeat the performance in a laboratory under controlled
‘scientific’ conditions and upon their command, as often as they deem necessary. A single
event ‘against’ shall not in any way be accepted as ‘falsifying proof’ against a theory that, in
thousands of other occasions, has proven to work optimally. And, of course, it is absolutely
OK to do so.

Every time that a controversy raises on the Internet (or on television, radio, newspapers or
at the pub...) between sceptics and astrologers, somebody repeats the concepts of which I
have tried to demonstrate the limits: that science is a method of knowledge better than
others, that horoscopes should undergo a scientific test, that astrology is not an exact science
and so on.

I personally never claimed that astrology is a science. I simply say that we can consider it
under an approach of epistemological type. I think that this is the right thing to do, or better
said: the only thing we can do if we really want to place astrology in its correct cultural
dimension without inferiority or superiority complex with respect to anyone.

In addition I have shown that even the sceptics’ approach that quote Galileo (the so-called
‘naïve’ inductivists) and even Popper’s approach, (the falsificationism), have notable limits.
And indeed, both approaches have been criticized by other epistemologists, among whom I
would like to mention, Thomas Kuhn, with his ‘paradigms’. God willing, I’ll discuss his
point of view in a future article.

1
A.F. Chalmers, “What is This Thing called Science?” Queensland University Press, Open University Press and Hackett,
2nd revised edition (6 new chapters), 1982
2
G. Sermonti and R. Fondi, “Dopo Darwin. Critica all'evoluzionismo”, Rusconi, Milan 1980
3
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
4
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc#Ad_hoc_hypothesis
5
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductivism