Show me a person who does not want to know what the future has in store for him/her?? Astrology does command a universal fascination, amongst all human beings. Why hasn’t this ancient art been given the status of a “science”, yet?? Why is astrology not being taught as a subject in our universities? Believers and those who make fun of Astrology, both, would be happy if astrology could be proved to be a “science". The horoscope which shows the planetary positions at a particular moment is indeed a scientific document (this is “astronomy", though). This forms the basis of all astrological predictions. What really raises the ire of rationalists are the claims made about the effect that these planetary positions are supposed to have on the life of that individual. The link does appear far fetched because according to present day science, there is nothing other than a weak gravitational force that exists between these planets and the earth (and hence earthlings like us) and how this force can shape the destiny of people, therefore does appear beyond any scientific explanation. But let us leave that aside for a moment; let us presume that present day science is not advanced enough to explain the effect that planets have on ones destiny.

All sciences started off as an empirical set of rules. This means that in a given set of circumstances, some conclusions were so consistent that they were called “rules” or “theorems”. Like when Newton noticed that every time he let go an object, it fell down and did not go up. So this became a rule, without his knowing why it so happened. Reasons of many such conclusions were found much, much later. Another example was the rising of the sun. While it was noticed that it always rose in the East and set in the West, it was much later realized that this was because of the earth's’ rotation round the sun.

It is not necessary for all scientific findings to be 100% consistent. Medical science has many examples of the same treatment producing different results in different persons. For a set of empirical rules or theorems to acquire the status of “science”, it is similarly not necessary to be 100% consistent. There are statistical techniques, well developed by mathematicians, which will prove a hypothesis with a certain “degree of confidence”.

If this degree is sufficiently high, then the hypothesis is accepted as a scientific law.

There are “perfect sciences” like Physics or Chemistry where this degree of confidence is indeed 100% but there are other “softer sciences” like Psychology where the degree of confidence is lower than this perfect score - - these hypotheses are still widely accepted.

Does astrology have such hypotheses, which can be proved with an acceptable, statistical “degree of confidence"??

Suppose we work backwards and note down known events like marriage, death, monetary position, vocation, family size and many others, in the life of a large enough sample of individuals. Statisticians will tell us how large a sample size is required to validate the findings of this experiment. Astrologers could now demonstrate how a certain planetary position at the time of birth could have consistently forecast this known even to occur when it actually did. This exercise could be expanded to test a number of astrological hypotheses on the basis of known events. If all these could be proved with an acceptable “degree of confidence”, well, astrology would get the status of an empirical “science”.

Presently we have three distinct groups of individuals in society.

The first is of course the one which swears by astrology but which would not subject its beliefs to any scientific scrutiny (education and designations have no role to play here, we have Prime ministers as well as beggars in this group). They will cite example after example to demonstrate how astrology predicted something correctly.

The second group comprises of those who are vehemently opposed to what they think is so much “mumbo – jumbo”. They will cite numerous examples about how astrology could not predict something correctly and how ridiculous even the basic assumption of planets affecting someone's’ destiny is.

There is a third and the largest group of persons who are “sitting on the fence”. They surreptitiously read astrological predictions but outwardly show that they do so for the sake of entertainment. They hope against hope that the good predictions come true and the bad ones don't. Many websites, magazines and newspapers publish astrological predictions regularly so that they can get this clientele attracted towards their publication. It may be of great interest to readers that according to the famous Reader’s Digest BOOK OF FACTS, (Page 395), two 20th century French researchers Michel Gauquelin and his wife Francoise spent 20 years of their lives investigating this very subject, and I quote hereafter:

QUOTE :

They examined the birth data of more than 40,000 people throughout Europe to try to find correlation between birth signs, jobs and personalities. Their computerized findings were published in 1983 and their rejection of astrology was total. There was not one piece of evidence, they concluded, to show that it was anything but a sham – despite the efforts of astrologers to prove otherwise. It is now quite certain stated Gauqueline that the signs in the sky which preside over our births have no power whatsoever to decide our fates, to affect our heredity or characteristics, or to play any part, however humble, in our lives. UNQUOTE I think Indian astrologers should take up the challenge and undertake a scientific study to prove their hypotheses and get astrology included in university syllabi, or gracefully abandon the pursuit of what the rationalists have been deriding, all these years.

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page." This new series of articles will try and question various beliefs that we hold without scrutiny. We Indians are known to have many “blind spots” in the way we think and live. The purpose here is to have a robust debate without in anyway belittling personal beliefs..

He invites reactions on his e-mail address  creative@nagpur.dot.net.in