Likewise I notice Razib picks up a lot of things from his familiarity and reading of Roman and eastern history that I’m completely ignorant of. These things really do affect the kinds of patterns we notice. It’s not like the patterns Newton saw were any different from those others saw.

I don’t pay attention to astrology so I have no dog in that hunt.

However, a friend who is big-time into astrology (does people’s charts with piles of books around him based on exact latitude/longitude and time of birth) talks about astrology as the result of centuries of observation and correlation-making, and he also says that people who are seriously into it (and who keep a foot in the contemporary world) do not speculate about mechanism or causation (the stars do not influence you) — it is purely correlative. So — errantly or not, I have a concept that there is “real astrology” and “popular astrology”, the latter being the silly/vague “readings” in the newspaper and that see causation in planets and stars. And I have a corresponding notion that “real astrology” is “sort of scientific” as it is (or at least claims to be) based on the scientific practices of observation, data collection, and analysis…

To the extent that popular ideas of astrology contain some echoes of these ideas, would it be a big surprise if a lot of people thought it was “sort of scientific”?

Also I have no idea, but I wonder if anybody has ever done experiments using the scientific method (as much as possible) in an astrological framework. Say have Y “real” astrologers do charts for N people and a) see how much the predictions replicate for a given subject and b) see what actually happens. Hypothesis formation (prediction) and experiment (compare predictions to each other and then to what happens).

It’s interesting though in that you are completely right that by that time science was all about rejecting occult influences. (In the technical sense of hidden direct causes) Gravity seemed the lone holdout. But perhaps this also shows that the real value in science is accepting what the data says regardless of whether it matches your expectations arising out of your metaphysics.

I don’t know the details of Newton’s life but I’ve long wondered if his odd alchemical and religious studies made him more open to his approach to gravity. Of course nearly all the scientists of that era had a hand in both camps but clearly no one liked that spooky action at a distance.

While the ontology and cosmology for astrology are kind of silly to the modern mind ultimately the real issue is that they are empirically falsifiable. The “successes” are really just traditional magic tricks (in the sense of performers) using vague answers and preparing people to expect an answer. I love listening to Penn Jullette on a lot of these topics since he knows how the magicians do their tricks.

Seriously, though – I wonder if some of the people who answered “sort of scientific” were simply thinking of the fact that astrology bases its conclusions on the actual gravity-based motions of the planets, and doesn’t assume the planets to be towed by angels or something. “Sort of scientific” is open to pretty broad interpretation.

Liturgical Christian denominations afford a great deal of importance to seasonal cycles in the liturgical calendar. Each liturgical year progresses from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Holy Week to Easter to Pentecost and then back to Advent again. Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and High church Lutherans and Episcopalians, at least, recognize Saints Days in the church calendar.

In contrast, evangelical Christian denominations typically disavow all aspects of the liturgical calendar except Christmas and Easter (with dates calculated according to the Roman Catholic method), and often don’t even acknowledge the association between Easter and adult baptism (historically, adults seeking to be baptized underwent catachetical study during Lent and were baptized on Easter). Many evangelical Christians I’ve met don’t have anything more than an inkling of what Advent or Lent involve.

Also, the liturgical Christians tend to put more emphasis on the astrological aspects of the biblical nativity story (the star of Bethlehem, etc.), while evangelical Christians tend to focus more on Acts and the New Testament epistles, neither of which has much astrological content.

This has a strongly astrological character that is even more astrological when one understands the considerations that go into setting the date for Easter which involves reconciling the date of Passover in the Jewish lunar calendar with the Roman solar calendar system. The need to calculate a date for Easter is one of the reasons for the long standing patronage of the Vatican of astronomers (some of whom have been prominent even in modern cosmology discussions among legitimate physicists).

I have written extensively about religion and other weird beliefs such as astrology. One thing I have found is that polls on astrology can be misleading because many fundamentalist Christians will state formally that they do not believe in astrology. In casual conversation, however, many admit to fearing it as a “tool of Satan”. They see it as very real but forbidden by their belief system.

When these people say they do not “believe” in astrology, they are confusing “believe” with “follower of”. They do believe in it but choose not to participate in it. Unfortunately this sloppy thinking is a problem for polling data.

In all these the politics and the religion are out of synch. So you could say that belief in astrology is a sign of stress — conservative doubters and liberal believers.

At 7 you get liberal atheists and conservative Southern Baptists who are the first ones where the politics and the religion agree. The liberals are presumably New Ageish.

Astrology is not orthodox in any Christian or intellectual tradition, and belief in astrology might just be a marker of doubt, cognitive dissonance, or desperation. In my experience it often is found with people who don’t feel that they have control of their lives and have little confidence in anything but are reaching out for salvation. From this POV the liberal atheist astrology people and the Southern Baptist astrology people probably aren’t very stable either in their atheism, their Baptist belief, and probably not even their belief in astrology.

Prediction of the future was mainstream and orthodox in China, India, and the pagan Mediterranean but is regarded with suspicion by the monotheistic traditions. Historically it could be regarded either as a pagan survival or as a survival of proto-science.

A correlation with questions about confidence in the future, confidence in the general rightness of the world, confidence in the authorities and in our system in general might be illuminating.