I am a Libra.
And that means absolutely nothing to me.
But many people, about 26 percent of the United States’ population, according to the 2009 Harris Poll, sincerely believe in astrology. And those are only the people who were willing to admit it to the pollsters.
I suspect that even more people periodically look at the predictions that are made based off of their astrological signs because they are so easily accessible and somewhat entertaining to read. You only need to flip a few more pages in the newspaper you are holding to discover how good your day is going to be and to get an extremely vague idea of what is going to happen during it.
For those of us who do not own tarot cards and cannot palm-read, this seems to be a wonderful alternative.
People have used their astrological signs and the predictions they have yielded to guide them in making day-to-day decisions, choosing what investment strategy to adopt when entering the stock market and even how to formulate quality presidential policy.
According to the New York Times in 1988, Marlin Fitzwater, a former White House spokesman, said that then-President Ronald Reagan and his wife were both “deeply interested” in astrology and the predictions it made.
So what is the origin of this system that has managed to capture the interests of millions of people?
Dr. James Elser, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, said in an e-mail, “Astrology is … a popular amusement whose origins can be traced (in the West) to pre-scientific, medieval (and earlier) belief systems that connected human events … to the positioning of celestial objects, especially the movements of the planets.”
“Connecting human events to the behavior of celestial objects has a long tradition in many cultures and many major civilizations have produced some form of something that can be called astrology,” Elser said.
Astrology was invented in the early years of our species as a way to explain our standing in the universe. I certainly applaud the effort.
Unfortunately, it lacks one essential characteristic: truth.
“The claims of astrology do not hold up under even the most basic scientific scrutiny. There is no known physical force that can connect the position of the planets on a given day to subsequent human behaviors or personality traits. The so-called accuracy of various astrological divinings can usually be attributed to a combination of their vagueness, post-hoc analysis and wishful thinking,” Elser said.
The claim that the position of the planets plays any role in determining any person’s mood or actions seems to be not only inaccurate, but rather childish. With the rise of science and the emergence of significantly superior explanations for why people act certain ways, etc., I think it is time we rid ourselves of these fantasies.
But then again, maybe this was just a very ‘Libra thing’ to do.
Reach Austin at acyost@asu.edu
