There has been some attribution of Japan’s recent earthquake to the moon being at perigee. This claim is due to some astrologers, not astronomers but, as I mentioned in my previous post, our everyday media takes one of these far more seriously than the other.
The refutation of astrology has never been a simple task. A web search will uncover pro-science viewpoints that, for the most part, boil down to “Science cannot explain it, therefore it does not exist.” Worse, “Science does not predict it, therefore it cannot exist.” Woe to all discovery! Putting the cart before the horse like this is not science; it’s scientism.
You could argue that, since there seems no way to detect astral influence, it makes better sense to adopt the simpler of the theories available. But on what grounds should we scientists expect Nature to be simpler? Because God made it so? No; for not all scientists (including science teachers) believe in God. Because so much of it is well described by amazingly simple theoretical frameworks? No ; unless you can show that our descriptions are due to Nature itself, and not because we limited beings can fathom
only a shallow skimming that lends itself to such description.
Because the simpler options are more beautiful by their efficiency and perhaps elegance? No – because efficiency and aesthetic are metaphysical values.
It is a good thing for us that Tycho Brahe did not dismiss astrology outright, even though many great minds before him had argued at length that it produced nothing of value, and was in fact damaging. (That utilitarian argument is also not complete without determining what’s valuable, and it sidesteps the question of what is true.) Tycho, a good empiricist, pointed out that the astronomy of the day was so
inaccurate that it was not possible to test astrological predictions.
There was therefore no evidence for either side’s claims. So Tycho set to work on the astronomical measurement project that is often thought of as the instigation of modern astronomy. Moreover, he started taking routine meteorological measurements so that, once he had enough, he could look for correlations between the stars and the weather. That might produce some evidence.
Whether Tycho found any evidence for astral influence is of no concern here. My point is that, dismissing astrologers and other non- scientific contenders for authority is not easy in a truly rational manner. Tycho is rare among the great minds who genuinely tried to test the claims. If we believe that empiricism is a hallmark of modern science, then science teachers of the present day ought to be willing to back up their own claims as well. With evidence. Not easy.
Pointing and laughing, as some objectors do, is often easier than evidence, and easier for both sides to understand, but it’s not argument. Nor does it count as argument on the evolution-vs- creationism battlefield. Alas, such exchanges reveal how irrational passionate combatants – even scientists- can be. And, if the news racks are any indication, even easy-to-understand dismissal by laughter has not achieved much at all.
