Is Astrology just Snakeoil in another form?

Tides, academic peer groups, hormone levels – how do these tie together and relate to starsigns? Read this and ponder. If you are a scientist, PAUSE and READ before you hop away. It might make you think.

Many people believe that astrology is nonsense. Then there are many people who believe in astrology and read their daily horoscopes avidly. What’s the truth? Let’s explore this with a few new ideas - so bear with me while I start a few strands and then pull them together at the end.

I have a bachelor’s degree in physics and for many years I was dismissive of astrology (though I did occasionally take a peek at my horoscope). Indeed, I cannot buy into the proposition that there are 12 basic personalities defined by one’s starsign and that we are governed by the stars.

Unless you belong to the Flat Earth Society, we all accept that the tides are governed mainly by the moon and sun (though there are several hundred terms in the equation which is used for tidal prediction). It is worth bearing in mind that not only the sea has tides – the earth itself, and the atmosphere also experience tides, but these are not noticeable in everyday life. That’s strand 1.

Over the last 20 years I have become aware that I suffer with seasonal affective disorder (‘SAD’). This is caused by the seasonal variation in sunlight level and intensity in people who live outside the tropics. It is a depressive disorder, and by definition, seasonal in nature.

The mechanism is believed to be related to the body’s production of serotonin and melatonin. So, this leads to the notion that people’s behaviour (governed by mood), can be influenced by seasonal sunlight levels. That’s strand 2 of the discussion.

Recently I read a book called ‘Outliers’, by Malcolm Gladwell.

It is a fascinating piece of work, but I’ll pick out just one item. He analyses NFL teams and star players (that’s American Football). It turns out that star players tend to have birthdays at a particular time of year. Astrology you say! No!

It’s just that players born early in the year tend to be the oldest in their school/college peer group. Because of that, they are physically more mature than other students in their school year born later in the year. So, if there is 11 months difference in birthdays between oldest and youngest in a given school year, then at age 12, say, there is about 7-8% difference in physical maturity. The stronger (older) students then tend to excel in their school year and so get more encouragement and support, and so on, a virtuous circle. That’s strand 3.

So let us try and pull these strands together:

- We can see that the physical components of the earth and biosphere are subject to astronomical forces (tides).

- There is (outside the tropics) a propensity for part of the population (SAD sufferers ~17%) to be affected by seasonal sunlight levels (which are indeed just a result of the earth’s orbit around the sun), by a mechanism which alters body chemistry. As an aside, the human female menstrual cycle is tied generally to the lunar orbital period (though obviously not all women are in phase).

There are segments of the population whose physical ability and success is determined by the time of year at which they were born. Obviously, we could test this by looking at countries where academic years differ (Malcolm Gladwell explored this, but only in the context of the extent of summer vacation length, East versus West).

Now then, we could reasonably surmise that the effects of the ‘birth at time of year’ might be visible in academic prowess (as opposed to sporting prowess), though surely the education profession would have detected this by now.

So, might we be seeing, at least at a first order level, effects on the population and individual personality arising from the earth’s motion around the sun, and moon around the earth? I am sure we are.

So, what of Astrology and Starsigns? Astrology could be a proxy (i.e a label attached to a set of observations) for this set of effects, though I can’t believe that second order effects (such as Uranus in Scorpio) would be significant. Still, it is in the nature of human beings to refine ideas and systems.

By the way if you want to know more about Seasonal Affective Disorder, then visit http://www.sadaffectivedisorder.com/ .

Follow me on my voyage at the edge of science and thought....and please leave a blog comment on what you thought of the ideas....

© 2009 Phil Marks