>I keep seeing Astrology popping up as a symbol for hocus-pocus thinking
>and I want to speak up. Where you are a Objectivist, I am
>Phenomenologist. I see Astrology as the phenomena of people born at the
>same time of year having similar personality traits. This is a
>phenomena I have seen in my own interactions with individuals throughout
>my life. As a Phenonemologist, I do not accept the causality generally
>held by astrologists, but I do not deny the phenomena. I have my own
>theories on its causality. (Short version: The first 12 weeks in a childs
>life have an overwhelming proportional effect on the development of their
>personality. Children whose first 12 weeks are spent huddled up, inside,
>in the winter will exhibit different personality traits as adults than
>those that spent the first weeks of their lives hiding from the sun and
>lying around naked.) These are just my theories and without research I
>can't say whether they have any validity or not. (Theoretically the traits
>of individuals in the southern hemisphere should be offset by six months
>from the traditional "horoscope" ideals. But I'm to lazy and poor to fly
>to Australia to do research.)
Other predictions that might save you boot leather would be... astrology
would be less prevalent the closer you got to the equator, because seasonal
climatic changes are less pronounced there. so the differences to
personality would be less... thus less predictive power in ascribing people
personality traits based on their birthdate.
IF (and only if) you can assume that astrology memes have transmitted as
strongly to equatorial (and southern hemisphere) areas as they have to
northern hemisphere areas.
The other test would be to find out what personality traits astrology's
mentioning, knock up a questionnaire designed to fish those traits out of
people, then run it on a large sample, asking for birthdate info.
Mind you,
PROBLEM (for Tim to explain): Astrology isn't only predicting an /annual/
cycle of personality changes; due to its reliance on orbital positions of
planets, it's predicting personality effects from planetary influences that
wax and wane on a multi-annual timescale. Comments, prof?
Dave Pape
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