Is there a conflict between astrology and science? Listening to many scientists you might think there is, and astrology is superstitious nonsense. But that is because of their belief system.

Let’s trace it forward from the origins.

Evolutionary theory tells us that we emerged from a state of immersion into the world, as are the animals. The world was alive and meaningful, and every night we witnessed the full glory of the cosmos in the night sky. It was all one. We made sense of patterns of meaning, calling them what became known as gods.

We developed language and self-consciousness, built great monuments aligned to cosmic events, and gradually developed ideas of natural science and number, leading in the great flowering of ancient Greece to early natural science, mathematics and philosophy. Astrology and astronomy were a single subject. But the magical oneness was beginning to disperse.

In Europe, fast forward nearly 2000 years to the Renaissances of 12C and 15/16C. Monotheistic religion and the one God has taken  over the mindset, banished paganism with its gods and become a dominant political project. The Greek ideas are rediscovered. Science is invented in the ferment of change driven by such as Galileo, Newton, Descartes. Subject and object are suddenly separated, and science becomes the study of the objective and measurable. The clockword universe is invented. Astrology and astronomy are cast asunder, and meaning banished from the scientific universe.

The rise of science and the Reformation push religion onto the back foot. Materialism emerges from the new dominance of science.From this new materialistic perspective, not only is God dead, astrology is nonsense, there is no meaning.

Yet actually science has moved on. For 100 years quantum physics has firmly nailed any concept of a predictable mechanical universe, and has firmly established that all is actually, at a quantum level, interconnected. Experimental results depend on the observer. Some scientists are just not keeping up!

In fact, a world view seems to be emerging where it is consciousness that is primary, not matter, so in fact meaning is all. As a ‘science’ of meaning, astrology seems pretty well positioned here!

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