Richard Dawkins on Astrology

Recently I watched a debate posted on Youtube.   It featured a lively discussion between biologist, academic and writer Richard Dawkins and astrologer Neil Spencer.

Richard Dawkins interviews Astrologer Neil Spencer

As an astronomer I’ve long considered astrologers to be my natural enemy.   Therefore I was squarely in Prof. Dawkins’ camp.  But after a while the discourse seemed a bit like watching a youthful Muhammad Ali climbing into the boxing ring with Pee-wee Herman.  It was so one-sided as to appear almost unsporting.  As I continued to watch a strange thing happened.  Perhaps it was a result of my natural inclination to identify with the underdog, but I began composing-in my mind-the arguments that I’d have liked Neil Spencer to have advanced.  It wasn’t that I wanted Mr. Spencer to win, far from it.  But I’d have enjoyed seeing how Prof. Dawkins would’ve faired against a more formidable opponent.  As I continued to watch my option of astrology shifted just a bit from compete disapproval to something approaching a tacit acceptance.    

Had I been the astrologer I’d have begun by asking Prof. Dawkins to imagine himself as a farmer living on the Nile Delta prior to the first dynasty.  This would’ve been about 5,500 years ago.  Situated close to the Tropic of Cancer the changes in the Earth’s seasons wouldn’t have been readily apparent.  There would’ve been no great fluctuations in climate or variation in the amount of sunlight each day provided.  Now suppose that one day the village wise man told you that within ten days the Nile would overflow its banks flooding your farmland and so it was time for you to make ready to plant your crops.  Assuming this to be true the wise man had just given you an extremely valuable piece of advice.  And suppose that in six days time the Nile did in fact flood although you observed no rain.  It would seem that the wise man was capable of forecasting the future; but how?  You ask the wise man for his secret to prophesy and, being a charitable sort of fellow, he explains that when he witnesses the heliacal rising of the star Sirius he knows that the Nile flood is soon to follow.   In other words, when Sirius first becomes visible on the eastern horizon just moments before sunrise the flood is soon to come. 

Today we know that the Earth’s seasons are due to the tilt of the Earth on it’s axis.  We also know that, before the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the annual flooding of the Nile was the result of seasonal rains in the mountains to the south unobservable from the Nile Delta.  This information wasn’t available in the year 3,500 BC.  An application of the yet to be imagined Occam’s razor would lead the farmer to the seemingly reasonable conclusion that the light from Sirius caused the Nile to flood.   But even if his conclusion was in error the information was still useful, so useful that it might mean the difference between a successful harvest year or starving.   Astrology may be wrong, but it wasn’t invented by fools or charlatans. 

In the debate Prof. Dawkins stated that an application of the scientific method by trained scientists could prove, or disprove, astrology once and for all and thus save regular folks a lot of time and effort.  Perhaps so, but anyone who’s ever had occasions to witness that weird Silicon Valley ritual known as the Stanford University Wacky Walk has seen young scholars collect their Ph.Ds in Physics while dressed up as zebras, Buzz Lightyear or Harry Potter.  Well why not, they earned it.  But why can’t the rest of us have fun as well.  If astrology is all a bunch of poppycock why not let the reads spend some time in introspection and decide for themselves?