<p>I am not enlightened. I am seeking enlightenment. You know “Believe those who seek the truth doubt those who find it” thing?</p>
<p>Anyway. There is as much evidence to support Astrology as there is Religion. I personally think Astrology is beautiful and archaic and either of those two reasons is good enough to have it be taught.</p>
<p>Does art need ****ing evidence to be taught?</p>
<p>Well religious studies examine the role of various religions in society. Also, theology degrees and graduate programs in divinity can serve the practical purpose in training people to become pastors, priests, etc. I suppose astrology might be appropriate as a part of a study in religion in the context of society, but I doubt you’ll find a program that is as extensive as you seem to want because it, like the four humors has gone by the wayside in modern times.</p>
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<p>I don’t care for his religion analogy, but he’s got a point here. We teach the theory and practice of art and literature in our universities, but we don’t teach the theory of practice of exclusively non-Western pursuits like Oriental astrology or West African naturopathy. That is to be expected, but it has nothing to do with logical validity (as the examples of art and literature demonstrate) and everything to do with a lack of demand for non-Western cultural products. </p>
<p>Some might say this lack of demand for “nonsense” subjects reflects Western enlightenment; others would call it Eurocentrism (and the preceding assertion racist). Whatever the case, I don’t fault the universities for abiding by the law of supply and demand.</p>
<p>Iamsounsure…Some might say that having to use profanity to get your point across is ignorant.</p>
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<p>Archaeology doesn’t make predictions. Do you consider it a pseudoscience?</p>
<p>I’m just ragging on economics (AKA the “dismal science”). Obviously, it’s a social science, not a natural science. It’s a science the same way something like political science is. It does try to make predictions, though, and the track record of those predictions is spotty, one might say.</p>
<p>As for astrology, it wouldn’t surprise me if universities have classes that teach about astrology, but I would be surprised if many teach persons how to practice astrology.</p>
<p>You could submit your application to Hogwarts. I’m sure they offer a class on Divination. :D</p>
<p>I would be surprised if somewhere someone isn’t offering a course on astrology, probably in a folklore program or interdisciplinary humanities program. I know that it’s sometimes hard to understand some things in classical and Renaissance literature without understanding the references to astrology or other forms of divination (reading entrails, tea leaves, Tarot, etc.) And it’s an identifiable folk practice that has been transmitted through centuries, across a number of cultures. </p>
<p>It would probably be really interesting to trace how it has developed, changed, recombined outside of establishment educational channels. How has the practice of astrology been affected by the Copernican Revolution, and by our changing understanding of the physics of the universe? (Apart, of course, from being marginalized and taken far less seriously than before.) How does it differ between cultures? What does “progress” look like within the community of practitioners? How do people determine validity? (Obviously, not the same way most of us do.) How is it taught? How do practitioners respond to market forces and fashion (since, essentially, they are in an entrepreneurial entertainment business)? These kinds of inquiries would also pose interesting methodological challenges, since lots of the transmission has been oral and nonacademic; just figuring out how to identify evidence would be fascinating.</p>
<p>Those are legitimate academic questions, any one of which could produce a perfectly good article or even a thesis. It’s hard to believe that no one has ever noticed.</p>
<p>As for West African naturopathy – I know there is a course in it in Penn’s Medicine and Society program, and I would bet that’s not the only one. There was an academic botanist a few years ago who got a couple of mass-market books out of his studies of the pharmacology of zombieism.</p>
<p>And a movie, too, if I recall correctly.</p>
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Most archaeologists do not consider archaeology to be a science simply because excavation is destructive and hence hardly repeatable (I would strongly disagree with the claim that archaeologists do not make predictions). What blurs the distinction is that archaeology makes use of scientific techniques (e.g. ICP-AES for archaeochemical analysis). </p>
<p>bookish beat me to my suggestion. John Steele at Brown is widely recognized as the world’s leading scholar on Babylonian astrology. Lest anyone make any Harry Potter quips, I should add that the head of the department is a HP fan and is designing a course about apotropaism entitled “Defense against the Dark Arts.”</p>
<p>Archaeologists do not consider their field a pseudoscience, despite the dearth of predictions (and of repeatability). That was the point: predictiveness is a red herring when discussing “sciences” that are mostly descriptive in nature. The issue is what kind of relationship the subject has with data. Archaeology is entirely data-driven, economics a combination of theory and data. Astrology doesn’t really have a concept of objective data.</p>
<p>Economics is not a science. It is a theory of human behavior based around the assumptions that people behave solely based on fear and greed. When you read economics papers, you’ll find that in general, when the initial data don’t match with the desired results, the paper will simply redefine the underlying assumptions so that the data affirms their pre-existing ideas. the famous quote is that economists exist to explain to you tomorrow whey their predictions yesterday didn’t happen today.</p>
<p>in any case, astrology is not a major at harvard because it’s not based on any fundamental assumptions at all. where you see orion, i might see a giant *****, and where would we proceed from there? if you’re looking to go to college to study astrology, you must have a serious trust fund.</p>
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<p>We’d devise non-testable theories to explain the difference in interpretation, just like they do in literature. It’s not that great a conundrum.</p>
<p>you’re comparing apples to oranges here. literary critique is generally the interpretation of the primary source (in this case, the author’s work). your so called “non-testable theories to explain the difference in interpretation” would be twice removed from the primary source (the stars) and would be meta-analysis (analysis of analysis), which doesn’t really fall within the scope of “astrology.” if anything, astrological meta analysis would fall under sociology or history (or maybe VES) at harvard. perhaps you’ll understand a bit better after some gen-ed courses.</p>
<p>I was referring to contemporary hermeneutics, the theory and methodology of the interpretation of texts. Replace “texts” with “celestial bodies” and you have what I was thinking of vis-a-vis astrology.</p>
<p>You’re trying too hard to condescend.</p>