A Curious Case of Astrology and Two Nobel Laureates
The 2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, in a recent speech,
dismissed astrology as a superstition and called upon the youth to abandon it. Any advocacy of reason and a call to abandon superstition is welcome. However, it is surprising that Sir Ramakrishnan only targeted astrology while ignoring dangerous superstitions such as Christianity which adversely impact billions of people. If one were to embrace Christianity in all earnestness one then has to abandon all reason and believe in such things as a virgin can become pregnant, dead people can be resurrected, the world was created only 6,000 years ago or that it is going to end soon, and in eternal heaven and hell. These Christian superstitions have been the cause of much of the opposition to science in the USA and of various acts of intolerance and violence in the history of Christianity. Yet, Sir Ramakrishnan ignored a grave superstition and instead targeted astrology.
Is astrology indeed a superstition that must be abandoned? Let us turn to the interesting counter-arguments of the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Kary Mullis. In his book, “Dancing Naked in the Mind Field,” Mullis presents the following arguments:
· Three strangers, independently, identified Mullis as a Capricorn based on how he acts: the way he waved his hands while talking and the way he held onto the countertop when he was not waving his hands, etc. The probability of three strangers independently and correctly identifying Mullis as a Capricorn by chance is 1 out of 1,728.
· His daughter inherited the charts of Mullis and his wife. Astrological inheritance?
· Mullis once had his astrological chart, and a list of over 200 of his characteristics, made based on his time of birth. Most of what the chart said about him was correct. But some was entirely wrong. Interestingly, the wrong ones were derived from Mullis’ rising sign. The chart had identified his rising sign as Taurus. Mullis was curious and researched further. He was born in 1944 during WW 2. At that time, America had an extra hour of daylight savings time. If Mullis was born at 1:53 p.m. in December 1944 he was actually born at 12:53 p.m. once the extra hour of daylight savings is accounted for. Mullis found out that once this correction is made his rising sign would be Aries instead of Taurus. Now with the corrected sign his revised characteristics read correctly. Mullis, as a scientist, was curious, and wanted to run a double-blind test. He gave two printouts of his astrological charts, one based on the incorrect rising sign and the other on the correct rising sign, to his friends who knew him very well and asked them to mark out those characteristics they knew did not apply to him. They correctly identified as inapplicable those characteristics that were derived from the incorrect rising sign - Taurus, and as applicable those characteristics that were derived from the correct rising sign – Aries.
· A study of distribution of American medical students in birth months discovered that a lot of students were born in late June. Sociologists postulated that the reason could be because the sun was up earlier in June and so there was more sunlight for the newborn to be outside and to get interested in biology! Mullis calls this explanation “bullshit,” and points out that in the Australian medical schools too most successful applicants were born in late June even though the sun is not up early in Australia in June. Successful applicants to medical schools do not come equally from each month. They cluster around Gemini-Cancer across the world. More biochemists are Sagittarius. Just a coincidence?
Mullis argues that there is no systematic and scientific study that has debunked astrology. He also warns against dismissing something without deeper research. One hopes that Sir Ramakrishnan could make a scientific case against astrology just as his fellow Nobel Laureate Mullis has made for it based on data and the criterion of falsifiability.
Astrology has been practiced to varying degrees in Hindu society for a long time. In some cases, ceremonies such as wedding rites are performed at auspicious times whereas in others the bride and the groom are matched based on their horoscopes. Hindu marriages are far more successful than the Western variety. Is it because the weddings are consecrated at an auspicious time? Is it because the horoscope-matching increases the chance of compatibility? Or should one explore neuroscience for an explanation? After all, the success of a marriage is dependent on how the married view it and approach it. Do the Hindu customs inculcate a sense of sanctity towards marriage in the minds of the married? Does the custom of marrying at an auspicious time or after vetting the horoscopes shapes brain plasticity positively and hence increases the chances of success?
All of these explanations can be scientifically tested. For example, one could compare other Eastern societies with comparable success rate in marriages but where astrology is not practiced with Hindu society to look for answers. Neuroscience can reveal the impact of beliefs and social practices on the brain. A scientific mind would explore these explanations instead of dogmatically dismissing a body of knowledge especially when statistical cluster analysis pertaining to astrology rules out chance occurrence.
Neuroscience has indeed found correlation between the occurrence of certain diseases and traits that would have only interested astrologers in the past. The Simian Crease or the single palmar crease is one such example. One in 30 people have this and men are twice likely as women to have this condition. The Simian Crease is normal in itself but in combination with other signs could pre-dispose the bearer to diseases such as Down syndrome, Aarskog syndrome, Cohen syndrome, etc. Our ancients, even though lacking in modern understanding of psychology and neuroscience, did not fail to notice the correlation between the Simian Crease and certain patterns of intense emotional and intellectual dispositions. As Mullis remarks, primitive people did not know about molecules but they were good observers, and when they observed an herb to work, they incorporated it into their body of knowledge. Likewise, it is reasonable to assume that our ancestors observed certain correlations between the lines on one’s palm and one’s health and recorded those observations as astrological predictions. Not long ago, any suggestion that the lines on one’s palms had anything to do with Down syndrome would have been ridiculed. That is no longer the case.
An open mind, free from dogma, is what helps us progress. It is a tragedy when a scientific mind dogmatically dismisses a field of study. There is no evidence that an indulgence in astrology limits scientific progress in any society. There is evidence to the contrary. Ancient Greece, Egypt, China, and India all made phenomenal progress in science while indulging in astrology. In fact, since astrology and astronomy were inseparable, progress in one was dependent on the practice of the other. Even today, societies that depend on astrology also boast of higher marital success rate.
The antipathy towards astrology is traceable to the medieval periods when the Christian church victimized the Gypsies in Europe for practicing astrology. Astrology threatened the church because it meant that a combination of several factors, and not a belief in Jesus, shaped one’s destiny. A scientist today has no business to propagate such medieval Christian biases as the opposition to astrology. If a scientist is concerned with eradicating superstition, he can surely target Christianity as his first candidate but such an endeavor will invoke the wrath of the church and the powerful establishments of the West and result in the scientist being branded an intolerant extremist. Astrology is an alluring soft target for one to show off one’s scientific temperament but one that yields to that temptation does so while turning a blind eye to statistical evidence.
