Lots of people—too many—like to pick and choose which science to believe. Don’t just blame climate change deniers. By “lots of people” I mean those who do not recognize the value of real natural science.
According to the New Yorker, astrology is on the rise among millennials who profess to believe in science. Seventy-four percent of Cosmo readers are “obsessed” with astrology. See:
The resurgence has been fueled by fake news/fake information/fake science on the Internet.
Of course there are astrology “apps.”
Some people are making a lot of money out of this. I wonder if they support fellow charlatan Donald Trump who goes by the notion of truth as something you repeat so often that people believe it.
We have desperate humanitarian crises in the Middle East and Africa, and people are throwing their money at astrology.
Is this harmless? No; first because it leads folks to believe in just anything that pops up on the internet that suits their fancy. If they can believe in astrology, why not space aliens? Secondly, it can lead people to make bad decisions—buy a car they can’t afford, marry a criminal, vote for a demagogue, put their children in a school that teaches evolution is a hoax . . . . You name it. All dangerous.
Science denial is a perilous road into the shadows.
Mark,
Is astrology an arrant fraud? Of course. It rejects science in toto and attributes human behavior to the accident of one’s birthday and to planetary influences, when in fact the gravitational effect of one’s mother when sitting on her lap is far greater than that of any distant planet.
Linking future behavior, like choosing a spouse or a child’s school, or voting–as your blog does– to one’s belief in astrology seems as unproblematic as the predictions astrology itself makes. It looks like
substituting one sort of hysteria with another.
Of course, extreme cases, like those cited in the recent New Yorker article, may well allow astrology to define their lives and choices and to exploit fellow, true believers financially. But to suggest that those who consult their daily horoscope are ushering in an era of anti-science, anti-rationality which threatens our culture and way of life is highly questionable. In its uber-hype piece, the New Yorker makes no room for the millions around the world who look for their sign as a non-serious, light-hearted distraction from the stresses of everyday life. Such viewers do not make good copy.
It seems entirely likely that many, if not most, of these viewers still believe in basic science: they go to doctors and hospitals, they trust air travel, FDA recommendations, violent storm predictions, etc. all of which result from scientific effort. That they hold an unscientific view in one particular aspect of life, like the validity of astrological predictions, hardly makes them anti-science. You might as well argue that those who are religious are anti-science. Clearly, in overwhelming numbers, they are not. A salient example: Francis Collins, the NIH head who led the Human Genome project is a devout, practicing Christian. Many scientists subscribe to some form of religious belief which contradicts the established facts of creation, evolution, and biology. They manage this because they compartmentalize. Religion and science are “two majesties” to use Stephen Jay Gould’s evocative phrase. In their minds, they do not overlap. They do not see contradiction but complementarity. I myself, cannot manage this, but far greater minds than mine do so routinely.
Thus, we must be careful not to write off those like astrology-philes who hold an unscientific view here or there. Nor must we see all of us as uncritical dupes of the internet.