Is Astrology Backed By Science?

Is astrology backed by science?

The answer, in short, is no. There is no scientific backing to the conclusions drawn by astrology. But there are many ways that astrology is connected with the human world, as it’s intertwined with the pursuit of knowledge about our place in the cosmos.

The Sun shapes the structure of the day and the seasons, the Moon influences the ocean’s tides, eclipses turn the sky dark, and solar storms create displays of green and purple lights on the Earth’s celestial canvas. Given these observable effects, it makes sense that people throughout history have wondered if the planets' positions could also influence human life on Earth –. whether the alignment of planets and stars affects who we are as people or what happens to us over the course of our lives. But, as Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University, explains, “there's just no way the motion of planets through the cosmos can affect us”. There would be too many effects to take into account on principal if they were.²

“The only way I can think of another planet having any kind of impact on us," he adds, "is if one were to stroll around at night looking up at Mars, say, or Jupiter or Venus – and by not looking where they're going, walk into a lamppost.”

Scientists have also long been using the scientific method to try to corroborate conclusions drawn by astrology to no avail. In the 1980s, American physicist Shawn Carlson  conducted a study to test the validity of astrology. He tasked 30 astrologers with looking at astrological birth charts – which map the Sun, Moon, and planets at the time of a person's birth – of 116 people and seeing if they could match each person's birth chart to their correct personality profile. The astrologers, who had never met the participants, were given three personality profiles to choose from for each birth chart. The test was "double-blind", meaning that neither the testers nor the astrologers knew the answers to any of the questions. His results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, showed that the astrologers only got a third of the pairings right, which is not statistically better than if they had chosen completely randomly.³

A test similar to Carlson was recreated more recently in August 2024, where 152 astrologers were asked to match twelve people’s birth charts to questionnaires they’d answered about their personality and life.⁴ Once again, the astrologers got less than a third of the matches right and even agreed on their matches among themselves less than a third of the time too. No more than chance.

Another scientific study sought to match the personality and intelligence test results of 15,000 people with their date of birth and found no correlation.⁵

 

There is some astrology in science, though...

While there is no science in astrology, there is “a tremendous amount of astrology in science,” says physicist Alexander Boxer, author of the book A Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the Birth of Science.⁶

Astrology thrived during early pursuits in science, and it was studied alongside astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. For thousands of years, astrologers were among the earliest practitioners to collect data and attempt to make predictions. Boxer refers to astrology as “the first data analysis enterprise.” In the Roman Empire, astrologers were essentially the “number crunchers" of their time. They spent their time with pen and parchment searching for patterns in the information they collected – a methodology still seen in science today.

Many astronomers during the Renaissance era practiced both astronomy and astrology, which helped maintain detailed observations of the sky. The astronomer Johannes Kepler, known for his laws of planetary motion, also cast horoscopes for the nobility as a means of financial support.

There’s also an epistemological lesson to be learned from the discipline of celestial predictions: astrology is, says Boxer, a pure encapsulation of the ways we naturally react to data as pattern-matching creatures who are seduced by numbers. “All the issues that astrology had to deal with never went away,” says Boxer. “They're part of our human story, of how we see patterns in numbers, sometimes when they're there, and in many cases, when they're not.”

Why is astrology so important for people, then?

Despite its lack of scientific evidence, astrology has endured throughout the years. It’s special to people, and still today many use it for guidance in their life, or even just for entertainment.

According to Paul Clements, a lecturer in arts and cultural policy at Goldsmiths University of London, astrology's lasting popularity is likely because it offers people tools to interpret their lives  with and a way to construct aone’s sense of identity.^7,8 Astrology is not scientific, says Clements, rather it is symbolic, creative, divinatory, and spiritual and more related to religion than science. The more anxious and insecure people feel the more they look to something that will help them to navigate the problems that life throws up. It gives people a support system to help them understand their unfolding lives. “It offers new ways of thinking about life and who we are,” says Clements. “A way to assuage existential anxiety.”

Interestingly, research has shown that astrology can influence how people feel about themselves. In a 2006 study, scientists had several people read either positive or negative horoscope predictions about themselves and then gave them some tests and tasks to complete.⁹ People who read positive horoscope predictions about themselves interpreted ambiguous photographs more optimistically and performed better on both cognitive and creative tasks. Conversely, people who were given negative astrology readings performed worse. This fits with what we know about the expectation effect in psychology: a student is more likely to perform poorly on a cognitive test if there’s a strong expectation that they will (not succeed?).

The core premise of astrology is the belief that people are all intimately connected to the wider cosmos. “This view is fundamental to most worldviews, philosophies and religions, and only rejected by modern Western philosophy and science,” says Nicholas Campion, an astrology historian from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. “The attraction of astrology is therefore found in the way age-old worldviews provide a sense of belonging and purpose.”¹⁰

So while there’s no scientific, empirical evidence that astrology works in explaining whether the alignment of planets and stars has any power over our personality, or what happens in our daily life  – its emotional pull and its role in helping people make sense of their existence certainly has its power.

Featured Image: © Lux Aeterna VFX / BBC

References: 

1. Kurtik, Gennady E. “On the Origin of the 12 Zodiac Constellation System in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 52, no. 1 (February 2021): 53–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/002182862098054

2. Sciences, Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary. 2021. “Paul Byrne.” Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. February 9, 2021. https://eeps.wustl.edu/people/paul-byrne

3. Carlson, S. A double-blind test of astrology. Nature 318, 419–425 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/318419a0

4. Greenberg, Spencer. 2024. “Clearer Thinking’s Study: Can Astrologers Truly Gain Insights about People from Entire Astrological Charts?” Clearer Thinking. Clearer Thinking. July 21, 2024. https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/can-astrologers-use-astrological-charts-to-understand-people-s-character-and-lives-our-new-study-pu

5. Hartmann, Peter, Martin Reuter, and Helmuth Nyborg. 2006. “The Relationship between Date of Birth and Individual Differences in Personality and General Intelligence: A Large-Scale Study.” Personality and Individual Differences 40 (7): 1349–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.11.017

6. Boxer, Alexander. 2024. “Alexander Boxer.” Alexboxer.com. 2024. https://alexboxer.com/

‌7. “Dr Paul Clements BA MA PhD.” n.d. Goldsmiths, University of London. https://www.gold.ac.uk/icce/staff/p-clements/

8. Clements, Paul. 2022. “Astrology, Modernity and the Project of Self-Identity.” Culture and Religion 21 (3): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2022.2093234 .

9. Clobert, Magali, Patty Van Cappellen, Marianne Bourdon, and Adam B. Cohen. 2016. “Good Day for Leos: Horoscope’s Influence on Perception, Cognitive Performances, and Creativity.” Personality and Individual Differences 101 (October): 348–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.032

10. “Dr Nicholas Campion BA, MA, PhD.” 2024. University of Wales Trinity Saint David. May 29, 2024. https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/staff/nicholas-campion

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