The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
June 2002
Peter Wright
Astrology and Science in
Seventeenth-Century
Social Studies of Science
Volume 5, Issue 4
Nov. 1975, 399-422.
In recent years the task of distinguishing
science from other cognitive systems has become much more complex. The traditional view that science is the
polar opposite of such systems of thought as witchcraft, magic or astrology has
been eroded almost to the point of extinction.
1 On the one hand, historians and sociologists of science
have been building up a view of scientific activity strikingly different from
the hitherto accepted one; on the other, social anthropologists, in analysing
so-called ‘alien belief-systems’, have drawn attention to many features that
appear to be far from alien to much scientific activity.
Nonetheless, although the distinction is far less
clear-cut than it was once thought to be, and although most of us would not
imbue it with the moral overtones that many of our nineteenth-century
predecessors did, it is still a distinction that needs to be made. There is no escaping the fact that, in
general, the consequences of what is usually accepted as being scientific
activity are enormously different in their impact on other aspects of social
existence from those of magical, religious or artistic activities. I do not want to deny that science may
well fulfil many functions hitherto, or still, performed by other systems of
thought. Still less do I wish to
suggest that they are easy to distinguish either synchronically or
diachronically: nonetheless, this paper is based on the assumption that the
contrast between science and non-science
Author’s address: Department of Applied Social Studies,
An earlier form of this paper was presented to the
Sociology section of the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science at
1. This can be clearly seen from the general tone of the
papers in R. Finnegan and R. Horton (eds, Modes of Thought (London:
Faber, 1973).
399
which figures so largely in a wide range of
nineteenth-century writings and was so important to Marx (as it was, in
different forms, both to Durkheim and to Weber), was not merely some kind of
fashionable idiom of the period, but actually marked out one of the most
significant aspects of the development of Western capitalist
societies.
It is my purpose to examine some of the difficulties
involved in the practice of research which attempts to demarcate science from
supposedly non-scientific systems of explanation: by so doing, it may be
possible to begin to isolate certain distinguishing features of scientific
activity without, at the same time, exaggerating the differences between
scientific and other forms of cognitive practice. In particular, I will try to make use of
one perspective which seems to embody this kind of emphasis - Robin Horton’s
view that science is rooted in a particular kind of social situation, one that
differs radically from that in which systems such as magic flourish. The material that I will use in my
discussion relates to the relative positions of astrology and what we now regard
(in retrospect) as ‘science’ in
Before discussing the application of Horton’s approach I
believe it is useful to situate it by touching briefly on some of the other
perspectives that are available to sociologists for distinguishing between
science and non-scientific explanatory systems.
For long the most influential approach was that of Sir
Karl Popper, who identified the distinguishing characteristic of science as the
potential falsifiabiity of its theories.
2 It is interesting to note that Popper himself gives
astrology as an example of a bogus science: one that possesses a few
superficially ‘scientific’ features yet is not a science because of the
inherently unfalsifiable nature of its predictions.
3 His general approach has frequently been criticized for
presenting an oversimplified view of falsification by disregarding both the
extent to which experimental data is itself impregnated with theoretical
preconceptions, and the degree to which the acceptance or the refutation of a
theory is also a social process. 4 Indeed, in the writing of Lakatos, himself
very
2. This is a view that runs throughout Popper’s work: see
particularly K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge,
1963).
3. Ibid., 37.
4. See the
papers in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1970).
400
strongly influenced by Popper, one can see major
concessions to a more sociological view of falsification arising in the course
of the defence of a broadly Popperian position.
An approach involving still more stress on social
elements is that of Thomas Kuhn. His celebrated emphasis on the ‘paradigm’
as the distinguishing feature of scientific activity leads him to suggest that
it was not from the unfalsifiability of astrology that its unscientific nature
came - indeed he insists against Popper that numerous predictions were seen to
be wrong - but from the fact that it was not founded on a paradigm bearing a
determinate relationship to empirical observation. He writes: ‘Though they [the astrologers]
had rules to apply they had no puzzles to solve and therefore no science to
practise’.5
A further approach which is coming to have increasing
importance, particularly on the European Continent, is that of Gaston Bachelard
and some of those influenced by him, particularly Louis Althusser. The common element in these orientations
is the insistence that sciences can only come about with the elaboration of new,
and distinctive, problematics whose growth constitutes an epistemological break
with earlier forms of thought.
Whilst Bachelard’s position is avowedly anti-sociological, it nonetheless
seems to me that some features of his approach are highly germane to a
sociological study of science. His
detailed studies of the development of scientific concepts in conflict with the
categories of everyday experience, for instance, are capable of providing many
insights relevant to the discussion of an application of Horton’s model to the
history of Western science.
It is this latter model which I want to describe in
rather more detail, since it is the one upon which I will draw most heavily in
trying to make sense of the data on astrology.
Horton argues that African traditional thought and
modern Western science, despite their alleged opposition, have many common
structural features. The
fundamental distinction between them is not, primarily, that between ‘personal’
and ‘impersonal’ modes of thought, but is rather to be sought in the social
situations in which they are found: the ‘closed’ and the ‘open’ respectively.
The ‘open’ situation is one where
there is an awareness of competing world-views. The ‘closed’ predicament is where a
single view dominates in the absence of any rivals. The absence of alternative modes of
explanation entails, according to Horton, certain distinctive attitudes to
thought. In such a situation words
will tend to have magical significance; there will be little
reflec
5. T.S. Kuhn, “Logic of Discovery or Psychology of
Research”, in ibid 7.
40
tion about methods of thought; ideas will tend to be
bound to occasions, and there will be no segregation of motives in the search
for explanation. It will also be a
situation where divination will be a dominant practice for the pursuit of
knowledge, and where there will be a protective attitude towards existing
concepts and theories. Any form of
experimental method is likely to be rare, and people will be unwilling to accept
that they are ignorant of the causes of events that affect them deeply. As a result, there will be little
acceptance of notions of chance or probability. The ‘open’ predicament contrasts with the
‘closed’ in each of these respects.
The greatest merit of this approach is that it both
stresses the similarities of science and other cognitive systems as well as
trying to provide a sociological analysis of the origins of their differences.
6
Because of
this dual emphasis on both continuity and change, Horton’s model seems to be
particularly appropriate to the study of the development of science in Western
societies themselves. Surprisingly,
however, he has very little to say about this: he touches on the topic in his
1967 paper and later expressed his antipathy to any account of the development
of science at the expense of magic in terms of some kind of ‘contrast-inversion’
conception of the relationship between them.
7 Nonetheless,
he does not examine in any detail the question of the extent to which the two
kinds of predicament may co-exist in a given society: he simply leaves us with
the tantalizing suggestion that the attitudes of ‘openness’ may be restricted,
even in the modern Western world, to very small areas of life - and, presumably,
to very small numbers of people.
8
If different world-views do continue to exist side by
side even in societies where scientific activities are highly institutionalized,
their juxtaposition and even interpenetration must have been far greater in,
say, seventeenth-century England. In this event, the problem of explaining
the decline of particular non-scientific forms of explanation, such as
astrology, becomes yet more difficult. If witchcraft, for example, is really so
convenient in providing a stereotypical interpretation of everyday misfortunes;
is really so important in providing forms
6. Barry Barnes has criticized Horton’s paper - I think
correctly - for over-estimating the openness of scientists when confronted by
anomaly. See S. B. Barnes, ‘The
Comparison of Belief Systems’, in op. cit. note 1.
7. A point which he develops at some length in his
‘Levy-Bruhl, Durkheim and the Scientific Revolution’, in op. cit. note
1.
8. R. Horton, ‘African Traditional Thought and Western
Science’,
402
of social control; is really so protected against
scepticism by techniques such as ‘secondary elaboration’; and so on - why should
belief in it ever wane? As Jarvie
and Agassi have suggested (with reference to magic) the key problem, perhaps, is
that of why people ceased to believe in it.
9
Astrology too poses a remarkably similar riddle. In the mid-sixteenth century it was, as a
historian has put it recently: ‘… not a coterie doctrine but an essential
aspect of the intellectual framework in which men were educated’.
10
Astrology was imbued with the authority of the learning
of the classical world. There were
Chairs of Astrology at some universities, including those of
But astrology was far more than an explanatory system
for small groups of savants: its influence seems to have permeated every
level of society, as the wide range of surviving evidence amply testifies.
13
It seems
to have provided a context of meaning and interpretation for all sections of the
population in a period when, perhaps, institutionalized religion was less and
less capable of providing this.
14
9.
10. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of
Magic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971),
285.
11. L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental
Science (New York: Doubleday, 1923-58), Vol. IV, 408; Vol. V, 238; Vol. VI,
165-6; Vol. VII, 89.
12. L. Thorndike, ‘The
13. See Thomas, op. cit. note 10; D. C. Allen,
The Star-Crossed Renaissance (Raleigh, N.C.: North Carolina University
Press, 1941); or Thorndike, op. cit. note 11.
14. See Thomas, op. cit. note 10
403
It is true that numerous attacks were directed against
astrology, but they were typically aimed, not at the fundamental principle that
the heavens influenced the affairs of men (or, still less, terrestrial nature),
but at the practice of astrology. The situation, perhaps, was not unlike
that of Azande scepticism towards witchdoctors. Many anti-astrological polemics, however,
did not even go so far as to concern themselves with the inadequacies of
explanations and predictions; instead, they concentrated on the dangers of such
predictions for both true religion and political order. This form of attack, indeed, is
frequently mirrored in the writings of astrologers and their sympathizers, who
persistently attempt to evade the regal and ecclesiastical prohibitions of the
subject (which become more common from the late sixteenth century) by pleading
that it is legitimate to give astrological explanations of the weather, health
and the general predilections of individuals based on the influence of the
heavens at birth. What are
generally condemned are precise short-term predictions, and attempts to
calculate the nativities of the sovereign or of Christ.
What is most striking in some of the attacks on
astrology (such as, for instance, Calvin’s’ 5) is the implication that
the subject is not dangerous because it is false, but because it is a
subversive truth. It is
hardly surprising that, as a consequence, its prime critics are theologians and
men of state: there is not a single attack published in English prior to the
1650s by anyone whom one could reasonably describe as a man of science; and
there are precious few elsewhere.
16
Yet by the late seventeenth century the attitude towards
astrology appears to have changed radically in educated circles. Admittedly, the evidence is rather
confused and in part distorted by political changes affecting the application of
censorship. 17 Nonetheless, a variety of documentary sources all
indicate a decline in support for the subject. The increasing proportion of comic or
critical references in contemporary literature; the number of critical asides in
publications
15. Although Calvin makes some criticism of the
inadequacies of astrological practice in his A vertissement contre
1‘astrologie (Geneva, 1543; republished Paris: A. Cohn, 1962), the burden of
his objections to the subject seem to be the conflict between his notion of
God’s Grace and a deterministic view of man in nature: see esp. 10-17, and
passim.
16. See P. Kocher, Science and Religion in Elizabethan
England (San Marino, Calif.: Octagon, 1953, reprinted
1970).
17. There was a large upsurge of publications of
almanacks in the period of the Interregnum which appears to have been largely
the result of relaxations in the control of publishing.
404
dealing with science or education; the complaints of
astrologers themselves; and perhaps most significant of all, the apparent lack
of interest in the subject in the writings of major intellectual figures all
help to suggest that, by 1689, astrological belief is a minority matter among
the intellectual elite. In so far
as its doctrines continued to have influence at this level, it was probably
limited to physicians and certain groups influenced by the ideas of religious
sectarians. The prevalent attitude
among many of those whom we would now consider to be in the forefront of the
scientific revolution would, very likely, be summed up by Seth Ward, astronomer
and early member of ‘the Invisible College’, when he described astrology in 1654
as ‘… that ridiculous cheat made up of nonsense and contradictions’.
18
How far is it possible to explain this decline in terms
of the kind of sociological distinction that Horton makes between science and
magic? Does the ‘Scientific
Revolution’ occur because there is a massive growth of awareness of the
existence of alternative theoretical frames of reference in the period in
question? If so, does this help to
explain the decline in astrology? Is it perhaps the case that astrology
persists in some kind of isolated social environment unaffected by the social
and intellectual changes that are generally regarded as important to the growth
of early science?
One difficulty that presents itself when one begins to
try to answer this kind of question is that of deciding when, in fact, systems
of thought and their typical forms of explanation may be said to be
‘conflicting’ - or even for that matter, ‘different’. It is easy now, with the benefit of
hindsight, to present Kepler’s work on planetary orbits as a real science
and to regard his mystical and astrological interests as some kind of
irrelevant anachronism; but it seems to me far more plausible to argue that for
him, and for many of his contemporaries, the one was a natural extension of the
others. Is Kepler then a thinker
involved in different and, indeed, conflicting explanatory systems, or is the
conflict merely the product of a modern re-categorization of his activities?
The problem crops up time and time
again. Any attempt to solve it
necessarily involves a number of fundamental issues about the relationship
between conflicts of cosmology and the different kinds of social practice with
which these cosmologies may be associated. These issues form the central thread of
my discussion of astrology.
Certainly, when one regards the period between the
mid-sixteenth
18. S Ward, (published under the anonymous authorship of
‘H.D.’), Vindicae Academiarum (
405
century and the late seventeenth it is easy to argue
that this was a time when numerous different theoretical systems were available
to the literate: and, in a time of fierce religious and philosophical
controversy there was no shortage of material. Nonetheless, it is problematic what
effect this had on the fate of astrology. To a certain extent, alternative
world-views had been available to some of the educated from classical times
onwards: after all, did not Copernicus himself use allusions to classical
writings to bolster his own heliocentric theory of the universe? In the same way, many of the most
frequently repeated arguments against astrology are merely reformulations of
polemics originating in classical times.
Again, it is highly debatable how far this was a period
of decline in ‘anti-scientific’ modes of thought. This becomes particularly clear if one
compares it with previous centuries. There is now considerable evidence to
suggest that some of the new intellectual influences in the Renaissance
(neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, for example) gave far more encouragement to
astrology than the philosophies that they were tending to supplant.
19
It is
worth mentioning in passing too, of course, that the same period also appears to
have seen an increased interest in both magic and witchcraft among the educated.
To say the least, the general
connection between the availability of alternative frames of reference and the
decline in ‘pre-scientific’ forms of thought seems somewhat
tenuous.
It is not sufficient, however, to treat the intellectual
environment of seventeenth-century
19. See, for example, F. Yates, Giordano Bruno
and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964), and
The Art of Memory (London: Routledge, 1966).
20. Although it is not possible to make an exclusive
distinction between ‘scientists’ and astrologers because of the overlap of
categories, and for other reasons, which I mention in the body of the paper, I
am treating as an astrologer any individual known to have cast nativities or
carried out other astrological operations, or who publicly defended the practice
of astrology. I am regarding
as [a scientist those who are, today,
generally regarded as having made a valid contribution to the development of
modern science. Because of the
retrospective nature of this latter definition I will place the word ‘scientist’
in quotation marks wherever I use it in this sense.]
HHC : [bracketed] displayed
on p. 407 of original.
406
If one takes, for example, the question of the magical
attitude to words, it is easy to find instances of astrologers using words in
such a way that they seem to have been inextricably entangled with the phenomena
they purported to denote. A symptom
of this is the way in which the supposed properties of planetary influence came
to be embodied in the very words used - such as ‘jovial’, ‘mercurial’,
‘venerial’, ‘lunatic’, and so on. The question of causation is
short-circuited by the unselfconscious use of analogy embodied in the very
categories of thought and, as a result, colours the perception of experience.
To attack the theory one must also
call into question the supposedly commonsense categories of experience on which
it appears to base itself.
Astrological practice was permeated with the use of such
analogical language. A typical
example is the following quotation from the work of Nicolas Culpeper, a
seventeenth-century astrologer and apothecary, who was also responsible for
making the Latin Pharmacopoeia of the Royal Society of
Apothecaries available in English for the first time. He writes, in defence of astrology, that
men are made of the same materials as the universe but not of the same forms.
He goes on to liken heavenly
influence to the way in which a man’s head sweats when his feet are on a hot
water bottle. The reason for this,
he observes, is:
… the mutual harmonic of one part of the body with
another; why then as well should not the actions of one part of creation produce
as well effects in another that being also one entire body, composed of the same
elements and in as great harmonic?... Should not Celestiall bodies act upon the
Terestriall, they being made of the same matter, and by the finger of the same
God? He that will not believe
Reason, let him believe experience…
21
This is a question-begging use of analogy which is
certainly alien to modern views of scientific method! But was it so very different from the
celebrated passage in Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus… where the author
gives a lyrical account of the central position and importance of the sun in
terms reminiscent of Hermeticist writing?
22 Was it
21 N. Culpeper, Semiotica Uranica
(
22 N. Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium
(1543: republished, with translation and parallel text, ed. A. Koyré,
407
different either from Kepler’s quest for planetary
harmonies or Gilbert’s belief that magnetism was a further illustration of the
microcosm-macrocosm analogy? Perhaps we find not a distinction between
the use of words in science and in magical thinking, but rather a kind of
transitional situation in both forms of thought.
That this may be the case is further suggested by the
fact that some of those who were opposed to the use of unquestioned analogy, and
to what could be described as ‘a magical attitude to words’, are themselves
defenders of astrology. John
Webster, for instance, the sectarian educational reformer who launched a
virulent attack on University education in 1654 (and who supported his arguments
with the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Bacon and many others who are seen as
key figures in the scientific revolution), nonetheless advocated both astrology
and natural magic. He summed up his
argument by calling for:
discovering and rectifying the delusions and fallacies
of the senses, and for drawing adequate and congruous notions from things, and
giving opposite and significant denominations to notions.
23
What could be a clearer plea for a non-magical use of
language?
Again, there is no clear distinction between the fields
with respect to the extent that they employed ideas bound to occasions. It is true that much astrological writing
was concerned merely with ad hoc explanation, but it is also true that
the early proceedings of the Royal Society are full of reports the reasons for
whose inclusion seem to have derived solely from ad hoc, commonsense,
understandings rather than from some theoretically rooted problematic. In the early l660s, for instance, the
records of the Society received reports of:
… a Spring in
The only way in which it seems possible to explain the
selection of these particular topics is that they represented, in terms of the
everyday, commonsense, understandings of its members, the extraordinary:
that which demanded explanation. In this respect they appear not unlike
the views of Azande tribesmen when they feel that a
particularly
23. J. Webster, Academiarum Examen
(
24. T. Sprat, A History of the Royal Society
(
408
severe and persistent case of sepsis demands a
witchcraft explanation. Nor for
that matter, are they unlike the example of the
I do not wish to give the impression that the discussion
of this kind of topic was all that the Royal Society concerned itself with: it
certainly was not. In the same
years, some of its members were also carrying out detailed experimental work on
topics that were not ‘extraordinary’ in the everyday sense; for instance,
studies of combustion and air pressure, whose interest arose from a burgeoning
scientific problematic rather than from intrinsic oddity. Nonetheless, I would insist that here,
too, there is no clear division between the astrologer and the ‘scientist’.
Just as there were ‘scientists’
whose work seems nowadays to be close to a magical mode of thought, so also
there were astrologers whose procedures seem to have been much closer to what is
often taken as a model of early scientific method. One can cite the example of John Goad, an
astrologer, who as late as 1686
26 published a volume in which he
attempted to provide an astrological explanation of the weather based on
correlations between weather conditions and planetary movements over the
previous 150 years or so. This was a generalizing theoretical
project of a Baconian flavour which seems to have little kinship with most
models of non-scientific thought.
If one turns to the extent to which the motives for
explanation were segregated in astrology and science in this period, the
situation again seems to be similar. Astrology certainly produced explanations
where it is difficult to separate the causal thread from the aesthetic, the
psychological, or the religious. As
a modern biographer has written of the sixteenth-century astrologer - and
mathematician - John Dee:
His science and his magic, his art and even his
antiquarianism, all form part of a universal vision of the world as a continuous
and harmonious unity. 27
But, to a certain extent, the same could have been
written of many of the leaders of the scientific revolution: Newton’s work, for
example, was very far from being simply the expression of a segregated
scientific role, but was, as Rattansi has argued,
28 intimately involved
with
25. Thomas, op. cit. note 10,
643.
26. J. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica
(
27. P. French, John Dee (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1972), 208.
28. P. M. Rattansi, ‘Some Evaluations of Reason in
Sixteen- and Seventeenth-[Century Natural
Philosophy’, in M. Teich and R. M. Young (eds.), Changing Perspectives in
the History of Science (London: Heinemann, 1973).]
HHC : [bracketed] displayed
on p. 410 of original.
409
religious and mystical concerns. The cases of
The only characteristic which does, to some extent,
appear to distinguish the two is the fundamental concern of astrology for
coincidence, accident, and so on. This Horton regards as the typical,
divinatory preoccupation of non-scientific thought. I am far from convinced, however, that
this is really the case here. Rather than being a symptom of some
underlying difference in the structure of astrological and scientific thought,
it seems to me that the difference is far better understood in terms of the
specific professional need of practising astrologers. Indeed, I want to argue that the sole
sustainable distinction between astrology and science in the period prior to the
l650s is one based on a professional definition of astrology: a definition which
includes some figures now viewed as scientists of that time, but which also
excludes others.
It is impossible to find an adequate body of evidence
for regarding astrology and science as conflicting intellectual systems. Up to the mid-seventeenth century, the
vast majority of men of science seem to have accepted the basic postulates of
astrology however strongly critical they may have been of its practitioners.
Many would probably have shared
Bacon’s view 29 that the
subject needed to be reformed, not abolished. This is an attitude not totally unlike
that of the Azande who are able to combine critical and, even contemptuous,
opinions of individual witch-doctors with a profound belief in the fundamental
truth of witchcraft and divination.
If one is to use a professional definition of astrology,
it is necessary to say a little about the professional astrologer and the
process by which he learned his skill. Unfortunately, little precise information
exists about the practice and training of what were almost certainly the most
numerous group of practitioners: the relatively unsuccessful figures, both in
town and country, who have left no documentary evidence in the form of published
almanacks and other works, but who
29. Quoted in Thomas, op. cit. note 10,
416.
410
probably employed astrological techniques for a variety
of purposes, including healing and divination. For many, astrology may have been only
one of several activities. These
consultants would have lacked first-hand acquaintance with classical sources
such as Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblios, but would have had some hazy knowledge of
the actual techniques for calculating a nativity. Some would have been likely to have read
a few of the numerous vernacular works on astrology published in increasing
numbers from the mid-sixteenth century. Some also certainly cheated their
clients, in the sense that they told them what they wanted to hear rather than
what could be justified in terms of astrological
techniques.
On the other hand, however, we occasionally find
practitioners of the highest intellectual standing who also made important
contributions to the development of modern science. John Dee is an example from
Evans was, apparently, an M.A. and in sacred orders, but
after dying as a result of excessive drinking, was found only to possess two
books; Halley’s De Judicis Astrorum and a volume of astronomical tables.
What is most striking about such an
example is the relative ease with
30. It is sometimes argued that Kepler and Galileo
carried out astrological operations ‘tongue-in-cheek’. Be that as it may, there is no necessary
contradiction between belief in fundamentals and scepticism towards the
practice. For a work that argues
that their involvement was genuine, see M. Graubard, Astrology and Alchemy,
Two Fossil Sciences (New York: Philosophical Library,
1953).
31. W. Lilly, A History of His Life and Times,
1602-1681 (
411
which a smattering of astrological technique could be
obtained from other self-styled practitioners, or even printed sources in the
vernacular. This contrasts sharply
with the long and arduous training that the novice in esoteric learning is
frequently subjected to in many cultures. The difference suggests that the success
of the professional astrologer depended in large measure upon his personal
skills in the consulting room and upon his journalistic abilities when compiling
almanacks, rather than on any great formal knowledge of astrological literature
or technique. If this is so, we
have a situation not unlike that of the medical practitioner of the day. Indeed it is interesting to note the
frequency of the links between astrology and medical practice. Several of the best-known astrologers
coveted the desire to practise medicine, and some did in fact obtain the licence
that enabled them to do so. This is
true of Forman, Ashmole and Lilly himself.
The parallels between the professional positions of
astrologers and physicians do not seem to have been entirely fortuitous. There certainly seem to have been
attempts by professional astrologers to provide themselves with some kind of
professional organization in the seventeenth century. This endeavour is hardly likely to have
been uninfluenced by the example of the power and success of the professional
medical bodies. There is evidence
that a Society of Astrologers was formed in
The Royal Society, as a body selfconsciously committed
to the advancement of learning, would have felt itself called upon, from time to
time, to produce justifications of its activities in terms of
the
32 See Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Catalogi
Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae, Part X, Catalogue of
Ashmolean Mss., entry: Astrologers, Society of
412
dominant religious and political world-views of its day.
However sincere these may have
been, they would nonetheless have served as forms of public relations necessary
for the maintenance of patronage - and even, possibly, of existence. In the case of astrology, also, such
practices would have been necessary, but they would have assumed an additional
importance that they did not hold for the Royal Society, simply because, for
professional astrologers, religious systems of interpretation were not only
aspects of a dominant ideology with which their practice had to be reconciled -
they were also frequently a source of direct opposition to astrology. As Kocher has pointed out, polemics
against astrology, prior to about 1650, were in almost every case religious.
33
Whereas the primary preoccupation of a majority of the
active members of the Royal Society seems to have been the explanation of
puzzling natural phenomena, that of the Society of Astrologers would appear to
have been the legitimization of their position: in this respect its activities
resemble, above all, those of an occupational interest
group.
What I am suggesting is that astrology was not simply a
cosmology but also a craft, whose practice gave rise to particular
professional interests. These two
aspects are intimately associated, but nevertheless some attempt has to be made
to analyse them separately if we are to arrive at an understanding of the
difference in evolution of astrology and science. The polemics that I have mentioned
earlier, for example, were almost entirely directed against the practice of this
craft, and not against its cosmological assumptions. It is therefore not surprising that most
of its opponents were clergymen (who could be seen as being in a situation of
potential professional conflict with astrological consultants) and not
‘scientists’ (who at this time had no institutionalized role or clear
professional interests).
Both the clergy and astrologers can be seen as providing
interpretations of day-to-day events in terms of wider systems of meaning. Although the two had co-existed over long
periods of time, there was a chronic source of religious opposition to astrology
in the fact that the latter potentially provided a wider field of explanation
than Christianity. The realization
of this threat can be seen in the virulence with which the Church reacted to
what it considered as the heresy of attempting to cast Christ’s nativity. Although science may also be seen as
providing an all-embracing system of explanation (something
which
33. See Kocher, op
cit., note 16, 224
413
certainly brought it at times into conflict with
religious cosmologies), its explanations were of a different type; they did not
provide a context of meaning for the interpretation of everyday events, as did
astrology, witchcraft and certain forms of religion.
It is this distinction between scientific knowledge and
astrological practice that also helps to throw light on attitudes towards
astrology within the Royal Society. There is clear evidence that several of
the early members of this body were supporters (or, even, practitioners) of
astrology. For instance, Lord
Brounker, the first President, is known to have set a nativity; Elias Ashmole,
another early member, was well known both as an advocate and as a practitioner
of astrology and various occult subjects; John Aubrey, the diarist, another
early member, was also favourable to it. In contrast, several other members
(including Thomas Sprat and John Wilkins) had condemned the subject in print.
Despite this, however, there are no
records of a controversy over astrology within the Society. Had astrology really been perceived as an
alternative system of explanation in conflict with modern science, as has often
been assumed, this would really seem quite unbelievable. Such a state of affairs is, however,
easily compatible with the view of astrology as a professional practice. Just as the Royal Society scrupulously
avoided topics that could stimulate political or religious differences, so also
it would have seemed natural not to have discussed astrology since it seemed to
be a craft practice that had little to say about most of the topics under
discussion to those who did not accept its conceptual
framework.
To conceive an activity as a craft is, perhaps, to lay
emphasis on three major elements. Firstly, it is to see it as a process
directed towards the achievement of more or less utilitarian ends, often of a
traditional nature. Secondly, it is
to draw attention to the fact that occupational demarcation may be a more
important factor than continuity of subject matter in the delineation of its
boundaries. Finally, it is to
stress the relatively unreflective nature of its method, a feature which can
result in the lack of clearly spelled-out theoretical links between a general
explanatory model and the problems of day-to-day practice. (To this extent, at least, it differs
from a science in Kuhn’s definition.)
In many cases such a craft may ultimately be supported
by a general theoretical model (whether magical, scientific or whatever) whose
fundamental role will be to legitimize the craft in general, and not to aid the
resolution of the detailed problems of everyday practice. A modern example of such a craft would
perhaps be the activity of cookery. A trained chef may well know much of the
basic science which helps to
414
explain, and legitimize, his skills in general terms.
Nonetheless, his everyday success
in avoiding lumpy sauces, fallen souffles or separated cream is a practical
skill which is usually both learned, and taught, primarily in terms of practical
experience and direct observation. Indeed, one has only to note the
diversity, even the contradictory, nature of some of the instructions given in
cookery books to realize that at least a proportion of the techniques proposed
are not susceptible to direct evaluation in terms of criteria of technical
efficiency.
Such a general model also, I believe, fits the practice
of seventeenth-century astrology fairly well. Firstly, it seems to have been largely
the case that the astrologers accepted the aims and the questions of their
clientele, rather than seeking to impose any esoteric problematic upon them.
Indeed, if one considers the
surviving evidence of the consultants, one can see that their clients presented
them with a bewildering variety of problems. Astrology seems to have provided a
context of meaning, interpretation and even security for the conduct of everyday
life, but was not concerned with any single material need.
34 Astrologers provided answers to people who wanted to
know whether they should get married or who wanted to know why their businesses
had failed. Wives of soldiers
enquired whether their husbands were dead, householders wanted to know if there
were buried treasure in their gardens, and serving maids frequently wanted to
know if they were pregnant. Charles
I even paid for astrological advice as to the best time to escape from
Secondly, it appears that what was accepted as an
astrological problem was, to some extent, a result of the interplay of a range
of political and social factors. There are indications, for instance, that
during the Interregnum the control over medical practice in London by the Royal
College of Physicians was not strictly enforced, and that it may have been
easier for astrologers such as Lilly (as well as unlicensed empiricists like
Sydenham!) to treat what are, from 1663 or so, redefined as professional
medical matters. 35
Thirdly, it seems to be the case that the conduct of
astrological practice failed to reflect back upon, and modify, the explanatory
model which astrologers used. I
believe that an important reason for this was the difficulty of deciding exactly
what would constitute ‘unsatisfactory’ astrological explanation. I do not mean to suggest that
astro-
34. See Thomas, op. cit. note 10, Chapter
10.
35. See K.
Dewhurst, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, 1624-89 (London: Wellcome Medical Library,
1966).
415
logers did not occasionally make predictions that were
unambiguously seen to be wrong: they did. I merely want to emphasize that this of
itself does not seem to have undermined their credibility with their clients.
This need hardly surprise us, since
there was never any shortage of ad hoc technical reasons available to
explain any particular predictive failure. Similarly today, public credence is not
necessarily impaired by the repeated predictive shortcomings of modern sciences
(such as medicine or meteorology) or even the less common errors of more exact
disciplines like astronomy (e.g. the over-estimation of the visibility of the
comet Kohoutek in 1973-4).
All of this strongly suggests that it is wrong to
consider predictive failure independently of its cultural context. Not only does the perception of failure
depend upon the disposition of a given audience to accept the underlying
plausibility of an explanatory system but it also requires the availability of
certain forms of knowledge and technique. For example, to give a precise evaluation
of those aspects of astrological practice which we would today regard as
‘medical treatment’ or ‘careers advice’ would involve the development and
application of such modern techniques as double-blind tests and the statistical
analysis of their results. It would
therefore be anachronistic to try to explain their decline by the availability
of ‘better’, more scientific beliefs. Even if late seventeenth-century medicine
were more effective than astrology, I would doubt whether the clientele
of the period had rational evaluating techniques for discriminating between the
two practices. What is more, the
documentary evidence of both consultations and almanacks suggests that, although
some of the questions to which astrologers addressed themselves were ones to
which scientific techniques were later to give precise answers, many were not
and could never be. In consequence,
it seems difficult to see how the functions of astrology could have been assumed
by any new science or technique.
As a result of the social functions of astrology its
relations with developments in scientific knowledge were different from those of
crafts such as building or metal-working. Because these latter skills were
concerned with problems whose solutions were capable, in large measure, of
objective evaluations, they were also influenced by scientific change in
neighbouring fields. Because
astrology seems to have operated primarily as an interpretative system, it seems
to have been relatively immune from the impact of science except in so far as
the latter provided a basis for the interpretation of everyday
life.
In general, then, it would seem that, given the nature
of the demands made on astrologers, very little of the advice that they gave
could be
416
assessed other than in terms of subjective satisfaction.
If this is true, it would imply
that the perception by a client of an astrological explanation as
‘unsatisfactory’ would be more likely to elicit from the astrologer a
generalized defence of the plausibility of the whole system, rather than
to provoke a critical re-evaluation of the relationship between the advice
and the supposedly underlying astrological theory. I would suspect that astrologers
largely saw their declining influence in terms of the poor ‘brand image’ of
their subject, rather than in any intrinsic weaknesses in their practice that
might cause them to return to their general theoretical framework in the hope of
refining or re-formulating it. If
this is how astrologers reacted (and the evidence of their frequent complaints
about the falling status of astrology suggest it was), it could be argued that
they had a fundamentally correct, if unconscious, appreciation of their own
role.
But if astrology functioned mainly as an interpretative
system, the problem still remains as to why it lost this function among the
educated elite. This does not
appear to be a question that can be answered in terms of the technical
difficulties of astrological practice. Instead, one must squarely confront the
difficulty of explaining why, in the last half of the seventeenth century, the
problems that had hitherto been presented to astrologers were apparently losing
their poignancy, and the advice, its powers of
persuasiveness.
It is debatable to what extent such a general question,
which touches on a whole series of issues relating to the perception of the
‘meaningfulness of life’, can ever be answered entirely satisfactorily. Nonetheless, I believe that several
points for consideration can be indicated.
Firstly, this transformation of outlook in relation to
astrology is not an isolated development, but can be linked to a whole series of
intellectual changes which are roughly contemporaneous. Michel Foucault has suggested that the
period is one of transition between two kinds of discourse about the world and
man’s relationship to it, and that this transition manifests itself in fields as
apparently diverse as painting, medicine, grammar and the study of man. The shift is one from a discourse framed
in terms of notions such as ‘harmony’ and ‘meaningfulness’, where causation is
seen as inextricably linked to resemblance, to a situation dominated by
notions of abstract classification.36
A similar transition in relation to changes in man’s
attitude to life has also been charted by the geneticist François Jacob. 37
36. M. Foucault, The Order of Things (London:
Tavistock, 1970), 43.
37. F. Jacob, La Logique du vivant (Paris:
Gallimard, 1970).
417
Secondly, I believe it is also possible to sketch, very
tentatively, the ways in which explanatory systems, whether crafts or not, might
be classified, as a first step towards identifying some of the ways in which
they could interact - and so support, or undermine, each other’s credibility as
systems of interpretation or explanation. For example, within the crafts
themselves, there are variations in the extent to which purely symbolic or
interpretative elements seem to be important. Even in modern
On the first level one could, perhaps, place crafts such
as navigation, ship-building and metalwork in this period since criteria of
evaluation were available, at least potentially, in terms of the
profitability of the application of a given technique. If one goes further and accepts the
type of analysis of the development of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries that writers such as Christopher Hill have proposed,
38 one can
also suggest that there was an intimate reciprocal connection between such
crafts and the development of science - a connection frequently reflected in the
emphasis placed by many of the Royal Society’s early members upon efficacy as a
proof of truth. 39
On the second level one could, perhaps, place a system
of explanation such as medicine - an activity which has tended, over the
centuries, to move up and down somewhere around the mid-point of the continuum,
as a result of changes in the balance between interpretative and technical
factors within medicine itself. One
could describe as interpretative all those culturally derived elements such as
notions of ‘illness’, ‘normality’, ‘unbearable pain’, etc., which can be
contrasted with such technical and more objective indices of body-functioning as
white corpuscle counts, recordings of brain waves, X-ray photography, and so on.
At certain times (such as the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) the weight of purely technical factors has
probably been very slight. In such
periods, there is little evidence that the activities of medical men did much to
improve their patients’ health and may, in
38 C. Hill, The Intellectual Origins of the English
Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1965).
39. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for drawing my
attention to this.
418
fact, frequently have worsened it. If this is a fair assessment of medical
practice in the period under discussion,
40 it provides a fascinating contrast with that of
astrology. It is not implausible to
argue that both activities were manifestly incapable of providing verifiable
results: yet astrology declines, while medicine survives for many years before
it can be said to have made any measurable success in treating illness.
41
However, perhaps the strength of medicine from the
seventeenth century onwards was that at least parts of it were perceived as
harmonizing increasingly with aspects of the ideology of powerful sections of
the elite. 42 Its most advanced elements may often have been seen, for
instance, as coinciding with a Baconian notion of the domination of nature
rather than of acquiescence to it. Some medical practitioners seem also to
have stressed a genetic causal approach to illness more in accord with certain
religious and commercial notions of the organization of life, and even the
conception of ‘vocation’ to which Weber accords so much importance.
43 In general, it may be suggested that late
seventeenth-century medical practice in
40. It might be queried whether certain changes in
seventeenth-century science and medical practice (physiological discoveries or
the empiricism of Sydenham, for
instance) were not in fact rendering medical practice more efficient.
This raises many tendentious
issues, not least that of whether seventeenth-century observers could have had
any satisfactory techniques for evaluating its success. My own hunch is that medical practice in
41. The inherent difficulty of evaluating the material
success of medical practice is further emphasized by the fact that Ivan Illich
(in Medical Nemesis [
42. The question of the nature of the development of
medical knowledge and practice in late seventeenth-century
43. M. Weber, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner &
Sons, 1958).
44. See M. Weber,
The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).
419
contributed towards the ideological preparations of the
English Revolution. 45
Astrology, however, after about 1650, seems to have provided
forms of interpretation which certainly had no directly measurable consequences
in the economic field, nor provided symbolic re-interpretations of experience in
terms which were attractive to the elite of the period. As a form of explanation in this context,
and at this time, it can, perhaps, be classified as occupying a third level in
my suggested schema: an interpretative system of no material utility which was
also losing its ideological appeal among dominant groups because of its failure
even to produce a form of interpretation in the idiom of the materially
effective techniques of the period. In consequence, it was probably also
losing its professional practice among the educated.
This suggested schema is only proposed as a possible way
of ordering the relationships between material explanations and interpretative
explanations in this period. There
are many other basic tasks that have to be carried out if a satisfactory account
of changes in attitude towards the meaningfulness of explanations are to be
investigated fruitfully. An
analysis of the relationships between the social factors and the changing
boundaries dividing different systems of meaning and levels of theoretical
knowledge still remains to be done - although, in their different ways, both
Mary Douglas and Berger and Luckmann have begun to provide a basis for such
research. 46
Nonetheless, the suggestion that the needs that
astrology had fulfilled were ceasing to be perceived as ‘needs’ by some sections
of the population does provide a clue both to the decline of what one might call
‘the underlying cosmology of astrology’, and of the way in which it passed away.
In my view, one of the great
contributions of both Evans-Pritchard and Kuhn has been to emphasize that, in
their own particular fields, a system of knowledge has to be understood in
relation to the social practice which accompanies it and supports it. Azande witchcraft beliefs without
witchdoctors, or Science without scientists pursuing the puzzles of normal
science, are both meaningless hypothetical notions.
Systems of meaning have to be reinforced in particular
social prac-
45. Hill, op.
cit. note 38, Chapter II.
46 M.
420
tice for them to persist. In a period where astrological practice
was becoming less relevant to the educated, so the astrological cosmology in
turn became more distant. This
seems to correspond exactly with the way in which the debate over astrology
actually evolved. As the second
half of the seventeenth century proceeded, so polemics against the subject
became fewer; the impression is, overwhelmingly, not of death when under attack
but of a gradual fading-away.
The fate of astrology, then, seems largely to confirm
the views of those writers who have argued that such systems are impregnable to
refutation by contrary instances. The reason for this, however, seems not
to reside in the vagueness of astrological theory or in the powers of secondary
elaboration, but rather in the power of astrologers and their audience to
tolerate anomalies in the period of the subject’s greatest popularity. In this respect, at least, it does not
seem to differ greatly from modern science.
47 The decline of astrology does not appear
to come about at a time of mounting anomaly: certainly there is no increase in
polemics against it. The period
seems rather to be one of lack of interest in the subject.
In conclusion, my suggestion is that some attention
should be given, when looking for an explanation of the demise of such symbolic
systems as astrology, to a consideration of the way in which changing material,
and economic needs, mediated through a variety of social factors, may be
connected with movements in the boundary between what is ‘taken for granted’ and
what is considered ‘problematic’ by a particular group in a particular
society.
I would suspect that a consideration of such issues
could help in turn towards clarifying the basis for a sociological distinction
between sciences and other systems of knowledge. After all, what seems frequently to be
given little attention in sociological accounts of the comparability of
scientific and other modes of thought is the vulgar, naïve, yet possibly sound,
assumption that science ‘works’ in some way that magic and astrology do
not. Although partially eroded of
late, it is
47. As examples of the toleration of anomaly in the
history of the sciences one might cite (among many): (a) The acceptance through
much of the nineteenth century of Dulong and Petit’s law on the relationships
between atomic weights and the heat capacities of solid elements, a law which
was known to have several exceptions, only to be explained much later by Quantum
Mechanics; (b) The problem of explaining Brownian movement prior to Einstein’s
explanation in 1905; (c) The continued use of Bode’s law on the positions of the
planets, even though it is always qualified by the remark that the position of
Neptune is an exception to it and that of Pluto only a rough
approximation.
421
still likely to be a dominant belief in most Western
societies. A minimum requirement of
any sociological account of the relationship of different systems of knowledge
would seem to me to be the analysis of their perceived
effectiveness.
422
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