Customer Reviews

Making Sense of Astrology

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Sceptical" treatises of controversial subject areas all too often suffer from lack of credibility, because they do not take the criticized subject seriously. Instead of making an honest attempt to understand the subject thorougly (which, in the case of astrology, involves hard work), they resort to purely rhetorical arguments, ridicule, logical trickery, misrepresentation of the subject, "debunkery by association", sometimes even make up scientific evidence to the contrary and invent whole studies that were never performed.

This scholarly work does not need any of this. Keeping the "sceptical" belligerence to a minimum, the authors make rational, intelligent arguments that are accessible to any interested layperson who is willing to invest a little time and effort of thought. A truly educational work, and worthy of five stars.

The title may be a bit misleading. The authors are skeptics, but try to take astrology seriously. They explain the house system and aspects etc carefully. The discussion of the problems involved in defining the houses in the artics is excellent! If you've always wondered how astrologers "know" which properties are ascribed to the different sign and planets or what the houses really means, then this is the book for you!
On the negative side, I think that sometimes they get a bit "agressive" towards astrologers. I think that the best way to make fun of astrologers is to take them seriously. Once you understand the arctic house problem, you will probably not have much faith in astrology. So there's no need to get agressiv. I also think that they could have given a bit more detail in explaining the astronomical and geometical problems. Unless you have some understanding of astronomy, you're not going to be able to understand everything. But the basic issues are explained well, and you can just skip the harder session.

PS. One of my students has written a mathematical supplement to this book. It's available on my home page. (Amazon won't let me give you the URL in the review, but just do a quick searh on the web.)