What is the science behind astrology?

First of all, let's be clear - I'm no troll, nor am I an idiot. Don't talk down to me like one. I'm also not joking, but I'm not burning with desire to know the answer - I'm purely curious. And if you don't give me a legitimate or serious response, then it doesn't serve any purpose other than to further my skepticism.

That being said, what is the real science behind astrology? What studies have been performed? On what metric is astrology measured? How is it that the time and place of someone's birth can affect their personality or behavior or anything of the like?

In other words, how am I supposed to take astrology as anything other than pure mysticism and fantasy? Just blind belief, like a religion? I'm genuinely curious.

A simple google search takes me to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_effect - which states, "Gauquelin's work was accepted by the notable psychologist and statistician Hans Eysenck among others[3] but later attempts to validate the data and replicate the effect have produced uneven results, chiefly owing to disagreements over the selection and analysis of the data set. Since the phenomenon in question depends upon the daily rotation of the Earth, the availability and accuracy of time and place of birth data is crucial to such studies, as is the criterion of "eminence". Later research claims to explain the Mars effect by selection bias, favouring champions who were born in a key sector of Mars and rejecting those who were not from the sample.[4][5]"

In other words, the Mars Effect and the research by Michel Gauquelin seems to be flawed. What else you got for me? I'll take evidence in favor of Gauquelin's theory or some other set of evidence, that's fine.

(Before you discredit wikipedia, just shove it up your ass, it's a fine source lol).

"Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you're like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Less often, SAD causes depression in the spring or early summer." from http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder/basics/definition/con-20021047

So SAD seems to be a psychological effect that relates to an elevation/depression of mood through seasons, which is interesting. But I wonder what astrology has to say about it? And I was thinking more of time related to things like certain zodiac signs, moons, and venus placements and all that stuff. I'm not -super- familiar with the lingo or the intricacies to be honest, I'm just curious (like I said).

As for the location/Babylonian astrology stuff, all I can seem to find are things related to Babylonian gods, which, no offense, don't really interest me or hold much water with "logic" if you ask me. But hey, no worries, I get that you're not up to fleshing this stuff out. Like I said, I'm more curious than I am burning with desire for answers. Thanks for a response, though!

And yeah, I suppose empirical evidence for this type of stuff is lacking. What are those three, if I may ask?

Okay, wow, that's gonna be a lot to read. Give me time for that. But I can totally see a climate-related relationship between foods and other sources going into a woman's body during pregnancy and then affecting development, etc. But do you think that holds just as true in the modern era? With modified food? With better ways to mass-transport food and vitamins and things of that nature? With travel being much easier and people having access to more and more things, with less dependency of their geographical location and the season? Just a thought. Let me see what some of these articles have to say about it, though.

Before you figure out the science behind astrology, you first need to find the science behind science. Why do certain things work the way they do? Did they just randomly appear that way, or was it magically created? Who knows. For me there was never really a science behind astrology, or anything really. The second you think you've figured out something scientifically, something else is found to defy it. Maybe something even becomes more advanced and better then it, still it's rendering it useless to the new age. Regaurdless it's the same as astrology imo, and scientists will strongly disagree with an astrologer on that, and always have. You could look at astrology as mental control from the world powers or the occult, humans writing down personality traits because of the placements of the planets for so long that it started to have actual yet small fact, to simply meaningless bs. I find it fun, and could care less of the scientific value of it.

1. Draw Chart

2. e=mc^2 (+/- std dev. quantum variation)

3. ??

4. profit

I am a bawievaer

Fear.

Posted by littlegigabyte
Also just want to point out that many of the sources for those articles were again, studies which resulted in correlations, mostly conducted by sociology and psychology departments, which are considered "soft sciences"

If you consider sociology and psychology as a legitimate branch of "science", then I digress, as I won't be able to offer any other insight.

I was just about to point out those two "sciences" being similar to how astrology gets its tidbits.

It's all fun and games, astrology, but there's no actual science behind it. Maybe a tiny bit of math and the like, but that's about it...