[Music] there are two ways to view the stars as they really are and as we might wish them to be these are the pleades a group of young Stars astronomers recognize as leaving their Stellar nurseries of gas and dust and this is the Crab Nebula a stellar graveyard where gas and dust are being dispersed back into the interstellar medium inside it is a dying pulser both the pleades and the Crab Nebula are in a constellation that astrologers long ago named Taurus the Bull they imagined it to influence our daily lives [Music] astronomers say that the
planet Saturn is an immense globe of hydrogen and helium encircled by a ring of snowballs 50,000 km wide and that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a giant storm raging for perhaps a million years but the astrologers see the planets as affecting human character and fate Jupiter represents a Regal bearing and a gentle disposition and Saturn the gravedigger Fosters they say mistrust suspicion and evil to the astronomers Mars is a place as real as the earth a world awaiting [Music] exploration but the astrologers see Mars as a warrior the instigator of quarrels violence and destruction [Music]
astronomy and astrology were not always so distinct for most of human history the one encompassed the other but there came a time when astronomy escaped from the confines of astrology the two Traditions began to diverge in the life and mind of Johannes Kepler it was he who demystified the heavens by discovering that a physical Force lay behind the Motions of the planets he was the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer the intellectual foundations of astrology were Swept Away 300 years ago and yet astrology is still taken seriously by a great many people have you
ever noticed how easy it is to find a magazine on astrology virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology almost none of them have even a weekly column on astronomy people wear astrological pendants check their horoscopes before leaving the house even our language preserves an astrological Consciousness for example take the word disaster it comes from the Greek for bad star the Italians once believed that disease was caused by the influence of the Stars it's the origin of our word influenza the zodiacal signs used by astrologers even ornament this statue of Prometheus in
New York City Prometheus who stole fire from the gods when the moon is in the house and J align with a Mars what is all this astrology business fundamentally it's the contention that which constellations the planets are in at the moment of your birth profoundly influences your future a few thousand years ago the idea developed that the Motions of the planets determin the fates of Kings dynasties Empires astrologers studied the Motions of the planets and asked themselves what had happened last time that say Venus was rising in the constellation of the goat maybe something similar
would happen this time as well it was a subtle and Risky Business astrologers became employed only by the state in many countries it became a capital offense for anyone but the official astrologer to read the portents in the skies why because a good way to overthrow a regime was to predict its downfall Chinese Court astrologers who made inaccurate predictions were executed others simply doctored the records so that afterwards they were in perfect Conformity with events astrology developed into a strange discipline a mixture of careful observations mathematics and recordkeeping with fuzzy thinking and Pious fraud nevertheless
astrology survived and flourished why because it seems to lend a cosmic significance to the routine of our daily lives it pretends to satisfy our longing to feel personally connected with the universe astrology suggests a dangerous fatalism if our lives are controlled by a set of traffic signals in the sky why try to change anything here look at this here's two different newspapers published in the same city on the same day let's uh let's see what they do about astrology suppose you were a Libra that is born between September 23rd and October 22nd according to the
astrologer for the New York Post uh compromise will help ease tension well maybe it's sort of vague according to the New York daily news's astrologer demand more of yourself well also vague but also pretty different it's interesting that these predictions are not predictions they tell you what to do they don't say what's going to happen they're consciously designed to be so vague that it could apply to anybody and they disagree with each other astrology can be tested by the lives of twins there are many real cases like this one twin is killed in childhood in
say a riding accident or is struck by lightning but the other lives to a prosperous old age suppose that happened to me my twin and I would be born in precisely the same place and within minutes of each other exactly the same planets would be rising at our births if astrology were valid how could we have such profoundly different Fates it turns out that astrologers can't even agree among themselves what a given horoscope means in careful tests they're unable to predict the character and future of people they know nothing else about except the time and
place of birth also how could it possibly work how could the rising of Mars at the moment of my birth affect me then or now I was born in a closed room light from Mars couldn't get in the only influence of Mars which could affect me was its gravity but the gravitational influence of the obstetrician was much larger than the gravitational influence of Mars Mars is a lot more massive but the obstetrician was a lot closer the desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality for we are connected not in the trivial
ways that the pseudo science of astrology promises but in the deepest ways our little planet is under the influence of a star the sun warms us it drives the weather it sustains all living things 4 billion years ago it brought forth life on Earth but our son is only one of a billion trillion Stars within the observable universe and those countless Suns all obey natural laws some of which are already known to us
