Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling down the Moon
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1859736874
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Mainstream science has long dismissed astrology as a form of primitive superstition, despite or perhaps even because of its huge popular interest. From daily horoscopes to in-depth and personalized star forecasts, astrology, for many, plays a crucial role in the organization of everyday life. Present-day scholars and scientists remain baffled as to why this pseudo-science exercises such control over supposedly modern, rational and enlightened individuals, yet so far they have failed to produce any meaningful analysis of why it impacts on so many lives and what lies behind its popular appeal. Moving beyond scientific scepticism, Astrology, Science and Culture finally fills the gap by probing deeply into the meaning and importance of this extraordinary belief system. From the dawn of pre-history, humankind has had an intimate connection with the stars. With its roots in the Neolithic culture of Europe and the Middle East, astrology was traditionally heralded as a divinatory language. Willis and Curry argue that, contrary to contemporary understanding including that of most astrologers astrology was originally, and remains, a divinatory practice. Tackling its rich and controversial history, its problematic relationship to Jungian theory, and attempts to prove its grounding in objective reality, this book not only persuasively demonstrates that astrology is far more than a superstitious relic of years gone by, but that it enables a fundamental critique of the scientism of its opponents. Groundbreaking in its reconciliation of astrologys ancient traditions and its modern day usage, this book impressively unites philosophy, science, anthropology, and history, to produce a powerful exploration of astrology, past and present.
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Against any possibility of collapse into monolithic solipsism. However, it also means we must perforce abandon for ever all ambition to theoretical closure, the dream – or nightmare – of a final, all-embracing theory of everything, the breathtakingly arrogant project so dear to materialist and reductionist science. Being ourselves part of a Nature in a permanent flux of becoming entails that we are always in a state of being adventurously, and dangerously, open and vulnerable in a universe we are.
Appear to be implicitly concerned with the conditions of fruitful human dialogue, which requires distance, difference, and asymmetry between the parties in dialogue, together with the fact of necessary relationship. ‘So it is not surprising’, Lévi-Strauss comments, ‘that myths dealing with the impossible arbitration between the near and the far, should frequently take as their theme the shortness of human life, which was instituted by the demiurges at the same time as the reasonable distance.
Cunning’ (Raphals 1992: 5). Metis was the daughter of the Titan Oceanus – animistic god of the great ‘river’ encircling the Earth – and the Titaness Tethys, themselves children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). Zeus swallowed Metis, his first wife, while she was pregnant with Athena, who was then born from Zeus’ head. She continued to advise Zeus from within. Athena, the goddess of strategy, was the patron of Odysseus: the best-known ‘Western’ exemplar, together with Penelope – although the.
Limited purposive consciousness to what Bateson (1972: 434) called ‘the whole systemic structure’, the ‘recognition of and guidance by a knowledge of [which]’ is, he suggested, wisdom. And that coheres with what Morrison and others have noticed about divination historically and anthropologically: its central concern is not knowledge (factual, let alone scientific) but wisdom (ethical, spiritual and pragmatic). It remains only to add that not only any moment chosen for a divinatory purpose but the.
Limited purposive consciousness to what Bateson (1972: 434) called ‘the whole systemic structure’, the ‘recognition of and guidance by a knowledge of [which]’ is, he suggested, wisdom. And that coheres with what Morrison and others have noticed about divination historically and anthropologically: its central concern is not knowledge (factual, let alone scientific) but wisdom (ethical, spiritual and pragmatic). It remains only to add that not only any moment chosen for a divinatory purpose but the.