Whether astrology is a science or a superstition cannot be simply generalized and should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. This starts with the question of the relationship between heaven and man.
In the past, there was a view that anyone who talked about the induction of heaven and man, that is, that there was a certain correspondence between heaven and man, was theology or superstition, but now it seems that the problem is not so simple. Is there a certain relationship or connection between heaven and man? If so, what is the relationship? How should this relationship be viewed? The so-called problem of the relationship between heaven and man should at least include the above content.
According to the materialist point of view, the heavens are the objective world, that is, the natural world, the cosmic space and various celestial bodies, and man is a kind of advanced creature that lives and operates in this external world. The relationship between heaven and man is essentially the relationship between nature or the universe and man. Man exists and operates in this natural world or universe (from the perspective of the large universe, the earth in which man lives is a celestial body of the universe, and man lives on the earth and lives in the universe. The so-called natural world, which is also the natural world in the broad sense, that is, the whole cosmic space, the ecological environment on the earth, is only a part of this generalized nature), and it is inevitable that there will be some kind of objective relationship with it that is not subject to human will, and will be affected by this relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to affirm that the relationship between heaven and man is an objective relationship, and thus determine man's attitude toward the relationship between heaven and man: recognize its objectivity, strive to understand its laws, and act according to its laws.
But religious theology has a different understanding of the relationship between heaven and man, they believe that the representative of heaven is a supernatural God such as God, and the relationship between heaven and man is the relationship between God and man. In their view, heaven is not purely objective, but has personality and will, and it controls and restricts man and his existential activities in the dark. Therefore man should obey the orders of heaven and God, and strive to explore the will of god through the heavens and judge the auspiciousness of human affairs.
Therefore, the same is to talk about the relationship between heaven and man, and form two completely different kinds of cognition, understanding and attitude. Among them, the materialist view should be said to be in line with reality, and the idealistic view has the nature of subjective imagination and fatalism.
The understanding and application of astrology to the relationship between heaven and man is in line with the idealistic view. Therefore, it cannot be concluded that it is superstitious simply because it talks about the relationship between heaven and man, but it should be pointed out that the idealistic nature of the relationship between heaven and man it speaks of can we judge that it is superstitious.
Comparing the actual content of astrology with the modern scientific study of the relationship between heaven and man, it can also be seen that the astronomical view of astrology is far from science.
Astrology's astrology pays special attention to the theory of heavenly condemnation, that is, the heavens descend disasters as a sign of condemnation and punishment because of the personal virtues or bad political conditions of the emperors on earth, and the emperors on earth see this disaster to cultivate morality or improve politics, so that the heavens can cancel the punishment of disasters and restore peace to the world.
Astrology thinks that the operation and position of the stars in the sky and the gods will directly determine the fate of all aspects of a person's future life, not to mention that the gods are out of fiction and are not real things, just take the innate determinant role of the stars on the fate of the individual, which also fully reflects the irrationality of the relationship between heaven and man in its subconscious: even if the stars can have a certain effect on the entire human race, it is difficult to confirm that it can directly affect a specific person in the vast sea of people, and to determine the future fate of this person in advance. For it is difficult to understand that this also takes into account the other people and things that the person will encounter in the future life, and the influence of these people and things on the fate of the person.
Today's science, with people's liberation from the shackles of thought in the past, has also begun to pay attention to the problem of the relationship between heaven and man. In 1989, the China Science and Technology Publishing House published a book entitled "Comprehensive Research on Heaven and Earth Life", which included the special papers of the Second National Conference on Heaven and Earth Life (i.e., Celestial Bodies and Earth Life) jointly sponsored by 11 scientific academic groups such as the Geological Society of China, the Astronomical Society of China, and the Chinese Space Science Society. This is valuable information for understanding the latest scientific research results of China's scientific community on the relationship between heaven and man.
According to this book, scientists' research and understanding of the relationship between heaven and man has only reached the following levels:
As a celestial body between the word and the earth, it is in a certain relationship with other celestial bodies, and under the influence of this interrelationship between celestial bodies, the geology, earthquakes, ecological environment, oceans, meteorological natural disasters, etc. of the earth will undergo certain changes, such as the arrival and disappearance of the ice age, and the extinction and evolution of the earth's organisms caused by it. Due to changes in the earth itself, the impact on humans, such as epidemics, etc.
At the same time, the ancient Chinese concept of heaven and man induction and organic theory of nature are re-explored, and the reasonable points are excavated from the objective relationship between nature.
It is also proposed that the Heaven and Earth Man is a giant system, that is, a supernatural social complex. Among them, the research on celestial bodies and the earth, celestial bodies and human beings, and the earth and human beings has entered the study of concreteness, but it has not yet reached a complete understanding of regularity.
The study of the ancient conception of heaven and man and the organic view of nature is still in the preliminary re-evaluation stage, let alone reached the stage of comprehensive and thorough analysis and collation.
The study of the Heaven and Earth Human Giant System is only a study of some inferences or conjectures, and the progress of the first two aspects of research has yet to be made.
According to this kind of research on the relationship between heaven and man in the current scientific community, it can be known that:
The relationship and influence of heaven on man can only be formed through the intermediary environment of the earth for the whole of human beings or for people in a certain region. In the giant system of heaven and earth, the so-called human beings refer to human beings, not to specific individuals.
According to the scientific point of view, the influence of heaven (including earth) on man is nonsense if it only works on one person and does not involve others. Heaven (or stars) does not have this focused, fixed-point function unless it is a willful God.
From the point of view of the integrated system of heaven and earth, the so-called life refers to the earth's living beings, including human beings, and it is even more unlikely to be just an individual.
According to this scientific study and understanding of the relationship between heaven and man, and then compared with the astrological view of the relationship between heaven and man, it can be understood that it is not in line with scientific understanding and is an idealistic thought.
From the perspective of the inherent defects of astrology and its inherent contradictions, the following analyzes that it does not have the function of revealing the relationship between heaven and man in order to confirm its unscientific nature.
One of the criteria of science is accuracy, that is, to require that human cognition conform as much as possible to the original situation of objective things. Astrology, on the other hand, is very lacking in accuracy.
The so-called accuracy includes not only the degree of conformity between the prediction and the result, but more importantly, the accuracy of the observation, understanding and extrapolation of the stars before the prediction, that is, the accuracy of people's understanding of the true situation of the stars.
We know that before the advent of modern astronomy, the observation of astrology in ancient China was all based on eyesight, which led to errors in the understanding of astrology and the actual state of the stars.
For example, with regard to the color and shape of the stars, what the eye sees is very different from what the telescope sees. Due to the limited eyesight, the color and shape of the stars that people see are quite different from the actual conditions of the stars.
In addition, in order to conform to the theory of the five elements, the astrology is hard to divide the stars into white, black, blue, red, and yellow, and it is even more inevitable to mix human factors.
Regarding the shape of the stars, it is also named horned and moody in an anthropomorphic way, which is also far from the actual astrological phenomenon.
In addition, since the knowledge of the stars only stays at the level of the apparent position of the stars (that is, the position of the stars seen by the eye on the celestial canopy) only by visual inspection, and does not recognize the true position of the stars (that is, the true position of the stars in the universe), this visual position facilitates great errors in the true position.
This problem can be illustrated by taking the true and apparent positions of the outer planets (Mars, Jupiter, saturn) among the five planets as an example. This is shown in the following figure.
The difference between the true position of the planet and the real orbit of motion and the orbit of the apparent position and vision is clearly shown in the figure.
Planetary motion has no retrograde and stop phenomenon, but in vision there are retrograde (from 3 to 5) and stay (3 and 5). And because the position of the Earth's rotation moves, it also causes the difference between the apparent position of the planet and the true position.
In astrology, it is not at all necessary to investigate the error between the apparent position and the true position, and it is directly used to predict personnel with the visual position as the true position, which is not in line with science, and therefore cannot really reveal the relationship between heaven and man.
Due to the lack of error between true motion and apparent motion, coupled with the rough calculation method, there is also a large error in astrology's estimation of the speed and degree of the stars.
Still the motion of the outer planets as an example. In the real planetary orbit, the distance and speed of each segment from 1 to 8 are basically uniform and equidistant, while in the orbit of apparent motion, the speed and distance of each segment from 1 to 8 are uneven or equidistant, which is an error with the data of true motion.
Not only is there an error between the position in the apparent motion and the position in the true motion, but even the velocity and position in the apparent motion itself are also errors in observation and estimation.
For example, some people have checked the "Book of the Seven Politics and Forty Thousand Years" and "Seven Political Calendars" used by the astrologers, and found that the apparent position of the planets recorded therein has an error of 1 to 5 degrees (see (Anthology of the History of Science and Technology (10), page 58, Shanghai Science and Technology Publishing House).
The above situation shows that the accuracy of astrology's observation and understanding of astrology is greatly reduced, so it is difficult to say that its prediction of personnel is scientific, and its understanding of the relationship between heaven and man has fundamentally lost its guarantee.
Another inherent flaw in astrology is that the theories and principles on which it is based have not been verified by theoretical arguments and practice. For example, astrology takes the sun as the yang, corresponds to the emperor of the world, takes the moon as the yin, corresponds to the minister or concubine of the world, and uses the five stars as the essence of the five elements to illustrate the relationship between the restrictions and changes of people and things on the earth, etc., which is a priori comparison.
In astrology, the constraints of the Eleventh Dawn on the fate of man, the setting of many gods and their jurisdiction over the fate of man, and the mutual constraint between the stars and gods are all unproven a priori conditions. Astrology begins with these a priori theoretical principles and methods as prerequisites for the development of its prediction process. Among these prerequisites, because they are not rigorous and systematic arguments, they appear to be very complicated and messy, even contradictory, and cannot be coordinated and unified. This determines the inevitable internal contradictions of astrology and the arbitrariness of astrologers in the use of this technique.
There are many contradictions in astrology. Taking astrology as an example, you can easily open the book of astrology to find many contradictions.
For example, the interpretation of the five-star astrological astrology is very different, Wu Xian said that if the ying confused and filled in the stars, the soldiers would rise up, Sima Biao's "Astronomical Chronicle" said that it would be unfavorable to adults, "Spring and Autumn Latitude" said that there would be early, and "Jingzhou Zhan" said that the general would do chaos. So complicated, just for the astrologer to use to cleverly embellish his predictions, the same kind of astrological anomalies he can explain in this way, can also be explained in that way, no matter what can be said a little, as long as there is a little right, even if he is enlightened.
It is this diversity of interpretations that provides great convenience for astrologers to use them at will. When we look at the Book of Han and the Five Elements, Dong Zhongshu, Liu Xin, and Liu Xiang often insist on the same eclipse, with different statements and all having a basis. This is a good example of astrology's self-contradiction.
There are more contradictions in astrology. Taking the three pins of life pushed by Zheng Xicheng as an example, the person Mars was in the Palace of The Lady, according to the "Cardinal Song":
The two daughters of the fire house (the two female palaces are the officials) are known as heavenly punishments, and they are the most restless when they walk with the water, and if they change the sentence and imprison thousands of miles away, they will be bitter for a lifetime.
It is said that the fire belongs to the palace for a bitter fate. According to the "Lang Jie Sutra", "The illusion comes to the Fude Official, and the night birth temple is prosperous." "Then blessed is the Lord, is it not a contradiction?
In addition, Jupiter is in the Wei Palace, saturn is in the Shu Palace, and the inference of the "Cardinal Song" is: "Mu entered the Qin Prefecture (the wei palace is the division of Qin) And enjoyed more happiness and peace in his life, and he was blessed with a high life and a lot of honors, and decided to enter the dprk as a prominent official." "The doi position is Tianguan, and the first generation of you can swim freely." Only afraid of Mercury meeting, life is not free from hardship. "It's also a contradiction. Mu Zaiwei is a high-ranking official, and Tu Zai meets Mercury for life (this person happens to be in the same palace as Shui Tu). But the Book of Nie Si says:
If Saturn is the same as Mercury, the world is lonely and courageous,
Bingjie waved the Gowen armed equipment, and the Blessings of the Hundred and Sixteen Celebrations were endless.
The Earth and Water Association is blessed, and it is both a literary and martial arts, which is not only a lifelong difficult contradiction with the so-called earth and water meeting in the "Cardinal Song", but also contradicts the prominent official of Mu Jinwei Palace (Zheng judged that this person is a sanpin official, not to mention a military attaché, and has no ability to swing with dignity). There are many other contradictions, and I will not elaborate on them.
From this, it can be seen that due to the chaos of its star gods, there are many contradictions, and the astrological fate family arbitrarily chooses a part to say and listen to people, and speaks more auspicious and fugui words, and those unfavorable and difficult words (such as the taboo of people living in the fire and the two daughters and the earth and water) are not mentioned at all. Such contradictions and arbitrariness, where can we talk about science? How can the true relationship between heaven and man be revealed?
In addition, astrology not only talks about the decision of horoscopic changes and foreshadows changes in personnel, showing a strong fatalistic color, but also says that the kings of the world can avoid the punishment and calamity of heaven through remedial measures such as cultivating virtue and changing the government, and even turn misfortune into blessing, which is again advocating that human actions can change the will of heaven. Here there is a contradiction between fatalism and the spirit of human affairs. This is no longer a contradiction in methods, but a contradiction in basic theory.
As for the astrological signs and the gods in astrology, there is also a contradiction: the stars exist objectively, the gods are fictional, the stars are determined through observation and calculation, and the gods are mostly determined according to the stem branches, and the stem branches are artificial fictions. Therefore, this coordination between the real astrological signs and the imaginary gods in astrology has become a major problem in its theory and method, but astrology has not explained this at all, and has accepted it in its entirety with a religious devotion, so that its contradictions will always exist.
The above argument illustrates the idealistic essence of astrology in the relationship between heaven and man, and points out the contradictions between science and self-contradiction. It is certain from this that astrology is not a science. Although it has the element of investigating the relationship between heaven and man, it cannot become a science because of the error in its understanding of the relationship between heaven and man, and because of the defects and contradictions in its theories and methods. Although it is still nominally called science, this is no longer a science or discipline in the scientific sense, but a science of alchemy handed down from history.
Coupled with the blind belief in astrology of its prerequisites without argument, and its misleading effect on the people, we can say that it is a superstitious technique. Of course, it should not be forgotten that astrology in astrology, as the main body of ancient Chinese astronomy, its continuous and serious observation record still leaves a valuable material for modern astronomy, so it has certain scientific value. If there is any scientific component to astrology, it is only this.
