Old Religious Sayings

AUTUMN astrology. Report on the comparison

After a month of absence I take to cure this blog. There are some new e tempo permettendo cercherò di raccontarle nei prossimi interventi. Incomincio presentandovi, a due anni da “Oroscopi e Cannocchiali”, il nuovo libro di Andrea Albini che vuole essere la continuazione e la conclusione del primo:

"L’AUTUNNO DELL’ASTROLOGIA.
Il declino scien tifico del discorso sulle stelle da Copernico ai giorni nostri"


L’astrologia è una pratica con sorprendenti capacità di trasformazione ed adattamento, e come argomento scientifico riuscì a sopravvivere per qualche tempo anche alla teoria eliocentrica di Copernico e alle scoperte al telescopio di Galileo. Its decline was slow because, although the theoretical model was in crisis, the operations is not affected: Kepler thought that astrology might be reformed, and in the second half of the seventeenth century a number of astrologers tried to adapt their art to new experimental science.
Even in the eighteenth century - in full Enlightenment - astrology was a weak residual survival in the field of medicine and meteorology.

Later, as a science, astrology was completely discredited and survived mainly in the popular almanacs. But already in the nineteenth century was recovered and the occult in the next century, the first studies on the symbolism and the myth in art history and then from
Jungian thought. Everything came together in the thought of New Age, in which astrology has a role alongside other alternative disciplines and value millenarian. As legitimate science, however, was unable to recover. For centuries it was considered insignificant and left aside by astronomers and scientists, or fought with rhetorical weapons.
Surprisingly, only in the last century have been put in place a series of studies that have demonstrated "scientifically" that astrology is not a science. But maybe it was wasted effort: the reasons for the success of this practice are not only logical, rational and non
are measured in termini di efficacia.



In Appendice, le gustose beffe dell’astronomo secentesco Geminiano Montanari e di Isaac Bickerstaff (alias Jonathan Swift) autori di falsi almanacchi che individuano le aporie e le difficoltà di una disciplina in affanno.
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ANDREA ALBINI (Pavia, 1962) tecnico presso l’Università di Pavia, autore di una serie di lavori scientifici, si occupa anche di divulgazione scientifica e ha collaborato con quotidiani e riviste
nazionali su argomenti di storia della scienza e della tecnologia. È consulente tecnico-scientifico del Cicap (Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sul Paranormale). È autore horoscopes and telescopes (Adverbs, 2008), The Voices of Joan of Arc (Adverbs, 2007) and, with Luigi Garlaschelli of Dowsing (Adverbs, 2005).