Thread by @500livesasafox

Since the idea of astrology being “irrational” is rearing its head again, let's explore how such criticisms are in fact nothing new, but reflect ancient debates. In fact, any sharp “rational” vs. “irrational” dichotomy is ahistorical, unempirical, & fallacious. 1/thread

Contemporary critics of astrology caricature divination and astrology as pathological ways of (not) knowing that stand in tension with or opposition to natural science, as if these practices were irrational holdovers from pre-scientific eras. 2/40

Divination and astrology thus get labeled as so-called “magical thinking,” and such practices get dismissed as historically backward and outmoded. This ahistorical view relies on simplistic dualities that ignore the actual anthropological and psychological evidence. 3/

Splitting knowledge into modern scientific methods vs. “primitive” irrational methods fails to account for the ways that ancient cultures did not (and contemporary practitioners don’t—more later) view divination as unproblematic, straightforward, or beyond debate. 4/40

In fact, ancient Greek authors’ debates about divination reveal intellectual concerns parallel to those of contemporary discourse that characterizes divination as an irrational or pathological way of knowing that stands in tension with or opposition to natural science. 5/40

The central fallacy lies in assuming an either/or approach to epistemic practices. It is as if someone either uses “rational” or “irrational” thinking. The ancient Greeks, however, plainly considered divination fallible and susceptible to rational inquiry. 6/40

For example, the classicist Peter Struck (2016) documents many places in Plato’s dialogues where divinatory language is used to characterize non-discursive, intuitive insights that are subjected to empirical scrutiny and debate after the fact. 7/40

Moreover, , Cicero (44 BC) structured his treatise “On Divination” as a dialogue between Quintus, who presents Stoic arguments in favor of divination, and Cicero himself, who argues against divination on the grounds of its poor evidentiary standing and irrationality. 8/40

In Cicero’s dialogue, Quintus even anticipates and attempts a rebuttal of an objecti.on to divination based on the distinction between correlation and causation, showing that this is hardly a novel concern or a simple, easily adjudicated matter. 9/40

Similarly, a few hundred years later, the Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus (245-345 AD) wrote defenses of divination in response to his teacher Porphyry’s characterization of divination as irrational. 10/40

The historian Sarah Iles Johnston (2008) and the classicist Peter Struck (2007, 2016) both substantiate how ancient Greek authors transparently acknowledged the possibility of fraudulent oracles, misleading spirits, and bad interpretations due to ignorance. 11/40

The association between psychopathology and divination is likewise ancient. In addition to viewing divination as irrational, Porphyry also viewed the ecstasy characteristically associated with oracles and prophets as madness. 12/40

Much later, the occultist Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1531-33/1898) would also describe divination as the product of melancholia and linked this influence to astrology. 13/40

Agrippa wrote that “[The melancholy humour,] when it is stirred up, burns and stirs up a madness conducing to knowledge and divination, especially if it is helped by any celestial influx, particularly of Saturn.” 14/40

Notably, this was not a Renaissance idea. Agrippa attributed his view to Aristotle (in his “Problems,” 30.1), who wrote that excessive bile led to excessive heat and passion that could not only stir up madness and frenzy but also divination and poetry. 15/40

Nevertheless, just as contemporary psychologists have come to see magical thinking as normative and potentially beneficial, ancient cultures did not see divination as necessarily marginal, abnormal, or pathological. 16/40

Mentions of divination frequently occur in the Bible, and although some passages condemn divinatory practices (e.g., Deuteronomy 18:9-14, described more fully below), others portray dream divination by unimpeachable men of God (e.g., Jacob, Joseph, Solomon). 17/40

Indeed, the scholar of religion Ann Jeffers’s (2007) close textual analysis shows that Biblical authors took for granted that readers would understand references to divination as reflecting widespread and commonly accepted practice. 18/40

Generally speaking, ancient cultures by and large did not hold mystical practices or beliefs apart from more worldly orientations and concerns. In the same way, contemporary practitioners hold multiple overlapping worldviews in dynamic tension. 19/40

Recall that Socrates—lauded today as the father of rationalism and precise logical argumentation—nevertheless understood his efforts as inspired by divine oracles and declared human wisdom derived from dialogical argument as ultimately of little value. 20/40

Likewise, Pythagoras made innovative mathematical advances of timeless value, and also founded a secretive cult that for centuries preserved mystery traditions. These worldviews coexist and dialogue with one another within and between individuals. 21/40

I have focused here on ancient Greece (and the biblical near-East, a little), but similar considerations could and have been documented across history and cultures. These considerations are by no means limited to “Western” cultures and perspectives. 22/40

As one example, the anthropologist George Brandon (2012) documented disagreements and debates among Lucumi priests, who reinterpret cowrie shell divination patterns differently over time based on long-term empirical experience. 23/40

More generally, van Binsbergen (2013) observes on the basis of a detailed survey of several African divination systems that divination procedures in general produce not one decisive outcome, but many ambiguous or even mutually incompatible clues. 24/40

Divination in numerous African cultural contexts consists not in rote mechanical procedures, but rather in weaving together loose ends of the procedure’s outputs with background knowledge of the client into a satisfying narrative. 25/40

Also, Zeitlyn (2001) demonstrates how, rather than producing decisive, final answers, Ifá divination involves the interpretation of underdetermined oracles that require creative and self-critical application in specific interpersonal contexts. 26/40

Historical and anthropological evidence attests that divination involves symbolism, interpretation, and the interweaving of intuitive cognition with rational, self-aware, discursive thinking. 27/40

Let me just definitively state for the record: it is simply empirically false that people who practice or “believe in” divination and astrology simply cling to magical thinking while rejecting rationality and science. 28/40

In my dissertation research on Tarot readers and querents, in their actual lives, Tarot practitioners did not consider their practices as being in tension with, let alone contradictory to, causal reasoning or scientific thinking. 29/40

Although some participants noted that social tension could arise when scientifically minded people denigrated Tarot practices, no participants communicated a belief, explicitly or otherwise, that their practices were in opposition to or contradicted science. 30/40

Overall, one general relevant finding was that Tarot querents in particular may enter a reading with playful, entertainment aims, pragmatic, or skeptical, antagonistic purposes that in no way suggest, let alone require, magical beliefs of any order. 31/40

This is not an isolated finding. Recent scientific has substantiated that magical thinking can dynamically and peacefully coexist in an individual’s worldview (e.g., Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000; Risen, 2016; Subbotsky, 2010). 32/40

As a general statement, too, interdisciplinary research emphasizes that divination typically involves symbolic meaning making that is continuous with rather than in opposition to rationality concerned with efficient causality. 33/40

Blanket conceptualization of divination practices such as Tarot and divination appear to represent a kind of error in reasoning that is predicated on very simplistic, reductionistic assumptions that ignore the history and lived experience of these practices. 34/40

Such criticisms take the surface features of a phenomenon (general associations with mystery, magic, and the supernatural) and narrowly, ahistorically project them onto dualistic ideas of “magical thinking” or “the scientific method.” 35/40

In summary, criticisms of astrology as “irrational,” “ignorant,” or “unscientific,” are not new, but represent continuations of debates that are at least two thousand years old. The “modern” vs. “primitive” dichotomy is illegitimate and fallacious. 36/40

(Obligatory reminder that “primitive” is a racist, colonial term, and arguments that explicitly or implicitly rely on the distinction between “mature” and “scientific” versus “immature” and “primitive” should always raise a red flag.) 37/40

More generally, human beings have never reasoned in simple, one-sided ways. Across space and time, humans hold in mind multiple interests, projects, and perspectives that exist in dynamic tension. It goes without saying that the same true of astrologers today. 38/40

The irony, of course, is that emotionally charged dismissals of astrology on the basis of allegedly epistemological grounds often belie an ignorance and utter disregard for a vast array of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural empirical evidence. 39/40

Rather than split human thought into scientific vs. mystical, or rational vs. irrational, we should see human experience as weaving dynamic trajectories through different modes of thinking and feeling about the world, some more rational, some less rational. 40/thread