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i dont understand why this thread is still stuck where it is.
it is pretty clear that there is a range of approaches to astrology, and that the weakest of them is that which would require that you accept its premises as still factual (the geocentric universe)--the debate with ustwo here has remained stuck within the assumption that this is the only way to think about astrology---and insofar as that is how the conversation has gone, i dont understand why folk are arguing with him as he is right--the problem is that this is not the only grounds on which one can approach it. historically, astrolgy is quite interesting. and it is not the case that a few thousand years of human interaction with astrology as one of a range of divination practices suddenly disappeared with kepler, copernicus and galileo...or is it the case that a thousand years of human activity suddenly became entirely stupid because there was a sequence of paradigm shifts in cosmology.
dave's main argument in response seems to be that there are things tht scientific descriptions cannot explain--well obviously--there is a shit-ton of things that scientific descriptions cannot explain, just as there is an enormous range of human experience that canot be jammed into sentence form without basically altering its logic. temporal experience, for example. simultaneous phenomena for another.
but the conclusion--that therefore astrology actually might have a scientific basis--doesnt follow. the arguments run more in the direction of generating conceptual problems for how scientific descriptions (and descriptions mor generally) operate, what they do (as over against what they say)--and so are of an entirely different order. you cant just say "scientific knowledge is limited because its descriptive powers are circumscribed" an then say "so astrology could be a science" as if b follows from a.
on the other hand
you can find alchemy interesting without necessarily accepting the assumptions that shaped--you can find it interesting as an exploration of the problems of categorization, of a logic that follows from the category of "noun"--if 1, 34, 108 are all names or nouns, then there is a way in which they are rendered equivalent as names or nouns--so logically it can follow that therefore one should be able to shift 34 into 108 without adding elements but rather by locating and sliding along this metaphysical space generated by the term "equivalent"....its metaphysics, sure, but that doesnt mean its not of some interest.
similar arguments could be made about magick.
i have done alot of work with magicians in generating sound environments--i think ritual is a device for focussing attention and that focus can generate very interesting outcomes--i dont have to share the assumptions that the magicians bring to bear on their own practice to find that practice interesting or generative. one of the main reasons why this sort of work has been important to me is the sense that i have and that the magicians have that we are working in parallel, even though i do not in the main find the devices they use to shape their attention to be aesthetically compelling, and they do not necessarily find the totally abstract way in which i see things to be so either. but in the doing, other things can unfold, so it hardly matters.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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