Statistical Astrology

The statistical astrology is consisted the studies which aim at determining by statistical tests if a correlation can or not be observed between the phenomena studied by astrology (planets, signs, domification, aspects, transits…) and of the factual events in psychology or the human destiny. This research which tries to establish, through the experimental method, the validity of astrology asserts a statute of “scientific astrology”. These studies, very few, are led to the margin of the scientific community. They constitute, in fact, a prolongation of traditional astrology, endeavouring to find a legitimitation scientific with this practice.

Stakes

; Question polemizes This field of research is very polemical.

It runs up face against the hostility of many groups which militate for science and the reason, and fight astrology in the name of these principles. For those, astrology is a subject " definitively drawn aside by the science" and a " pure mystification" , thus justifying a rejection without another examination.
It is generally rejected by the scientists, in particular the astronomers. Thus, pH. Zarka and F. Biraud, researchers in Observatoire of Paris, criticize the experiments of Gauquelin, because of their experimental skews which lead, according to them, with the production of statistical artefacts.
the reactions of the astrologers to this approach are in addition mitigated. While asserting the positive indices sometimes obtained like " evidence of the astrologie" , they stress that the statistical approach can only drown in the mass the contents extremely moderate and personalized of an astrological analysis " réelle". For the astrologers, statistical results positive thus give only one very reducing image of astrology, whereas negative results do not call into question traditional astrology.

The researchers of this field who asserted positive tests feed this polemic, being posed often at the same time like victims of the scientific hostility and destroyers of the traditional astrological obscurantism.

History

First steps of Choisnard

After the modern Science buried the practice divinatoire and predictive of the Astrologie at the Age of Enlightenment, the astrological doctrines were given to the last style, at the beginning of the 20th century by work of Paul Choisnard, a French polytechnician, officer of the army, form with the statistics. This last carries out the first statistical studies on the Astrologie and present of the conclusions which would be favorable to the astrological doctrines through an investigation into 1500 people having acquired a reputation from where it would draw a frequency abnormally high from the presence of Jupiter to the position called medium of the sky . It poses the bases of scientific astrology thus, i.e. of the astrology studied with average scientists, but does not take into account astronomical, demographic and sociological skews in its calculations and often draws from false conclusions.

The “fact” of Paul Choisnard is thin, its incomplete method and its contestable results, but this work opens the way with a “scientific astrology” which is distinguished from the practices divinatoires and predictive and on an attempt at checking of the astrological Tradition by means of a scientific step concentrates, step continued in France by Leon Lasson in the Twenties and Thirties and who extends in Germany. They are engineers who lean in addition to the Rhine on the question and the failures are frequent, as the study reported on Hans Ritter on 2230 births of musicians who does not reveal “any absolute correlation for the musical composition”.

Switzerland Karl Ernst Kraft, taking up the idea, invests itself in research but with the characteristic to withdraw itself presupposed of the astrological tradition to keep only the basic principles of them. It develops a fundamental concept of research from which it draws a new idea, approached by Choisnard, the astral Hérédité, which remains in an embryonic state of research.

Contribution of Gauquelin

A French psychologist, Michel Gauquelin, working with his wife Francoise Gauquelin, resumes work of Choisnard by criticizing them and by correcting them in the years 1940. He publishes in the years 1950 and the 1960 first results of his own work from where he would draw a Corrélation between the position from Mars in the sky and a sporting population of . He thus revives the debate by publishing his results on the Effet Mars which would like that the sportsmen have a frequency more raised than the average, of presence of Mars in certain sectors of the sky. Very criticized, its " Effect Mars " fact the object of several scientific checks discussed until the end of the 20th century.

Michel Gauquelin, while collaborating in the checks of its work with rationalist scientific organizations and skeptics, will draw from his experiment, the corrections of its studies and the reliable rules to study astrology scientifically. It strengthens the bases posed by Choisnard and fact school.

This time, it is the scientific community which develops the controversy through checks carried out by organizations which fight against the Pseudo-science S and the superstitions. The checks arrive at conclusions discussed at the end of the Eighties.

Work of Michel Gauquelin opened the way with a scientific checking of the principles supported by the Astrologie. The step develops in France mainly around the RAMS (Research in astrology by average scientists) and of André Barbault, and more recently, of Herve Delboy and Didier Castille. Research new " effets" do not arrive at entirely raising the doubt of skews in matters sociological, cultural, hereditary and different. This research also extended in the USA, in Italy, in Germany…

Recent studies

In 1993 appears in " the books conditionnalists " a statistical study which would show a correlation between the aspects Mercury-Saturn and qualities of player of failure. Although the theoretical object of this study is extremely restricted, the confirmation of its validity would contradict the dogma of the impossibility of an influence of the stars.

In the years 2000, Didier Castille, statisticians of INSEE undertake the largest scientific study on a population of several million French from where it draws a correlation between birth dates and dates from death of the individuals which was not discussed to date but which was not published, to date, in an scientific magazine at reading panel. The author himself notices that the correlation obtained could be explained for example by a larger suicide rate the day of the birthdays, or more simply by car accidents due to too sprinkled birthdays. All in all, that factors nonrelated to the stars but connected well to the birth date, could explain the correlations clarified.

Assessment of statistical astrology

No proven causality

Today, the results of Experiment S aiming at showing the validity of the interpretation of the birth charts by astrologers or computers are null. The weather misses with astrology the formal observation of possible “is astrological”. The Effet Mars of Gauquelin opened the way of research of such a phenomenon.

To date, no rational cause could be established between the position and the movement of the stars and the events terrestrial. If the identification of a causality becomes a concern of the partisans of a research in astrology by average scientists, with the ell of our current knowledge, research observe and discuss famous effects without cause.

Results of a search

As regards the bottom, this field produced in one century of existence only few studies. The statistical data are rather difficult to collect (dates, hours and birthplaces of a sample of population " représentatif") compared to a subject of investigation which does not receive any public finance. These studies in addition are very disputed. On the statistical level, the analyzes of correlations on dates and hours of births contain many potential skews, generally badly controlled. The selection criteria of sampling are often subjective and easily contestable. Lastly, the appreciation of the effect to measure (often a professional success or a psychological feature) is not always easy to characterize.

University statute of knowledge

The research results in astrology by average scientists not seem to have affected the civil society which would reintroduce astrology meanly, like science, but like a discipline deserving a new form of attention. Thus the work “Astrology” of the collection “Which do I know? ” of editions PUF, initially written by an astronomer openly hostile with astrology, was replaced by a work of Mrs. Suzel Fuzeau-Braech, founder of the RAMS, to change again in 2005. After 300 years of absence in the University S, four university actions in the world having milked with astrology come to be born, as indicates it Jean Dommanget of the Belgian Committee para in his article, regretting an interest growing of the universities for astrology, in particular in France, in India, in Austria and in the United States.

Influence on Astrology

The 20th century will remain the century of the entry of the scientific step in the Astrologie. This new approach, even if she is not recognized by the whole of the astrologers, nor of the scientists, will have considerably advanced the discipline by purifying its doctrines, thanks to the development of contradictory arguments in astronomical, sociological or demographic matter.

Behaviors pseudoscientific

Yves Lenoble astronomically points out the considerable influence that the father of scientific astrology, Paul Choisnard, had on almost the whole of the experts and the researchers in astrology of today, by inventing the modern chart of the birth charts with their form just, far from the esoteric abstraction of the square and triangular representations of antan. Francoise Gauquelin by noting in a study (not reproduced by lasuite, and thus nonsignificant) that angles between Planet S which it calls “hard” (90° and 180°) " would seem more frequent at the people having carried out a career remarquable" , tends to move the tradition of the " mauvais" and of the " bons" astrological Aspects to redefine this factor on a less deterministic level. Such a tendency whose modern astrologers cannot separate themselves any more.

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