Firestorm 2034: Chapter Twenty-Three: In the Stars

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After taking some time to rest -- Taberah was still quite confused -- he asked Aed, "When was the day of your birth?"

Aed said, "It's really not that important."

Taberah said, "Why should a man of your age not want to tell when he was born?"

Aed said, "I'm old enough, Taberah. Why do you want to know?"

Taberah was puzzled; Aed had attained a very respectable age, and Taberah could not understand why he looked uncomfortable about it. Maybe to explore later...

"I want to go outside at night," Taberah said, "and gaze upon the stars and the crystalline spheres, and know the influence of the planets when you were born upon your life and at the present day."

Aed took a moment to parse this sentence, and said, "You want to cast my horoscope?"

"Yes."

"I thought you were a Catholic."

"I am."

"Then why do you want to cast my horoscope?"

"In order to understand you better."

"Don't you think there's something wrong with astrology?"

"What?"

"What do you think astrology is?"

"Natural philosophy, exploring the interconnected world in which we live."

"Taberah, astrology is not science. It's magic, or like magic. It belongs to the occult."

Taberah was trying to sift this apart. "Why?"

"It is divination. It does not work according to the basic laws of science. Astronomy is science; it studies how the heavens go. But it does not believe in influences, any more than looking at the entrails of a chicken will tell the future."

Taberah said, "Aed, what's the difference between science and magic?"

Aed was caught completely off guard. The disowning hostility of science to magic, The Skeptical Inquirer, the use of the word 'scientific' to mean 'rational' and 'working' and 'magic' as a pejorative metaphor for technology that did not appear to behave according to rational principles -- Taberah might as well have asked him to explain the difference between light and darkness. But his question deserved an answer; science does not include divination -- no, that would exclude weather forecasting; science provides theories and laws about how the world works -- so does magic; science is about exploring the forces of nature -- no, magic claimed to do that as well; science is reductionistic and magic holistic -- no, that was, if true, looking at the surface rather than the nature of things, and that wasn't true; it excluded psychology; science produces predictable results according to its theories that -- well, that also rules out psychology as science...

"Taberah, what can astrology tell you about a person?"

Aed listened to Taberah's explanation, and slowly stopped fighting a realization that this made more sense than what he was taught in his undergraduate psychology class, particularly behaviorism -- he felt he would be much better understood by Taberah's astrology than by a behaviorist account. Astrology at least accounted for the stuff of common sense -- emotions, tendencies, thoughts, good and bad timing -- while behaviorism reduced him to an unbelievably simplistic account of just a black box that does actions. Listening to Taberah's account sounded goofy here and there, and the idea that the influence of the stars and planets controlled matters was straight-out hogwash, but Taberah's explanation overall gave him the impression of a rational account believed by a rational mind.

Science did experiments rigorously, and its standards did not validate any claims of magic -- no, wait, the dice were loaded on that question; in Taberah's explanation, Aed saw a wisdom that just wasn't found in psychology; science did not meet the standards of interesting magic. No, that was not quite right; when did science really begin flourishing? At the same time as magic began flourishing, and often in the same people; Newton's discovery of physics was almost a vacation from his work in alchemy. The two enterprises were born out of the same desire, to control nature and gain power, and in both people would readily engage in practices that had been hitherto regarded as impious and disgusting, such as digging up and mutilating the dead. Still, there was a difference, a difference which Aed felt if he could not think. They --

Aed came to himself and said, "I can't tell you the difference between science and magic, Taberah. I can't tell you, but I do know it. You shouldn't be doing astrology. You shouldn't be doing divination. If you're not sure of whether something is science or magic, you can ask me." Aed thought about buying him a psychology text, but decided not to, at least not for the moment. The psychology text he'd read, he was beginning to realize, was parochial and in many ways backwards; of course it was written by psychologists at respected schools, but the zeitgeist was -- Taberah would encounter enough of it on its own, without having it embedded in something Aed told him to have replace his belief in astrology. Aed felt vaguely guilty about destroying a treasurehouse of lore, but let this go to the back of his mind. Once Aed had explained a simplified version of physics and astronomy, it was with some deflation that Taberah saw why Aed placed astrology among divination, but not weather forecasting.

Taberah stepped out that night, and lay on his back to look at the stars. He could not see many of them, and those badly, because of all the light. It seemed to him that something had departed from their song, but he could almost see something new. It was beautiful that the planets should revolve around the sun and not the earth; just as there were nine orders of angels -- the highest six of whom gazed continually on the glory of God, and only three of whom were sent out among men -- there corresponded nine planets, six of which were further out in the Heavens, the third of which contained life, and all of which revolved around the Light! His head went dizzy when he realized what it meant that he lived on a planet, and the sun was a star.

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