Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Astrology in Wikipedia

I don't know if anyone knows much about editing Wikipedia. I don't. A year ago there was an edit war in the Astrology section, and eventually some of the astrology friendly editors were banned.

I put in an edit this morning, which I don't expect to last. This is how the introduction to Astrology concluded:

While astrology may bear a superficial resemblance to science, it is a pseudoscience because it makes little attempt to develop solutions to its problems, shows no concern for the evaluation of competing theories, and is selective in considering confirmations and dis-confirmations.

I changed this to "some consider it to be a pseudoscience" and added the following:

Astrology, however, pre-dates modern science. Its truths lie in the skilful reading of symbols and in the observation of human behaviour, in much the same way that a psychoanalyst or novelist would glean his or her insights. These kinds of human truth are not easily testable by the very particular methods of science.

It is not for astrology to show that it stands up to the scientific method of testing; the onus is on science to show that its methods are applicable to astrology.
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