I sometimes get notices from unexpected sources for science and technology events. On Tuesday, March 9, 2021, I received a notice from an agency about Urania Day (March 16, 2021) celebrating women in the arts and sciences during (US) Women’s History Month. What made the notice unusual is that the agency was representing Ophira and Tali Edut of AstroStyle, an astrology website.
Astrologers like Galileo, Kepler, Tycho and others
I realize that for a lot people, astrology is a pseudoscience but what is often missed, according to some observers, is that astrology has provided the basis for current astronomy and physics.
Dr . Rebekah Higgott who was Curator of History of Science and Technology at the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich from 2008 – 2013 wrote a thoughtful January 28, 2011 post about astrology and science on Martin Robbins’ Guardian science blog,
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Like Martin, I heard about the astrologers’ petition to the BBC and blogged about it, together with another astrology-related story that recently hit the headlines. Unlike him, I was critical of the knee-jerk response of many scientists, science writers and fans of science. I also had some quibbles about his post, so I’d like to start by thanking him for hosting this – and, before you leap to the comments section, making it clear that I do not believe in astrology. However, I do believe that a little knowledge and understanding can help the cause of science communication far more than ridicule.
As is well known to readers of The Lay Scientist, the Astrological Association, prompted by remarks made by Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain, has asked for “fair and balanced representation” (note, not “equal representation”). This has resulted in widespread derision from those who can see nothing wrong with stating that “astrology is rubbish” and “nonsense”. Most, however, have failed to understand exactly what has annoyed these astrologers, or to take the time to find out what astrology actually is.
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The Astrological Association is not complaining about a statement such as this. Rather, they consider it unfair that they are represented as having no knowledge of the astronomy and celestial mechanics that Cox and O’Briain are paid to explain on TV. They are annoyed that astrology is considered to consist solely of those who read and write newspaper horoscopes. Serious astrologers often have an excellent understanding of, and respect for, astronomy. They are, in fact, a not insignificant audience for astronomy programmes, lectures and books.
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Which brings me to the history: a little historical understanding should make astronomers and science communicators realise that practising astrologers are likely to have good knowledge of planetary motions. Up until the late 17th century, astrology and astronomy were deeply interconnected. [emphasis mine] …
Do read the rest of Higgott’s post for the mentions of Galileo, Kepler, Tycho, and more.
Astrology lays the foundation for data science?
Alexander Boxer’s 2020 book “A Scheme of Heaven: The History of Astrology and the Search for Our Destiny in Data” might seem a bit fanciful. Interestingly, it was discussed by Jonathan Keats in a January 15, 2020 book review for the New Scientist and a January 17, 2020 book review by Steven Vanden Broeck for Science Magazine (Science 17 Jan 2020: Vol. 367, Issue 6475, pp. 255 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz9644). Both of these reviews are behind paywalls. (There is an open access summary of Vanden Broeck’s review mentioned later in this subsection.)
Here’s more about the book from publisher W. W. Norton’s webpage for A Scheme of Heaven,
An illuminating look at the surprising history and science of astrology, civilization’s first system of algorithms, from Babylon to the present day.
Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and astrology is the universe’s grandest pattern-matching game. In this refreshing work of history and analysis, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific and mathematical framework. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world’s most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a monumental data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history’s most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler.
Thousands of years ago, astrologers became the first to stumble upon the powerful storytelling possibilities inherent in numerical data. To correlate the configurations of the cosmos with our day-to-day lives, astrologers relied upon a “scheme of heaven,” or horoscope, showing the precise configuration of the planets at a particular instant in time as viewed from a particular place on Earth. Although recognized as pseudoscience today, horoscopes were once considered a cutting-edge scientific tool. Boxer teaches us how to read these esoteric charts—and appreciate the complex astronomical calculations needed to generate them—by diagramming how the heavens appeared at important moments in astrology’s history, from the assassination of Julius Caesar as viewed from Rome to the Apollo 11 lunar landing as seen from the surface of the Moon. He then puts these horoscopes to the test using modern data sets and statistical science, arguing that today’s data scientists do work similar to astrologers of yore. By looking back at the algorithms of ancient astrology, he suggests, we can better recognize the patterns that are timeless characteristics of our own pattern-matching tendencies.
At once critical, rigorous, and far ranging, A Scheme of Heaven recontextualizes astrology as a vast, technological project—spanning continents and centuries—that foreshadowed our data-driven world today.
I had problems finding Boxer’s credentials, he’s described as a physicist and/or data scientist. Most unusually he does not fully tout his credentials on his eponymous website or anywhere, it seems. Based on a reference to an Alex Boxer in a January 26, 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) news release, he has a PhD in physics from MIT (this excerpt is from the second paragraph from the bottom),
… A newly installed microwave interferometer array, developed by MIT graduate student Alex Boxer PhD ‘09 [emphasis mine], was used to make the precision measurements of the plasma concentrations that were used to observe the turbulent pinch.
Getting to the open access summary, Science magazine published this brief of Steven Vanden Broecke’s book review in a January 14, 2020 highlight,
Alexander Boxer, a professional data scientist, knows a thing or two about distilling patterns from big data. Surrounded by constant, endless streams of information, humans are pattern-matching animals, and astrology, he claims, “is the universe’s grandest pattern-matching game.”
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The book also exposes readers to the rigor of statistical analysis. Here, Boxer applies his knowledge of statistics to some of the most enduring and fascinating patterns that astrology educed from its constant comparisons between heavenly and terrestrial events. This combination of topics is usually the preserve of critics, who like to mobilize analyses of astrology’s conceptual apparatus, history, and statistical soundness to demonstrate the art’s vacuity. …
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A Scheme of Heaven—like all good history writing—turns its subject into a mirror. (In the words of the Roman poet Horatius, “the story is told about you.”) Statistics, Boxer shows, not only debunk astrology’s claims, they confirm that some of our most private behavior happens in step with cosmic rhythms today. History not only documents a distant past, it shows how intimately some of our most prestigious scientific traditions really are—as Johannes Kepler argued—the children of this foolish daughter. And like astrology, the patterns that data science reveals turn out to hinge on far more interpretation than we might like. Boxer points out, for example, how the contemporary combination of big data with machine-learning algorithms is rapidly creating a rift between empirical forecasting models and causal understanding—exactly the kind of rift that has often been invoked to criticize astrology.
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And now:
Purple hair, Caroline Herschel, and Urania Day
March 16 was chosen as Urania Day to honour Caroline Herschel, an astronomer with an extraordinary history as is made clear in the Urania Day notice,
Urania Day, March 16, to celebrate girls and women in arts and science
during Women’s History Month
Named for the Greek Muse of astronomy, Urania Day falls on the birthday
of groundbreaking astronomer Caroline Herschel, who co-discovered Uranus
Supporters are encouraged to dye their hair purple like the ‘violet-haired’ Muses
to champion the visibility of women in the arts and sciences
#UraniaDay #MarchMuse @astrotwins
NEW YORK – March 5, 2021 – Ophira and Tali Edut, twin founders of astrology multimedia brand AstroStyle, along with astrologer Matthew Swann, have established a new galaxywide holiday: Urania Day. Occurring annually on March 16, birthday of astronomy pioneer Caroline Herschel, and named for the Muse of astronomy, Urania Day’s purpose is to encourage girls and women to literally reach for the stars through science, math and technology.
“As female ‘astropreneurs’ — successful business owners in a creative field — ourselves, my sister Tali and I have been on a mission to empower girls and women since we established AstroStyle in the early 2000s,” explained Ophira, whose website garners more than 10 million pageviews each month. “With Urania Day, we seek to honor the lesser-known, under-credited and virtually forgotten female mavericks of the arts and sciences — starting with Caroline Herschel — and use their stories to inspire today’s young people.”
The Urania Day founders invite any supporters of their mission to be a #MarchMuse and post an image of themselves with purple hair (extensions, wigs and creative dye welcome!) or to share a purple-tinted selfie with the hashtags #UraniaDay and #MarchMuse.
Caroline Herschel, born March 16, 1750, was the younger sister of Sir William Herschel. They both left careers in music to indulge their mutual passion for astronomy and telescope-making. It was Caroline who possessed the craftsmanship to grind and polish their telescope mirrors by hand, and facilitated her brother’s accidental discovery of the planet Uranus on March 13, 1781 using a homemade 6.2-inch reflecting telescope. Beyond this historic accomplishment, Caroline was the first woman to discover a comet, discovering eight comets and three nebulae over the course of her career. She was also the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist, to hold to government position in England, to publish findings in the scientific journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, along with Mary Somerville). Caroline also created catalogs of astronomical discoveries that are still in use today. [emphasis mine]
“Uranus the planet was named for Uranus the ancient god of the heavens,” explained Tali. “He was the great-grandfather of Urania and her sisters, the Nine Muses, who were — are — the patron goddesses of the arts and sciences. It’s each Muse’s job to inspire humanity in her area of expertise.”
Visitors to UraniaDay.com are invited to Choose the Muse they most closely relate to: Urania (astronomy), Clio (history and the guitar), Melpomene (tragedy and rhetoric), Thalia (comedy, geometry, architecture and agriculture), Terpsichore (dance and education), Calliope (epic poetry, inspired The Iliad and The Odyssey), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (grammar, geometry, hymns and mimic art), or Euterpe (lyric poetry).
“Artists are known to ‘invoke the Muse’ when they sit down to write or paint,” she added. “We all invoke the Muse regularly when we use words derived from their name, like ‘music,’ ‘musings’ and ‘amusement.'”
The AstroTwins have also restyled Caroline Herschel’s Urania’s Mirror constellation deck as an all-ages coloring book, which can be downloaded as a free PDF on the Urania Day website.
About The AstroTwins
Identical twin sisters Ophira and Tali Edut, known as the AstroTwins, are professional astrologers who reach millions worldwide. Through their website Astrostyle, and as the official astrologers for ELLE magazine, they bring the stars down to Earth with their lifestyle- and coaching-based approach to horoscopes. They’ve created astrology sections for multiple media properties, including Refinery29, Parade and Lifetime TV. Bestselling authors, they have written a collection of books, including AstroStyle, Love Zodiac and Momstrology (their #1 Amazon bestselling parenting guide), and their own brand imprint annual horoscope guides.
The AstroTwins have been featured on Good Morning America and Today, and in The New York Times Sunday Styles, People and Vogue. They have collaborated with major brands including Coach, Zappos and Nordstrom, and cocreated the wildly successful “Signs of Love” campaign with Revlon and Refinery29. The sisters have read charts for celebrities including Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder, Karlie Kloss, Emma Roberts and Sting. They are regular guests on SiriusXM, and have appeared on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New Jersey, doing on-air readings for the cast. Follow them at @astrotwins and on www.astrostyle.com
There’s more about Caroline Herschel in her Wikipedia entry. As for that bit about polishing the mirrors for the telescopes that feat sometimes had to be accomplished with over 24 hours of continuous work. (If memory serves, some of those mirrors took over 48 hours work without a break.) Do read Richard Holmes’ 2008 book, “The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science,” which details the work involved in one of its chapters.
Happy Urania Day!