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Re: Is maths responsible
Posted:
Oct 19, 2008 5:17 PM
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On Sat, 18 Oct 2008, Gordon Fisher wrote:
> Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:09:20 -0400
> From: Gordon Fisher <gmfisher7@OPTONLINE.NET>
> To: MATH-HISTORY-LIST@ENTERPRISE.MAA.ORG
> Subject: Re: Is maths responsible
>
> On the other hand, some applications made by astrologers, based on
> models introduced by mathematicians and astronomers, seem to have had
> more failures and difficulties than, say, those which Newtonian and
> Einsteinian theories of motion have had. Are some or all mathematicians
> and astronomers to be made scapegoats for what astrologers have done?
The reason I agree with Samuel Johnson's 253-year-old definition
"Astrology The practice of foretelling things by the knowledge of the
stars; an art now generally exploded, as without reason"
is that if astrology was soundly based then the astrologers could have
told the astronomers where to look for the planets Uranus and Neptune
by using the differences between people's predicted and observed fates,
and that would have improved astrology, just as Leverrier and Adams
told the astronomers where to look for Neptune by using the differences
between Uranus's predicted and observed orbits.
-- John Harper, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science,
Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)463 6780 fax (+64)(4)463 5045
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