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The cultural authorities
of science and the Church were unlikely bedfellows in their common interest
of subverting astrology. Beginning in the 16th Century, a succession of
popes unsympathetic to astrology and all matters of the occult issued
forth edicts and papal bulls that made the delving into astrology grounds
for heresy. Astrologers in the 16th and 17th Centuries tried to justify
their craft scientifically in fits and starts, but no sustained effort
could be established for fear of serious repercussions from the Church.
Thus, any momentum
of study into astrology by a community of like-minded individuals was
halted. Astrologers, with rare exception, were marginalized to the outermost
fringes of European society, no longer esteemed consultants nor prized
purveyors of the stars.
It wasn't so much the
case that astrology was repeatedly refuted by objective investigations, but
more that astrological assumptions were no longer compatible with the assumptions
of the burgeoning new worldview at the time of the Scientific Revolution.
Subsequently, what satisfied the citizen living in the Age of Enlightenment
was simply that astrology was incongruous with the ethos of the time.
Probable conjecture
of the time might be: "Running experiments to prove the assumptions
of astrology are false is a mere formality–so why bother?" Unfortunately,
as time passed, stories and half-truths grew as memories dimmed and grew
weaker and before you knew it, astrology had been conclusively debunked!
The negative attitude
and inflexibility toward astrology that prevailed over the whole of the Scientific
Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment has been carried over by some scientists
practicing today. Often, certain scientists will exercise anything but objective
science when to undermine the whole
idea of astrology.
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