Tuesday, September 15, 2009

horoscopy or the road to moronic marraiges and crappy catastrophies... Part I

well.... to begin with let me quote sheldon cooper from the "Big Bang Theory" " knowing that you are a sagitarius tells us that you are part of the mass cultural delusion that arbitrarily defined constellations affect your everyday life". The person who wrote this was brilliant !!!!! Author's Note :I don't mean disrespect for astronomy nor do I want to disrespect the faith people have in astrology or horoscopy. They are at perfect liberty to believe what they want and act accordingly, after all.. who am I to tell them ?
Now that the political correctness is out of the way, let us get down to the fun part. Horoscopy or Astrology. Just what is this wonderful prediction tool that enables us to read our 'past' and our 'future' in the stars in the heavens ? Let us try to understand what influence the planets and stars can have on humans. If you are a rational and practical person you will say well.. there's gravity.. and probably light so electromagnetism. Fair enough... but then hang on... stars are HUGE !! and so are most planets compared to earth. And obviously compared to me the earth is HUGE. so does the gravity of a planet millions of miles away in space make a big difference to me if I in a different place on the earth ? Gravity is the weakest force in existence. yes it has very long range effects but then, the effects also decrease with the square of the distance !! now if a star is 5000000 km away and a star is 1000000km away from me then the effect of each one is divided by the squares of the respective distances. I mean will the effect change if I am pune or if I am in new zealand. Occam's razor and common sense and simple physics tells us... probably not. And as for light or electromagnetism, well.. the stars do shine at night so I can see them ( they probably must be shining by day too but the sun blots them out ) but the fun part is, I can only see the stars on my side of the earth and not on the opposite side, sure I'll see them in 12 hours time but still. So light from stars on the other side of the earth is not reaching me. Maybe neutrinos will, but let's face it, we are not in the middle of a solar furnace here so one neutrino hitting someone in my family in about 6 or 7 generations of seems right ( I have not calculated this, but this is an educated guess, ignore if you feel not important ). So gravity will have a uniform effect on me ( unless one proves that the distrubution of heavenly bodies around earth is skewed enough to cause a non uniform gravity field, of course this is on the background of the earth's and sun's and moon's gravity fields. But I know of no such data ( of course I am ignorant as they come ) so let us agree that gravity is more or less uniform on the earth ) uniform effect on me and everyone else on the planet, from bacteria to elephants ( their local masses are different but the effect is so negligible since gravity is the weakest force in existence ). Next is light, well light never hurt anybody really. we are alive here because of the sun's light, so more light from the stars can't be all that bad. We have an ozone layer to knock out all the UV rays. Thankfully we are not bathed in gamma rays like some other planets of some other stars. So light is a good thing, and again.. affects all the earth in the same way. Ok if you are mole or a worm underground it won't matter much but it can be argued that light has been uniform on the earth for years and will be uniform for years to come. No change in the way light affects depending on where you were born ( unless you count the hole in the ozone layer but hey that has nothing to do with the stars right ? ). SO now that we have established that all the effects possible by stars and planets on us are uniform, repeatable (since the planets and stars move in precise orbits with respect to the earth ) and basically no force in the known laws of physics can explain why they affect different people differently ( if at all they do ) we turn to next level of horscopy.. that is constellations. that is for part 2...

15 comments:

pooja said...

Good one Dada! great title too:)waiting for the next part.

Mukta said...

hmm... interesting. so are you leaning towards horoscope reading or what? are you a believer or a non-believer?

Ashwin Kelkar said...

mukta.. did you not read the blog entry ?? honestly.. please reconsider the question...

Swati said...

Nice Ashwin...I personally believe there is some very accurate science behind all the astronomy books written by our ancient ancestors (rather I dnt completely disregard the possibilty)..but your arguments here are as lucid, logical and coherently stated as ever, making me think along the lines of "uniformity of the force". You considered one parameter: each individual...what do you think abt effect of specific time, latitude, longitude etc...what if its not visible light energy, force...Astronomy I had thought was rather emperical and co-relative..rather like in drug studies..we knw the effect but nt the exact mechanism...maybe we havnt yet identified the "miRNAs" of astonomy...if you knw wot I mean..sorry for being such a geek :)..nice read though...looking forward to read the nxt part

RAKING FOR MY WORLD........ said...

Hmm..Interesting to note that you are thinking about things other people think are just things not to think about...well got carried away as you can see..
So if we consider that all the forces as well as fields are pretty uniform around a particular entity..consider a human...then obviously the predictions shouldn't vary.. But are we same as entities to others? I think not...
One can think of the science of Ayurveda (I am novice here) but from wat i understand it has a personalized treatment basis for different people.
So may be different entities try to or inadvertently they do modify their own spaces in their own way and hence that might be the basis of their prediction. this is only a single aspect and doesn't take into account the significance of star charts at birth time.. but yes it might answer the logic behind how a spouses or parents horoscope can be used to ascertain ones own horoscope..may be the spaces are overlapping here since 2 people are close...Well just speculating on things

Scarecrow said...

Nice write but I am extremely disappointed that you used the term Astronomy interchangeably with Astrology and Horoscopy.... Even Swati's comment had that mistake (no, ignorant blunder)..Sorry for being so curt because I, personally, am very much into astronomy (which is just observing heavenly bodies) and has NOTHING to do with it affecting our lives.... Hope you make the correction before you set out on a logical reasoning.
@Swati - The astronomy books of yore are pretty damn right...and they do NOT talk about their effect on our lives. Those are astrology books!

Ashwin Kelkar said...

to scarecorw.. dude i used astronomy only once and i meant astronomy in that sentence...

Swati said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Swati said...

Mr Scarecrow, I fail to understand your sudden outrage..However, let me attempt to assure you that I do believe in the science of astronomy, as mentioned in the very first sentence, trusting it to be extremely accurate and even fascinating. I, however cannot vouch for its authenticity like you, simply because I have too limited a knowledge to be critical about it. Again, if I understand correctly, astrology is based on the complex calculations of astronomy (stars n heavenly bodies as you mentioned) and this understanding of mine is purely based on a manuscript I had read a few years ago..Albeit, I admit I didnot pay particular attention to the use of these terms for I supposed that in the context of this post they could be used as such...I apologise for offending you, and the author as well, for spamming this highly thought (and feelings) promoting blog with my ignorant comments..Peace;)

Ashwin Kelkar said...

To Swati..
I am not offended by your comment. in fact I also fail to understand mr.scarecrow's outrage. I never meat to disrespect astronomy and I have even used details from astronomical studies to support my arguements. Now why would I do that if astronomy was not an objecive science ?. I have used astronomy in the only one line in this post ( as i pointed out to scraecrow ) and in that line I 'meant' to talk about astronomy. In addition to that I say in that line that I mean no disrespect to astronomy :D and while talking about astrology I use the word 'faith in astrology' that itself should tell you I am considering them as two DIFFERENT things scarecrow.
As swati correctly pointed out astrology is based ENTIRELY on astronomical calculations.. but that does not make astronomy invalid. It just makes astrology to be a bad application of an exact and wonderful science.. scarecrow.. think about this arguement please..

Swati said...

Also, Mr Scarecrow, I wish to point out that when I did use the term "Astronomy" in the following sentence: Astronomy I had thought was rather emperical and co-relative..(if this is the sentence you were refering to)...that is what I wished to say exactly...Our learned ancestors drew a pattern(corelation) between various stellar positions and occurences/events then unfolding on the minute planet Earth...and extrapolated it to make predictions..very much like what we still do in science..most often they may have seen data points fitting their hypothesis, with the exceptions of some outliers..This again is just my understanding of the whole subject, and I agree might be too stunted as compared to yours dear Sir who seem to have read all the books on astronomy as well as astrology ever written :D

Ashwin Kelkar said...

ok people.. parts 2 and 3 are up.. could we argue on them now please ? :D

Scarecrow said...

"As swati correctly pointed out astrology is based ENTIRELY on astronomical calculations.. but that does not make astronomy invalid. It just makes astrology to be a bad application of an exact and wonderful science"
I totally agree with the above idea and I'm happy to clear that you meant the same thing. I still would just reiterate that the application still does not mean they are the same things. I have been faced with too many people using Astronomy and Astrology interchangeably and was aghast when I thought that people like you and Swati (whom I consider to belong to the "literati", if you may) seemed to be making the same mistake. I did not mean to demean your intelligence. It was just an argument about how your particular sentences could be interpreted.
Peace!

Swati said...

geez..i was having so much fun! what santya you shud have continued :D

yogeshwar said...

Nice one. I guess this i just the start, wil continue to the next part

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just your regular guy who dreams too much. i read a lot don't remember it all though.. swim, trek, yoga.. think and read more.. that about sums it up..