Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype

Robert Tulip · Mon Jan 18, 2010 5:46 pm


	Interbane wrote: Benski, C., et al. The Mars Effect. 1996, Prometheus Books.

Rebutted at The Mars Effect is Genuine

Interbane · Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:29 pm


	Quote: Rebutted at The Mars Effect is Genuine

I'm sure it is, I haven't had the time to read it. You never answered my question about why professional hockey players are found to be born just after the winter solstice. Could this be a Solstice Effect? I believe this effect to be true.

Robert Tulip · Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:21 pm


	Interbane wrote: You never answered my question about why professional hockey players are found to be born just after the winter solstice. Could this be a Solstice Effect? I believe this effect to be true.

My understanding is that in junior grades, older children within the year group have an advantage due to age, and so are statistically more likely to pursue a sporting career. It has nothing to do with astrology.

Interbane · Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:52 pm


	Quote: My understanding is that in junior grades, older children within the year group have an advantage due to age, and so are statistically more likely to pursue a sporting career. It has nothing to do with astrology.

That's my understanding also. There's a reason astrology isn't taken seriously, even if a test seems to have no alternative explanation such as the Mars Effect. There is no physical link between a planet's movement and life on Earth strong enough to cause an effect. The moon causes the tide and messes with Earth's magnetic field, so is only barely strong enough by extension of it's secondary effects. There are nearly unlimited factors 'stronger' than planetary gravity which would influence birth rates. That's even excluding parents who might lie about when their child was born.

An overarching examination of all tests having to do with astrological influence on life would show many positive correlations. This doesn't mean the positions of heavenly bodies caused these correlations. The gravity isn't strong enough. Well, let me add a disclaimer here. It is possible that celestial gravity may have some obscure effect on life. It's also possible that there's an invisible purple flying dragon in my garage.

Robert Tulip · Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:03 pm


	Interbane wrote: ..even if a test seems to have no alternative explanation such as the Mars Effect. There is no physical link between a planet's movement and life on Earth strong enough to cause an effect.

You do appreciate, Interbane, that your quoted statement here is a contradiction in terms?

You are saying that all other causes are ruled out, but you rule out the only possible cause only because you don't like it, or in the Dawkins/Darwin cautionary statement of the opening post, because you find it impossible to believe. I sympathise for your tender feelings Interbane, but you should be more intellectually robust.

This is why Gauquelin's work is a momentous paradigm-shifting finding, and why scientific bigots resort to fraud, censorship and lies to deflect his work. It requires that people change their minds.

geo · Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:13 pm


	Robert Tulip wrote: This is why Gauquelin's work is a momentous paradigm-shifting finding, and why scientific bigots resort to fraud, censorship and lies to deflect his work. It requires that people change their minds.

I think you might be getting ahead of yourself here, Robert. From what I've read of the Mars Effect, I don't see that correlation is yet firmly established. If the data showed an obvious correlation there wouldn't be a controversy. And even if a correlation existed, it's far from clear as to what would be causing it. Right? It could be statistical anomaly such as the hockey players born in January. So until someone comes up with a plausible hypothesis about this mechanism behind the so-called Mars Effect—how the position of Mars can possibly affect a person's sports ability—you really have nothing more than speculation at this point.

While Dawkins may acknowledge certain "slow and relentless" forces that when all added up cause the cork to eventually move across the ocean, I don't think such small forces have been quantified or can be measured in any meaningful way. So that's all speculation too. It seems more likely that the gravitational tug of distant stars would be so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don't see a correlation being firmly established yet much less a hypothesis that would explain it. And so even if we grant you that these forces might exist, it just might be premature to call Gauquelin the next Galileo.

Interbane · Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:43 pm


	Quote: You are saying that all other causes are ruled out

Actually, that's not what I'm saying. That's what you're assuming, that all other causes are ruled out. This is like saying you have no clue how your keys ended up locked inside your car, therefore it must be an invisible purple dragon that also resides in your garage. It is not at all impossible to believe that gravity from mars may lead to people becoming super athletes. :lol:

It's a laughable notion, but not impossible to believe. It is not my resistance to this idea that is faulty, it's your ulterior motive in believing it to be true.

All this is summed up rather eloquently by saying correlation does not equal causation. Repeat that like a mantra.

Robert Tulip · Tue Jan 19, 2010 1:33 am


	Interbane wrote: There is no helical structure to time. You're mistaking a visual 2d model for something physical.

My model is an accurate four dimensional physical model of the solar system through time. I know that may sound complicated, but in fact it is quite straightforward and simple to understand. The sun orbits the galaxy at 220 kilometres per second, dragging the planets with it. The sun stays within one solar diameter of the centre of mass, the point that describes an exact mathematical arc around the galaxy. The planets form helical paths around the centre of mass. In my model, the Z axis, the path of the centre of mass, is severely truncated to squash the helix for ease of depiction. The XY axes, marked by the orbit of Neptune, are about nine billion kilometres across. The sun travels 7 billion kilometres per year around the galaxy, so the Z axis of my model would need to be a few hundred times longer to model the solar system helix over 179 years with accurate proportions between the axes. The fourth dimension, time, is shown in this model as the positions of the gas giants at any chosen date. Remember, this 179 year model is true virtually for ever, permanently repeating for the duration of the orbital stability of the solar system.


	Quote: considering the impossible possible, the species would then have to be concerned with this infinitesimal background gravitational fluctuation that started 100 generations or more ago… It is cancelled out by local noise.

I get the impression you didn’t understand Dawkins’ point about the statistical averages of a slow wind. The solar system is the ultimate background climate for the earth. Everything in a climatic system responds to its initial conditions through emergent complexity.


	Quote: You're also jumping between the helical structure of DNA, and an organism's phenotype. Which one are you referring to?

The 3D helical structure of DNA just coincidentally has similar morphology as the 4D helical structure of the solar system. My point is that initial conditions provide boundary limits for phenotypic variation, so the regular conditions of the 4D helix of the solar system are a foundation for the variation of life.


	Quote: What would the phenotypic effect be without the 'initial conditions' that you're proposing? Can you hypothesize the difference? Would famous people stop dying every 2148 years seperate from other important events? Would we have developed a third eye?

Disregarding your last flippant points, it is entirely meaningless to speak of life without its initial conditions. Earth could not exist except in the solar system. The helical structure I describe has been stable for four billion years.


	Quote: With regards to the DNA, the helix is a general response to the stacking up of single monomer units into a polymer, which means DNA can’t help being a helix. So the chain of causality must by necessity include an explanation for how infinitesimal gravitational variations dictated that life be composed of monomers and polymers. Not only this, but those infinitesimal gravitational variations would do this 'intelligently!', since they would want DNA to resemble the orbits their parent planets go through (not really, only in a reduced dimensional analogy) over the course of 179 years.

By stacking up chunks of time around the axis of the SSB path we get a helix. Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune reach a point 13/12 around the circle every 179 years. Stacking 144 of these models describes the ‘DNA’ of the Great Year.


	Quote: Eh? What is the challenge to scientific orthodoxy? You're lining up ducks. No one would refute that there are patterns here. Well, maybe they would if you were wrong. But this is inconsequential. These patterns are meaningless. You are putting meaning into them.

I’m not putting the meaning in, I am finding it as an objective fact described in the Bible. My claim that the Bible is in essence scientific is a challenge to scientific orthodoxy.

Robert Tulip · Tue Jan 19, 2010 1:59 am


	geo wrote: From what I've read of the Mars Effect, I don't see that correlation is yet firmly established. If the data showed an obvious correlation there wouldn't be a controversy. And even if a correlation existed, it's far from clear as to what would be causing it. Right? It could be statistical anomaly such as the hockey players born in January. So until someone comes up with a plausible hypothesis about this mechanism behind the so-called Mars Effect—how the position of Mars can possibly affect a person's sports ability—you really have nothing more than speculation at this point.

Thanks Geo. If you read Ertel’s paper refuting the critics of the Mars Effect, you will see he found it with p value 0.005 in one of the Skeptics ‘massaged’ samples, and challenged the skeptics to respond to perceptions that CSICOP tampered with the data. As far as I know they have not responded, and appear caught red-handed, reliant only on ad hominem and bluster. One of Gauquelin’s three samples has p value 0.00004, a result grossly improbable except by a real planetary effect.

What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence. The weakness of the effect is shown by the observation that it is only detectable among eminent individuals who had a natural birth at known time, and as Ertel notes, decreases statistically with decline of eminence in the study group.


	Quote: While Dawkins may acknowledge certain "slow and relentless" forces that when all added up cause the cork to eventually move across the ocean, I don't think such small forces have been quantified or can be measured in any meaningful way. So that's all speculation too. It seems more likely that the gravitational tug of distant stars would be so infinitesimally small as to be non-existent. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and I don't see a correlation being firmly established yet much less a hypothesis that would explain it. And so even if we grant you that these forces might exist, it just might be premature to call Gauquelin the next Galileo.

Please, I am not talking about distant stars but about our solar system. As I commented earlier, these effects have nothing to do with the stars except as markers for local cycles. I regard Gauquelin as the equal of Galileo because the shift to a precessional paradigm, for which Gauquelin provides indispensible groundwork, is equally mind-bending as the shift from geocentric to heliocentric cosmology.

geo · Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:12 am


	Robert Tulip wrote: What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence. The weakness of the effect is shown by the observation that it is only detectable among eminent individuals who had a natural birth at known time, and as Ertel notes, decreases statistically with decline of eminence in the study group.

I'm not going to start studying Gauquelin's work because I just don't see that there's a lot there. I also don't have a background in statistics so I can't really comment on the data. However, on the face of it there seem to be a lot of problems, although there very well might be some kind of anomaly that is worth further study.

A few comments however. Gauquelin started from the position of trying to find meaning in astrology. I find this highly suspect. I say be wary of those who come from a biased position especially in the field of statistics where data can be tweaked in subconscious and conscious ways.

Wiki: Although he was highly critical of certain areas of the art, Gauquelin showed an interest in astrology from an early age; it is said that he could calculate a birth chart at the age of ten and earned the nickname of Nostradamus at school because of his astrological readings. After studying psychology and statistics at the Sorbonne, he devoted his life to the attempt to demonstrate the validity of certain fundamentals of astrology. However, he did not define himself as an astrologer and opposed the practice of astrology.

Your view that human genes could have the ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth is very interesting, however, this is nothing more than a grand mind experiment at this point. Are these claims for athletic, medical, and political eminence backed up by reliable scientific data? Or does this proof rely entirely on a few small select and questionable studies? You might be satisfied with Gauquelin's work, but apparently most scientists aren't. You can't simply blame the lack of acceptance to bias in the scientific community. If this effect was real it could and should be verified by bigger, better studies. So where are they? CSICOP's blunderings, if true, are in the past and irrelevant. Also if CSICOP can tweak the data as alleged then so can Gauquelin. In fact, this has been suggested.

Wiki: However, correlation does not imply causation. The issue remains contentious and the debate is inconclusive. A more detailed study by Ertel (1988) appeared to show that there is an effect. Still, the explanation for this effect remains uncertain. A paper by de Jager (1990) suggested that humans may have an optimal reproduction period and that the orbit of Mars currently happens to coincide with this interval. Longer periods of observation are needed to settle the issue.[3] Another possibility is that the data may have been skewed by incorrect reporting of birth dates during the last half century.

Examples of data-mining can be found in various studies related to acupuncture. Those who are biased in favor of acupuncture have either set up faulty studies, or have tweaked the data, or have simply denied the reality that acupuncture is no better than placebo. Several well-designed studies have completely debunked the efficacy of acupuncture, but its adherents continue to promote it. As such they are like members of the Intelligent Design community who simply deny scientific fact when it conflicts with their fixed ideological beliefs.

Equating Gauquelin with Galileo still bothers me. Galieo had actual scientific data that conflicted with the geocentric model. AND he had a plausible heliocentric theory to explain the phenomenon. As far as I can tell Gauquelin simply does not provide an explanation for what could very well be statistical anomalies. You can't have a paradigm shift without reliable data and certainly not without a working hypothesis.

I say wait for better studies to come along and then start formulating hypotheses. Until then you are putting the cart before the horse. You are jumping to conclusions.

DWill · Tue Jan 19, 2010 1:07 pm

At first I naively thought the claim was that the planetary influence must somehow influence the genetic makeup of a fetus. But I see now that time of birth is the only really significant thing and that genes have nothing to do with future athletic prowess. Two couch potatoes without an athletic gene in their bodies could produce an elite athlete. I'm puzzled at the seeming impermeability to this planet force of the mother's skin stretched over her abdomen. Somebody explain to me why the effect could only manifest at birth.

It doesn't seem obvious to me that prowess in athletics makes the supposed Mars effect a weak one, as Robert says. Why wouldn't the opposite be true, that just influencing whether a person is athletic would evidence a weak force (which in any case the ME doesn't predict), while the ME somehow revealing itself only in cases in which athletes were prominent would take a strong force. The determination of eminence is of course a big methodological sticking point for studies of this kind.


	Robert Tulip wrote: What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence.

This just doesn't make sense. If the individual already had genes for athletic eminence, what would be the sense of getting herself born when Mars is in a certain sector? Astrology and genetics is a weird marriage.

What we have in the Mars Effect is an anomaly. That much has to be granted the pro-astrology side, it seems to me from the information I've read. Gauquelin's results have been replicated. The ME is the one and only (as far as I could see) piece of so-far valid scientific evidence for astrology, and it is a slender thread by which believers continue to interpret random events as being under the influence (however vanishingly slight) of some of the planets. But even if the claimed effect were slight, yet it could somehow be established that the sector in which Mars was positioned at an individual's birth played any part whatsoever, I agree with Robert that this would be reason to consider a different science paradigm. It's just that there's now a spoonful of evidence on the pro-astrology side, and about a truckload on the anti side.

P.S. Another wrinkle in the data is that in several cases a planet had a negative corelation to eminence in a field.

Interbane · Tue Jan 19, 2010 2:04 pm

I don't see there being anything valid to nonlunar gravity being a zeitgeber. Even lunar gravity is questionable. You mention oysters being affected by the gravity of the moon, but ignore the parsimonious explanation that it is instead Earth's electromagnetic field. Look at the following differences around the world in gravity, due only to elevation. These are massive changes compared to the infinitesimal influence of nonlunar bodies. Add environmental objects, motion, location on earth(centrifugal), and the variant location of nonlunar bodies to this, and you'll realize how stupid what you're suggesting actually is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_gravity

This is like saying light from distant stars is influential during daytime, or that the fart of a mosquito is influential during a hurricane. Literally. This is completely ridiculous. Explaining to you how weak the effects of gravity are that you're proposing is like explaining to a child the size of the universe. The words are there, but comprehension is lacking. You're blinded by your bias.

The Mars Effect is a thousand times more likely to be caused by parents fudging the account of their child's birth to coincide with their superstitious beliefs about the heavens. This doesn't mean there is no correlation between mars and eminent athletes. It means the gravity of mars is not the cause.

As for DNA, the shape of it is helical because monomers and polymers naturally form into that shape when combined. Emergent structures are also found with water as the building blocks, in the form of snowflakes. This is the reason DNA is helical. You're attempting to offer a competing reason which is so far fetched that I shouldn't be wasting my time explaining any of this to you.

Robert Tulip · Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:29 pm


	geo wrote: I'm not going to start studying Gauquelin's work because I just don't see that there's a lot there. I also don't have a background in statistics so I can't really comment on the data. However, on the face of it there seem to be a lot of problems, although there very well might be some kind of anomaly that is worth further study. A few comments however. Gauquelin started from the position of trying to find meaning in astrology. I find this highly suspect. I say be wary of those who come from a biased position especially in the field of statistics where data can be tweaked in subconscious and conscious ways.

Geo, the problem with Gauquelin’s data is that he found extremely weak real effects, not only looking at positions of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon at birth of eminent people but also at inheritability of planetary positions, for which he found strong, even compelling evidence in analysis of family birth data. Applied to Galileo, many people in the seventeenth century were ‘highly suspect’ about anyone seeking to apply a battering ram to the prevailing geocentric orthodoxy by ‘finding meaning’ through a telescope. The replication of Gauquelin’s findings under hostile peer review, and subsequent threadbare efforts to explain them away, shows that the bias here is in the suppression of new scientific findings, not in those findings themselves.


	Quote: Your view that human genes could have the ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth is very interesting, however, this is nothing more than a grand mind experiment at this point. Are these claims for athletic, medical, and political eminence backed up by reliable scientific data? Or does this proof rely entirely on a few small select and questionable studies? You might be satisfied with Gauquelin's work, but apparently most scientists aren't. You can't simply blame the lack of acceptance to bias in the scientific community. If this effect was real it could and should be verified by bigger, better studies. So where are they? CSICOP's blunderings, if true, are in the past and irrelevant. Also if CSICOP can tweak the data as alleged then so can Gauquelin. In fact, this has been suggested.

Birth time analysis is actually more than a mind experiment, given that Gauquelin has proved strong genetic determinance. The West-Mateus paper on the Gauquelin Controversy shows the tragic history of a great man stymied and driven to death by fools. Here is their comment on inheritance of planetary positions: “The Heredity Studies: During the 1960s, the Gauquelins conducted another massive study that examined astrological relationships between parents and their children. The 30,000 size sample of ordinary French citizens and their children revealed that when parents had certain planets in Sectors 1 and 4 of the charts, their children were also likely to have the same planets in the same sectors. The correlations between particular planets – such as the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – were stronger in that order. The significance level was 1 million to 1. Induced or Caesarean births did not show this pattern.”

No resources are available for study of planetary effects because mainstream science has determined that anything that might give succour to astrology is outside the pale of acceptable research topics.


	Quote: Wiki: However, correlation does not imply causation. The issue remains contentious and the debate is inconclusive. A more detailed study by Ertel (1988) appeared to show that there is an effect. Still, the explanation for this effect remains uncertain. A paper by de Jager (1990) suggested that humans may have an optimal reproduction period and that the orbit of Mars currently happens to coincide with this interval. Longer periods of observation are needed to settle the issue.[3] Another possibility is that the data may have been skewed by incorrect reporting of birth dates during the last half century. Examples of data-mining can be found in various studies related to acupuncture. Those who are biased in favor of acupuncture have either set up faulty studies, or have tweaked the data, or have simply denied the reality that acupuncture is no better than placebo. Several well-designed studies have completely debunked the efficacy of acupuncture, but its adherents continue to promote it. As such they are like members of the Intelligent Design community who simply deny scientific fact when it conflicts with their fixed ideological beliefs.

Wikipedia is dominated by people who are very conservative about ‘fringe’ claims. This text is an example of extreme bias. Gauquelin’s work does not admit of explanation by de Jager’s Mars orbital theory, as it is about the position of Mars each day – with eminent athletes more likely to be born when Mars is rising or culminating. Geoffrey Dean claims that doctors and parents in France in the early twentieth century may have colluded to write birth times with good Mars positions. Considering the lack of evidence and absurdity of this idea - can you imagine doctors agreeing to systematic astrologically motivated deception? - it can be readily dismissed.


	Quote: Equating Gauquelin with Galileo still bothers me. Galieo had actual scientific data that conflicted with the geocentric model. AND he had a plausible heliocentric theory to explain the phenomenon. As far as I can tell Gauquelin simply does not provide an explanation for what could very well be statistical anomalies. You can't have a paradigm shift without reliable data and certainly not without a working hypothesis. I say wait for better studies to come along and then start formulating hypotheses. Until then you are putting the cart before the horse. You are jumping to conclusions.

Planets are the liminal edge of the climate of the earth, as the physical objects surrounding and protecting earth from the universe. They form an enveloping cyclic environment with real periodic effects. Ocean tides are about 2/3 from the moon, about 1/3 from the sun, and about 1% from the other planets combined. With the size of the ocean (about four billion cubic kilometres of water), one percent is really a lot as a permanent contribution to this base daily climatic factor for the earth.

Those who have sought to prove that Gauquelin’s findings are ‘statistical anomalies’ are now in a similar position as the climate scientists of the Hadley Centre in Britain, having been asked by Ertel for data to support their claims but refusing to supply it. The data supports Gauquelin. The studies which rubbished him refused to accept his methodological insistence that only eminent natural born people be included in the study. Amongst this cohort, the anomaly is that more of them are born with outer planets on the eastern horizon than in the general population, indicating genetic sensitivity to the outer planets.

Robert Tulip · Tue Jan 19, 2010 11:54 pm


	DWill wrote: At first I naively thought the claim was that the planetary influence must somehow influence the genetic makeup of a fetus. But I see now that time of birth is the only really significant thing and that genes have nothing to do with future athletic prowess. Two couch potatoes without an athletic gene in their bodies could produce an elite athlete. I'm puzzled at the seeming impermeability to this planet force of the mother's skin stretched over her abdomen. Somebody explain to me why the effect could only manifest at birth.

Bill, if the Mars Effect is inherited, it indicates a geneplex whose phenotype includes athletic prowess and being born when Mars is rising. It is not beyond possibility, but rather is in fact the only possible answer from the data.


	Quote: It doesn't seem obvious to me that prowess in athletics makes the supposed Mars effect a weak one, as Robert says. Why wouldn't the opposite be true, that just influencing whether a person is athletic would evidence a weak force (which in any case the ME doesn't predict), while the ME somehow revealing itself only in cases in which athletes were prominent would take a strong force. The determination of eminence is of course a big methodological sticking point for studies of this kind.

The weakness of the effect is indicated in the observation that it is only statistically detectable among eminent individuals, and drops steadily in correlation with drop of eminence of the cohort. If Mars had a stronger effect on human genetics, such refinement of the selection would not be needed. The force here is not new, but rather arises from the evolution of the earth within a steadily pulsing field, with all the planets including Mars circling the sky ever day over the trillion days of life on earth. The mechanical repetition of the tiny tidal and gravitational effect is apparently enough for genes to use this small difference as a selection factor.

Quote:


	Robert Tulip wrote: What could this effect be? My view is that, like oysters which adjust to the position of the moon by gravity alone, human genes could well have ability to detect planetary positions to ‘choose’ time of birth. A set of genes for athletic eminence could well include ability to optimise time of birth, although of course why Mars would correlate with athletic eminence is a pure mystery. It just does, as Saturn equally correlates with medical eminence, Jupiter with political eminence, and the Moon with writing eminence.

This just doesn't make sense. If the individual already had genes for athletic eminence, what would be the sense of getting herself born when Mars is in a certain sector?

If the Mars-in-the-east birth decision of a baby is a phenotypic expression of a gene, it indicates the deep harmonic relation between Earth and Mars. It could be that a Mars gene is just found together with a bunch of genes for athletic eminence. Sure Mars is a long way away, but it has followed the same pattern with respect to the earth since before life began. The signal of Mars rising as the trigger for operation of a gene for birth time is not really more mysterious than many surprising genetic facts found in plants and animals. A gravitational sense exists in life, and this is how it manifests in people. This planetary link at birth could be the tip of an iceberg of subtle planetary effects.


	Quote: Astrology and genetics is a weird marriage. What we have in the Mars Effect is an anomaly. That much has to be granted the pro-astrology side, it seems to me from the information I've read. Gauquelin's results have been replicated. The ME is the one and only (as far as I could see) piece of so-far valid scientific evidence for astrology, and it is a slender thread by which believers continue to interpret random events as being under the influence (however vanishingly slight) of some of the planets. P.S. Another wrinkle in the data is that in several cases a planet had a negative corelation to eminence in a field.

Combining astrology and genetics, the visible outer planets all create observed and proven statistical trends in individual charts and family inheritance. However, Gauquelin found no evidence for the sun signs of zodiac astrology, despite looking. The lack of scientific evidence of the signs is a problem for astrology.


	Quote: But even if the claimed effect were slight, yet it could somehow be established that the sector in which Mars was positioned at an individual's birth played any part whatsoever, I agree with Robert that this would be reason to consider a different science paradigm. It's just that there's now a spoonful of evidence on the pro-astrology side, and about a truckload on the anti side.

The paradigm shift here is from an essentially three dimensional spatial model of the solar system into a four dimensional spatiotemporal model. Gauquelin provides a step towards this model by looking for trends on the basis of terrestrial alignments to the outer planets at different times, to find patterns in time. My claim is that I have built such a model of time and it can be seen in the photograph in my paper on the Gas Giant Planets, the Holy City and the Great Year.

The model demonstrates the helical patterns of the solar system through time. These patterns are only visible through inter-temporal comparison, freezing the path of the helix. Unlike comparison between the rungs of a 3D DNA double helix, to see the 4D rungs, such as the Jupiter Saturn 60 year ladders shown in my model, requires that 3D models of the solar system be set in motion, including along the Z axis of the sun’s movement around the galaxy. The resultant helix provides the model to enable comparison of regularities through time. This is where we find the 179 year gas giant cycle as in harmony with the Zodiacal Age and the Great Year. As the Zodiac Ages march along the same path as the year in reverse, they establish a twelve-fold pattern which I suggest is the physical basis of the signs of the zodiac. The implication is that the Great Year causes the twelve signs of the zodiac through its harmonic resonance with the solar system centre of mass, mapped on the topology of the annual cycle of the solstices and equinoxes.

Robert Tulip · Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:39 am


	Interbane wrote: I don't see there being anything valid to nonlunar gravity being a zeitgeber. Even lunar gravity is questionable.

http://www.astrozero.co.uk/astroscience/koll1ge.pdf gives this example: “”in 1994, Ertel had commented on the French sceptics’ treatment of their data. They had diligently assembled birth-data on over a thousand sportsmen, and were loudly proclaiming that no Mars-effect could be found in this data. He made the rudimentary observation that, using some well-known French reference-books such as Stars du Sport and La Fabuleuse Histoire du Sport, the data-set divided into half: those sportsmen mentioned in these books, and those not. The former were the eminent group, the latter were not. The former showed a clear Mars-effect, the latter showed none. One would have thought this was fairly simple.”


	Quote: You mention oysters being affected by the gravity of the moon, but ignore the parsimonious explanation that it is instead Earth's electromagnetic field.

Frank Brown did a series of experiments which revealed lunar effects in oysters, rats and hamsters. See post56782.html#p56782 for a summary of Brown’s work.


	Quote: Look at the following differences around the world in gravity, due only to elevation. These are massive changes compared to the infinitesimal influence of nonlunar bodies. Add environmental objects, motion, location on earth(centrifugal), and the variant location of nonlunar bodies to this, and you'll realize how stupid what you're suggesting actually is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_gravity

Planets compensate for weakness by regularity. The steady pulsing nature of planetary gravity produces effects on earth as the initial conditions and enveloping framework for life.


	Quote: This is like saying light from distant stars is influential during daytime, or that the fart of a mosquito is influential during a hurricane. Literally. This is completely ridiculous. Explaining to you how weak the effects of gravity are that you're proposing is like explaining to a child the size of the universe. The words are there, but comprehension is lacking. You're blinded by your bias.

Gravity from the outer planets is enough to cause 1% of earth’s tides. This is more than nothing, especially since it has been the same for billions of years.


	Quote: The Mars Effect is a thousand times more likely to be caused by parents fudging the account of their child's birth to coincide with their superstitious beliefs about the heavens. This doesn't mean there is no correlation between mars and eminent athletes. It means the gravity of mars is not the cause.

I find it hard to imagine French doctors colluding in such deception and it escaping any historic notice. The genetic link with Mars is far more parsimonious.


	Quote: As for DNA, the shape of it is helical because monomers and polymers naturally form into that shape when combined. Emergent structures are also found with water as the building blocks, in the form of snowflakes. This is the reason DNA is helical. You're attempting to offer a competing reason which is so far fetched that I shouldn't be wasting my time explaining any of this to you.

No, I am not offering a reason why DNA is helical, I am simply pointing out the helix in our genes presents a 3D analogy for the 4D shape of the solar system.

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