Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype
Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:19 pm
Astrological Ideas in The Extended Phenotype
Richard Dawkins is renowned for his contempt for astrology. Imagine then my surprise to find in The Extended Phenotype, the book that Dawkins himself suggests is his most focused explanation of his theory of reality, an argument which can readily be used as a foundation for a scientific theory of astrology. My argument here is purely scientific and logical, aiming to show that the current mainstream indifference and hostility towards astrology reflects assessment only of its popular forms, and that this cultural standoff conceals from attention a large and fertile terrain for scientific research into cycles in biology, in which temporal patterns caused by regular planetary orbital cycles can be postulated as having major structural effects in the evolution of life on earth.
Chapter Six of The Extended Phenotype, ‘Organisms, Groups and Memes: Replicators or Vehicles?’, provides key exposition of major claims about central questions in evolution, including the existence of group selection, which Dawkins rejects, the theory of memes, which Dawkins explains as viral brain structures, and the debate over punctuated equilibrium. The discussion which I argue can be used to ground a theory of astrology is Dawkins’ critique of the ideas of his renowned sparring partner, the late Stephen Jay Gould, about how evolution can possibly maintain a steady direction of change over millions of years.
What force, Dawkins asks, can be so small as to produce such steady change as seen in the long-unchanged fossil record of the brachiopod genus Lingula? Lingula is almost unchanged since the Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago. The very slow but steady rate of change of this organism prompts Dawkins to use it as his textbook example of an unending lineage, a living fossil, a buffered gene pool resisting change through an evolutionarily stable strategy (pp 100-102).
The question, opening the idea of extremely weak but consistent ecological forces, is how Lingula displays microevolution by ordinary natural selection. Dawkins says Gould “sticks his neck out and hands Ockham’s Razor to his opponents” (p105) through his statement that “a steady progression yielding a 10% increase in a million years [is]... a meaningless abstraction” (p103). Applying the Ockhamite scientific principles of parsimony and elegance, Dawkins describes Gould’s argument that “it is hard to imagine a selection pressure weak enough to sustain such a slow rate of unidirectional evolution over such a long period” as a “resort to the ‘hard to imagine’ style of reasoning that Darwin so wisely cautioned us against” (p103).
To get inside this ‘hard to imagine’ framework of the extreme length of evolutionary time, Dawkins gives the example of a cork floating across the Atlantic Ocean, but one that (as metaphor for Lingula’s stately rate of change) takes a million years to cross from Europe to America. He says “if we found a cork steadily moving at such an extremely slow rate, we would have to seek ... an explanation commensurate with the time-scale of the phenomenon observed”. Dawkins’ crucial Ockhamite scientific argument against Gould is that “when all is added up, the net statistical direction of the cork may still be determined by a slow and relentless wind”, so in evolution there can be forces like the imagined wind that is “so weak that the cork takes a million years to cross the Atlantic” (p104).
Now, my claim that this piece of impeccable evolutionary logic provides a basis to examine astrology is a provocation to the bigotry of orthodox scientific true believers who see such talk as anathema and taboo. For we may ask, if there are real and consistent terrestrial pressures of the infinitesimal scale that Dawkins describes, does this not give us a basis to consider the possible evolutionary effect of real observable physical factors that have just this sort of scale? The moon has orbited the earth about fifty billion times since life began. Perhaps the infinitesimal difference between the positions of the moon through its weeks and months is just such a genetic pressure like the million year wind blowing the cork with a measurable average outcome, discernible by large scale statistical analysis?
Astrology is a magical folk tradition, and much of it deserves the same level of belief as we give to a fiction novel, with possible metaphorical meaning but no literal truth. The scientific consensus is that the absurdity of newspaper horoscopes gives grounds to reject the idea of all planetary effects holus bolus. And yet, when we see Dawkins’ invocation of weak evolutionary forces operating in one statistical direction over eons, we are justified to ask, what would we find if an epidemiological study looked for minute regular differences between population groups based solely on planetary factors? Where such studies have been done, as for example Michel Gauquelin’s examination of the position of Mars at birth against population statistics, the figures have indeed shown there are differences which cannot be attributed to anything other than minute consistent planetary effects.
It is of course rather ironic that Richard Dawkins himself, the bête noire of mysticism, the éminence grise of atheism, should offer an argument at the centre of his favourite book that enables possible support for a set of ideas that Dawkins regards with pure repugnance. I don’t want to over-egg this custard, but we have here a framework for discussion of a possible mechanism for planetary effects, applying the findings of evolutionary biology to assess what factors are in play in setting life on earth in its cyclic cosmic context.
It is widely assumed that astrology proposes that stars affect life on earth. This is a basic misconception of the physics. The actual basis of the astrology of the twelve signs of the zodiac is purely a function of the physics of the earth and the sun, with the stars merely markers of a real physical rhythm produced by the four turning points of the equinoxes and solstices. The observation that distant stars cannot produce mechanical effects on earth is entirely correct and entirely irrelevant. If our solar system was the size of a coin, the nearest star would be about one hundred yards away and our galaxy would be about the size of the continental USA. Things 'within the coin’ have been in nearly totally stable relation since the dawn of life, providing a real gravitational background context for life on earth.
Starting from the slowest such astronomical cycles of the earth and solar system, the Great Year of precession of the equinoxes and poles is a 25765 year rhythm that is the main factor in the long term internal position of the earth against the galaxy. The Great Year is a marker for the spin wobble of the earth, like the wobble of a top or a gyroscope, caused by the torque of the sun and moon on earth's oblation. The question of any biological effect of Great Year precession is entirely within the earth itself, produced by its torque, and has nothing whatsoever to do in mechanical causal terms with the patterns of stars which are observed as its markers.
My hypothesis is that the precession of the observed position of the sun has a dynamic relation with the annual cycle of the seasons and the signs, such that the so-called Ages of the Zodiac exhibit the same physical temporal structure, reversed and extended, as the earth’s year. I invite readers to read my short paper, Solar System Planet Clock, available at http://rtulip.net/astronomy, where I explore further the logical and empirical foundations of the physics of astrology.
Richard Dawkins is renowned for his contempt for astrology. Imagine then my surprise to find in The Extended Phenotype, the book that Dawkins himself suggests is his most focused explanation of his theory of reality, an argument which can readily be used as a foundation for a scientific theory of astrology. My argument here is purely scientific and logical, aiming to show that the current mainstream indifference and hostility towards astrology reflects assessment only of its popular forms, and that this cultural standoff conceals from attention a large and fertile terrain for scientific research into cycles in biology, in which temporal patterns caused by regular planetary orbital cycles can be postulated as having major structural effects in the evolution of life on earth.
Chapter Six of The Extended Phenotype, ‘Organisms, Groups and Memes: Replicators or Vehicles?’, provides key exposition of major claims about central questions in evolution, including the existence of group selection, which Dawkins rejects, the theory of memes, which Dawkins explains as viral brain structures, and the debate over punctuated equilibrium. The discussion which I argue can be used to ground a theory of astrology is Dawkins’ critique of the ideas of his renowned sparring partner, the late Stephen Jay Gould, about how evolution can possibly maintain a steady direction of change over millions of years.
What force, Dawkins asks, can be so small as to produce such steady change as seen in the long-unchanged fossil record of the brachiopod genus Lingula? Lingula is almost unchanged since the Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago. The very slow but steady rate of change of this organism prompts Dawkins to use it as his textbook example of an unending lineage, a living fossil, a buffered gene pool resisting change through an evolutionarily stable strategy (pp 100-102).
The question, opening the idea of extremely weak but consistent ecological forces, is how Lingula displays microevolution by ordinary natural selection. Dawkins says Gould “sticks his neck out and hands Ockham’s Razor to his opponents” (p105) through his statement that “a steady progression yielding a 10% increase in a million years [is]... a meaningless abstraction” (p103). Applying the Ockhamite scientific principles of parsimony and elegance, Dawkins describes Gould’s argument that “it is hard to imagine a selection pressure weak enough to sustain such a slow rate of unidirectional evolution over such a long period” as a “resort to the ‘hard to imagine’ style of reasoning that Darwin so wisely cautioned us against” (p103).
To get inside this ‘hard to imagine’ framework of the extreme length of evolutionary time, Dawkins gives the example of a cork floating across the Atlantic Ocean, but one that (as metaphor for Lingula’s stately rate of change) takes a million years to cross from Europe to America. He says “if we found a cork steadily moving at such an extremely slow rate, we would have to seek ... an explanation commensurate with the time-scale of the phenomenon observed”. Dawkins’ crucial Ockhamite scientific argument against Gould is that “when all is added up, the net statistical direction of the cork may still be determined by a slow and relentless wind”, so in evolution there can be forces like the imagined wind that is “so weak that the cork takes a million years to cross the Atlantic” (p104).
Now, my claim that this piece of impeccable evolutionary logic provides a basis to examine astrology is a provocation to the bigotry of orthodox scientific true believers who see such talk as anathema and taboo. For we may ask, if there are real and consistent terrestrial pressures of the infinitesimal scale that Dawkins describes, does this not give us a basis to consider the possible evolutionary effect of real observable physical factors that have just this sort of scale? The moon has orbited the earth about fifty billion times since life began. Perhaps the infinitesimal difference between the positions of the moon through its weeks and months is just such a genetic pressure like the million year wind blowing the cork with a measurable average outcome, discernible by large scale statistical analysis?
Astrology is a magical folk tradition, and much of it deserves the same level of belief as we give to a fiction novel, with possible metaphorical meaning but no literal truth. The scientific consensus is that the absurdity of newspaper horoscopes gives grounds to reject the idea of all planetary effects holus bolus. And yet, when we see Dawkins’ invocation of weak evolutionary forces operating in one statistical direction over eons, we are justified to ask, what would we find if an epidemiological study looked for minute regular differences between population groups based solely on planetary factors? Where such studies have been done, as for example Michel Gauquelin’s examination of the position of Mars at birth against population statistics, the figures have indeed shown there are differences which cannot be attributed to anything other than minute consistent planetary effects.
It is of course rather ironic that Richard Dawkins himself, the bête noire of mysticism, the éminence grise of atheism, should offer an argument at the centre of his favourite book that enables possible support for a set of ideas that Dawkins regards with pure repugnance. I don’t want to over-egg this custard, but we have here a framework for discussion of a possible mechanism for planetary effects, applying the findings of evolutionary biology to assess what factors are in play in setting life on earth in its cyclic cosmic context.
It is widely assumed that astrology proposes that stars affect life on earth. This is a basic misconception of the physics. The actual basis of the astrology of the twelve signs of the zodiac is purely a function of the physics of the earth and the sun, with the stars merely markers of a real physical rhythm produced by the four turning points of the equinoxes and solstices. The observation that distant stars cannot produce mechanical effects on earth is entirely correct and entirely irrelevant. If our solar system was the size of a coin, the nearest star would be about one hundred yards away and our galaxy would be about the size of the continental USA. Things 'within the coin’ have been in nearly totally stable relation since the dawn of life, providing a real gravitational background context for life on earth.
Starting from the slowest such astronomical cycles of the earth and solar system, the Great Year of precession of the equinoxes and poles is a 25765 year rhythm that is the main factor in the long term internal position of the earth against the galaxy. The Great Year is a marker for the spin wobble of the earth, like the wobble of a top or a gyroscope, caused by the torque of the sun and moon on earth's oblation. The question of any biological effect of Great Year precession is entirely within the earth itself, produced by its torque, and has nothing whatsoever to do in mechanical causal terms with the patterns of stars which are observed as its markers.
My hypothesis is that the precession of the observed position of the sun has a dynamic relation with the annual cycle of the seasons and the signs, such that the so-called Ages of the Zodiac exhibit the same physical temporal structure, reversed and extended, as the earth’s year. I invite readers to read my short paper, Solar System Planet Clock, available at http://rtulip.net/astronomy, where I explore further the logical and empirical foundations of the physics of astrology.