Facts in Science & Astrology

[Robert_Schmidt]

I would like to pursue this issue of facts a little more, but it seems to me better to start a new topic for this purpose. If our distinguished moderator would prefer to have this on the existing topic, I will repost it there.

Michael Erlewine wrote: "And the mind can be said to surround the facts like the sugar solution surrounds and precipitates sugar crystals. Beyond the plain facts is the solution out of which or from which the facts eventually emerge and are awarded ‘facticity’ by scientific consensus."

Michael, I admire your gift for metaphor. In my somewhat more stilted language, I would say that facts are “hypostases” (precipitates or sediments) “emanating” from certain hypotheses. (My apologies to Plotinus.)

Continuing in my stilted vein, the reality of such facts—that is, their “thingness”—takes its meaning solely from the hypotheses posited to account for them.

In one of his books, Heidegger mentions the story of Galileo’s famous experiment where he dropped a heavy and light ball from the leaning tower of Pisa to determine if they would fall at the same rate (his view) or whether the heavier ball would fall faster (the Aristotelean view). It may not have been Galileo who actually did this, but that does not affect the moral of the story. The heavier body fell just a little bit faster. The Aristoteleans said “See, I told you so”. The Galileans said “See, I told you so. The heavy ball fell just a little bit faster because the air resistance was greater on the lighter ball. In a vacuum, they would fall at exactly the same rate”. The latter experiment was of course performed and gave the result Galileo would have predicted. No doubt some enterprising Aristotlean would have argued that the fall of the two bodies in a vacuum was the exceptional and not the normative case, and could have come up with some explanation within the framework of Aristotelean physics to justify that exception.

Here we have two different views of the same event. The interpretation depends on certain hypotheses held by the observers. The facticity of the event only has meaning against the background of these hypotheses. Not only that, but other secondary causes have to be introduced (friction) in order to account for deviations from the norm. These secondary and supportive causes are likewise hypothetical and only have their meaning within the framework of the fundamental hypotheses.

Keeping to the terms of your metaphor, Michael, I would say that hypotheses have a dual role. On the one hand, they might be likened to catalysts, without which there would be no precipitate at all. They have this role when they are turned to the world of nature, producing what we call “facts”.

On the other hand, the hypothetical character of a hypothesis, its “if” character, exists only in mind. Again keeping to your metaphor, these hypotheses are dissolved in the “syntax” of the mind. (I am trying hard to slip under Michael’s dualism detector here.) It seems to me it only requires a “small” turnabout to see these hypotheses not simply as agents for the precipitation of facts, but more as what they truly are: bearers of that enveloping syntax. If only we knew how to parse the complex sentences of the language of science!

Robert Schmidt

[Ed_Falis]

Or on a lighter note, as a T-shirt I used to wear back in grad school said: "Scientests should always state the opinions on which their facts are based".

I don't think Robert and Michael (or I) are disagreeing on this.

- Ed

[Michael Erlewine]

Thanks for the post Robert and for taking pity on me. I have packed up my mental toolbox and carried it over here.

Your language is a bit different (as it should be for a dialog!), but I believe we are seeing the same thing.

I view the stream of facts as a continuum from the matrix or womb of time out of which everything must come or emerge in order to accumulate or precipitate, hold together for a while, and then pass through this world, just like the Bible says, “This came to pass,” “That came to pass,” etc. Only nothing comes to stay. Everything else just comes to pass. And its duration or longevity depends on how well it was made, perhaps how important a fact it is. I have written elsewhere how facts are the fixed stars in our mind that shine to guide our way. We could discuss that at another time.

My point here is that the delivery route from the surrounding matrix or solution to the tip of the top of the hardest fact (within the center of that matrix) is not a switch, but a continuous path or road along which are many mailboxes, where each of us live.

It could well be that the scientist’s group of mailboxes is very close to the most exposed part of the scientific fact, meaning: they are very conservative about this. However farther up the road away from the hard fact and toward the mother matrix (amorphous) are another cluster of mailboxes, among these those of astrologers, many of my close astrological friends among them. We are quite comfortable with the quality of the facts where we live, perhaps because they are more along the shoreline of facts. We happen to like the beach.

What I was trying to do in the other forum, rather unsuccessfully I agree, is to point out this continuum we all share and the possibility that various folk hang out at one point or another along it; not all of us like our facts ‘well done.” Moreover, some of us feel that facts are somewhat malleable as they are coming into view or forming as opposed when they are considered rock hard.

And an even smaller group of us not only live out on the shore of facts, but feel that facts can depend on the turn of the mind and ‘in fact’ facts may go in and out of season. I won’t go into great detail here on this last statement, but beware: given the least provocation on your part, I will relate a view of facts that finds the endless reorientation of the mind capable of rearranging the facts to suit its needs.

It seems most of the astrologers I know are quite comfortable with soft facts, ones that are clearly not hard facts, at least not yet, if ever. I jokingly (to myself) call this familiarity with ‘soft’ facts akin to going to meet your maker. In other words, instead of waiting for only the hard facts to appear, we retrace the path that hard facts themselves took back to where they once were hypotheses or soft facts. We like the feel of soft facts and the possible futures we can see in them. And not all futures end up as hard facts. Robert, I have not fogotten your reference to hypotheses as a kind of scaffolding or 'mother'. I would expect that many soft facts remain pliable and never extrude into 'hard' existence, but are forever kind of young in that regard. We could discuss this. And just to prove how incorrigible I am, here is a poem about facts I wrote back in the later 1960s.

Force of Faith

The form of force enforcing form,
Finds freedom from that form in fact.
And in fact forced is freed,
A form of force with faith in form that finds in fact:
Faith itself a force.

Thus, force finds itself in form on faith.

And force enforcing faith in form,
And form informing faith of force,

Faith is that force in form.
Faith is our form of force.

[John_Townley]

Great to see this subject on its own! Definitional language, and the fact that astrology is extremely language-linked, is so critical, as I've been saying, but it's not the only delimeter. In the individual instance, what is the outcome? If astrology (in its momentary practitional handling) "works" do the facts count at all? Whether our current or future facts (however envisioned) lead us to success or not, and whether that is relevant, is one of the problems these definitions daily present to us not only in astrology, but on the real seas of life…here’s a fun, historical, maritime, astronomical example: http://matrixtownley.wordpress.com/2009 ... g-the-sun/

[Robert_Schmidt]

Michael, please take pity on me in return. I promise to provoke you in due time, but for the moment I would like to discuss more fully with you the path “upstream” that reverses the normal process of fact formation.

If I understand you correctly, you are referring to the path back from the precipitate (the scientific “hard facts” as you call them) through certain “soft facts” (among which I believe you include the facts of astrology) back to the source from which all facts (hard and soft alike) flow forth. My teacher, a profound student of Plato, would have said that making the turn away from the hard facts of the natural world and attempting to retrace the path that led to their formation in the first place was to embark on the philosopher’s path.

This is what I really want to discuss, but before doing so I would like to develop the terms of your metaphor a little more—a metaphor that I am beginning to like more and more.

I am stressing the role of hypotheses in fact formation, which may be likened to a support or scaffolding for facts, or in the context of your metaphor, a kind of catalytic agent. Kepler’s laws were facts of observation, and such facts have a certain kind of “solidity” based on consensus. (As you have pointed out, facts based on consensus do not hold together forever.) But Kepler’s laws took on a different kind of solidity when Newton rendered them intelligible by deducing them from his own three principles, which curiously he also called laws. Kepler’s laws then became possessions of the mind.

Although I believe I understand how you are distinguishing hard and soft facts, I would prefer to call facts resulting from observation alone soft facts, and facts precipitated by hypotheses the hard facts.

Newton’s laws have an entirely different character than Kepler’s. The statement that an object in motion tends to stay in motion and travel in a straight line unless acted upon by external forces is an assertion of a different order. Although it is a principle based on experience, it is neither self-evident nor directly confirmable by observation. We can come to have greater and greater confidence in such a hypothetical principle after it has been more and more successful in accounting for, and rendering intelligible, more and more facts of observation, but that is just another way of emphasizing its hypothetical character. Even though there may be more and more agreement or consensus about a hypothesis, it never loses its hypothetical character as long as the hypothesis is used to account for events in the natural world.

As far as astrology as a discipline is concerned, the facts of observation are the internal and external events in a given human life—not correlations between celestial phenomena and human life. As I see it, the techniques of astrology constitute a system of hypotheses designed to render human life intelligible. To the extent it is capable of doing so, the soft facts of observation (in my sense) about a given human life can be precipitated in the form of hard facts.

What has been confusing me about this discussion so far is that the astrological facts are being regarded as the putative correlations between celestial phenomena and human life, and they are being called soft because there is not sufficient consensus outside the community of astrologers about whether such correlations can be demonstrated. To be sure, there would have to be such facts of observation in order for there to be a scientific astrology in any accepted modern sense of the term. And the search for a physical basis for these correlations would be one way of rendering the correlations intelligible in terms of the forces and fields of modern physics.

But I am trying to say that the observables of astrology are the events of human life. Astrology in its hypothetical character is intended to render human life intelligible, lend it a facticity it would not otherwise have. In this regard it is like mathematics when applied to the world of nature. To repeat a statement I made some time back on the physical basis topic, Galileo held that the book of nature is writ in mathematical language. This is the underlying hypothesis of all mathematical physics. But as a teacher of mine once said, that statement forever remains a hypothesis. However, in its hypothetical character, mathematics can help render the world of nature intelligible and give mere observations solidity, and it has been uncommonly successful in doing so. But we do not need to establish a physical basis between the objects of mathematics and the objects of nature itself in order for this process to occur. Clearly, the connection between mathematics and nature is outside the realm of nature itself and must have a more metaphysical basis. I am making a similar statement about astrology as a discipline..

(Forgive me for this statement, John Townley. I am not trying to take this discussion entirely out of the reach of the science question. You know that I take as much guilty pleasure in thinking about the scientific questions involved as anyone.)

In my opinion, then, the validity of astrology rests on whether it succeeds in rendering human life intelligible through the use of astrological hypotheses. I do not believe its validity depends on whether it can be given a physical basis. Nor do I believe its mere usefulness can be the measure of its validity, if by usefulness we simply mean helping people through crises as therapists. (This is of course an important function.)

This was not what I set out to discuss in this post. I had intended to get to the path “upstream” that Michael has brought into the discussion. But it seems that I had to somewhat pedantically attempt to clarify some of these preliminary issues for myself before I could go on.

What I would like to discuss with Michael and others in my next post is that even though the hypothetical use of celestial phenomena may possibly render human life intelligible, that is not the same as rendering it meaningful. In order to render it meaningful, I believe that we have to take the astrological hypotheses in a different way and uses them as supports for getting back to the source from which the astrological facts ultimate flow.

Robert Schmidt

[Michael Erlewine]

Dear Robert,

Of course I am glad to see your post, but as I ‘know ye of olde’, I can’t help but notice what appears as an attempt to define this topic in terms you will be able to use to your advantage. I am not saying this is not understandable and I am not complaining, but I see where you are going with this and it looks to me it’s headed for the realms of philosophy, when I hoped for something a little more sensible… to me. You know I need grounding.

Also, if I play your game, I should have chosen my own terms a little more carefully in previous posts. So now I have to do remedial work (what you and I used to call ‘pig boarding) to try and shunt you in a direction that I might be able to speak to (you know I am not calling you a pig). Where to start? Let’s take the ‘embark on the philosopher’s path’ reference.

Before it would become the ‘philosopher’s Path’, it probably would be the ‘psychologist’s path’, and after the philosopher’s path, perhaps the ‘mystic’s path’ and so on. I used the word ‘continuum’ to suggest a graduated path to ‘facticity’, a path broad on one end (the matrix) coming to a point on the other (facts of science). Every physical thing (stone, rock, but also habits, etc.) forms, has duration and a trajectory, and then fades back out of physical existence to where it came from. This is the ‘things come to pass’ reference.

The idea was that perhaps along that continuum could be stages, ‘kinds of facts’, each meaningful in their own right, but not all based on their sheer physicality. Examples would be psychological facts, spiritual facts, mystical facts, and as you point out mathematical facts, etc.

I used the analogy of the physical facts being like the precipitate of a heavy sugar or salt solution only to point out that in esoteric terms, all matter is considered as internal rather than external to us, and we the mother of it. My point was that some of us feel more like the mother than the motherless child, and so on.

As this started out (in the other thread), we were looking at physical evidence to support astrology. In that thread, I suggested we look at soft facts as well as hard facts, but I did not get into mathematics or philosophy, which are now materializing in your post.

Also, I am not sure how you arrived from my metaphor at the idea of a catalytic agent. I can only assume (being of suspicious mind) this suits something you have not really told us yet, but you want to get us accustomed to that concept. So I am reduced in this post to trying to head you off at the pass, so to speak. I feel like I have been invited to a concert, arrived a little early, and see they are setting up for a symphony when I was expecting a little blues and jazz. So let me short circuit this if I still can.

Astrology to me is not mainly mathematical, although Dane Rudhyar once called it the algebra of life. Astrology does not render human life intelligible. Only we can do that. Astrology is a tool that we can use to identify our self through and with. We render life intelligible, not astrology.

For me, it is all about identification - everything. Astrology just happens to be one of the better ways to identify. Not the best, but still very, very good. I have written for many years that ‘identification is circulation’, that the universe not only identifies itself through us, but that this identification is how the cosmos circulates information necessary for its coherence and existence. I am always trying to bring spiritual ideas down to earth and to make spiritual ideas matter or meaningful

And meaning to me, as Robert well knows, especially in the written word, is always directional. The meaning of something (anything) is but a pointer from an abstraction to an actual experience. Meaning simply points to the experience itself, and actually having that experience is required to ‘know’. Experience serves to ground language in the sense world, like plunging a hot poker into cold water. What in your post you called ‘observations’, I would want to galvanize a bit and call ‘experiences’, it being not enough to observe, which can be confused with ‘watching’ – voyeurism.

All the meaning in these posts points to the sense world and to experiencing life for ourselves – initiation. And we all have experiences, but experience itself does not add up to what is called ‘realization’. Realization and identification is what we are after and astrology is one way to enable that. And I see Robert’s serialization announcement at the end of his post, so I will do the same.

Yes I am interested in looking at the islands of facts (of all kinds) in our mind stream. I am curious how they form and are made, how they achieve duration and last, and how elegantly or bluntly they come apart. And I am interested in what they mean and where they point to. What are they telling us to do?

But beyond that possible discussion, I would like to examine how we astrologers in this 21st Century managed to get in a position where we (as a group) seem to be teetering on the edge of respectability, financial success, and social acceptance, no matter how brave a face we may put on. How did we get here and what can we do about that?

[Robert_Schmidt]

Believe me, Michael, I am not trying to turn our discussion away from the direction in which you originally set it in motion, at least not wittingly. In particular, I am not trying to turn it in the direction of philosophy, except insofar as Plato too wrote movingly in his own way about the philosopher’s path being in some sense a reversal of the scientists path. That was my only purpose in bringing it up. Nor am I trying to make mathematics the issue; indeed, I do not believe that mathematics can in any way be an adequate language for astrology (scientific or otherwise) or for discussing the process of fact formation that we are presently discussing. I brought that in merely as an analogy, and to clarify (at least for myself) the notion of a hypothesis, which has been on my mind for a long time now.

Nor do I have any problem with your notion of a continuum of facts from those that are more mystical through those that are more philosophical through those that we might call psychological down to those facts of science. If I was reconsidering your distinction between soft and hard facts, it was just because, like you, in the context of fact formation, I see them to have just as much ‘facticity’ as those hard facts of science proper.

I brought in the notion of hypothesis (a term that I am merely using as a kind of place-holder for the moment) because I believe it is essential in understanding the process of fact formation as fact formation, no matter what kinds of facts we are talking about. It is a process I find occurring in my own mind, or so I interpret it.

And when I said that the use of astrology may make human life intelligible, I meant that in the bare technical sense that it may make the life accessible to the mind rather than merely to the senses. I am not disputing your point that in a deeper sense it is we who make our lives intelligible.

I hope these clarifications are adequate for the moment.

I want to move to the issue of meaning, and just make a provisional first statement of my own. I agree that meaning of a word is directional and should point to something that can actually be experienced. But words do not exist in isolation and as mere pointers established by human convention. I maintain that they take on their directional or intentional character as a result of a syntax in which they are found. It is that syntax that enables them to be pointers at all. Thus, I believe that we need to take a deeper notion of syntax into account whenever we speak of meaning. What is that solution out of which things precipitate or emerge and into which they may subsequently dissolve again, but such a syntax?

As a long -dead poet of my acquaintance once wrote of human beings: We are the “subject of a syntax conjured in the mind of God”.

Robert Schmidt

[Michael Erlewine]

Not a problem.

I am a little distracted because I am preparing to leave town until next Sunday, but I may be able to write something tomorrow. Until then, just this:

You wrote:

“I agree that meaning of a word is directional and should point to something that can actually be experienced.”

I would add that words with no direction have, by definition, no meaning at all. All of this word stuff is just an approximation and can only be carried so far. There are many important concepts that cannot be expressed in words and that is the point of words to begin with, to point out experience so we don’t need them. The meaning of words can but lead us to a sense experience, but it is up to each of us to take the plunge.

Of course words depend on syntax, structure, how they are used, etc. This is assumed. My only point is that words depend on their meaning, and meaning is a pointer, a simple reference to something other than itself, and what is most wonderful to note, meaning depends on the sense it makes, and sense is an experience only we can have.

Meaning is like leaning, like pointing to something other than then itself, a reference and an introduction. Otherwise words have no purpose or at least no effect.

We can explore the web of words from high to low, from light to heavy, and it all boils down to what the words mean or point to, and they all point to an experience. I find this remarkable, even amazing – a sea of pointers, like a school of fish, all pointing in the same direction, the direction of an experience available to each of us. Talk about signs and significators. They are all around us.

And having that experience we can realize what the words actually mean and begin to know what we have been talking about.

So those of us who love the specific gravity of words and language (and here I mean syntax) are destined to find that words heavy laden with meaning, words that are ‘grave’ and have much gravity are no different in essence form any other words. Words are just pointers, simple references, our introduction to the sense world. When we grasp that concept, then the world of words becomes transparent or void and we see through them to the simple life experience they recommend. We know their meaning and we can use words properly.

A question for you Robert: I know little to nothing about the language and the words of mathematics, but they too must be pointers and have meaning, and even mathematical meaning must have to make sense. So what is the sense experience these pointers lead to? Perhaps you can answer that for me.

[Ed_Falis]

...
A question for you Robert: I know little to nothing about the language and the words of mathematics, but they too must be pointers and have meaning, and even mathematical meaning must have to make sense. So what is the sense experience these pointers lead to? Perhaps you can answer that for me.

My experience with math is that it focuses on how one can manipulate the syntax, semantics and tokens (eg words) independent of the sense objects to which its tokens are applied. If a mathematical model accurately enough describes something in the realm of sense, for some set of purposes, it can then be used to point to a set of related outcomes, relationships etc in the realm of sense. I'm not sure that what we do as astrologers is so different.

- Ed

[Michael Erlewine]

Years ago I coined the phrase Astro-Talk to suggest that the cosmos was speaking to me, if I was listening. As time rolls on for me, and it has, I am reminded more frequently now by my mind (as I look at astrology charts) to listen to what the chart is saying rather than try to have the chart fit my expectations, whatever they might be.

I can’t improve on the actual chart; it is my talisman, the touchstone of interpretation. And if I ever want to have another astrological insight, I must not jump at an interpretation just because it fits in with what I already understand, with my expectations. By doing so, I just close the door to seeing things differently and to having new experiences.

Often the chart reveals itself to me over time, if I will just have patience. Like waves rolling a log ever farther up the beach at high tide, so will repeated visits to some chart factor that refuses to give up its secrets to me at first glance prove worthwhile. Everything has cycles, and that includes my own ability to take in the meaning of what can be right before me in the chart, staring me in the face.

This process of revelation reminds me of the careful work of paleontologists as they painstakingly remove the matrix that binds a fossil, bit by bit. This same kind of patience rewards the astrologer who is unearthing a new technique or who finds his or herself unable to interpret a particular planet in a particular chart. It is not that we have somehow been suddenly struck dumb as far as interpreting goes; far from it. More often I have found an astrological factor that is particularly reluctant as far as revealing itself holds a deeper understanding for me, if I will but take it a step at a time, coming back again and again until I have relieved it of its secrets.

Like the paleontologist mentioned above, so can I ever so carefully approach a stubborn chart factor and gently tease out its meaning. If I am in a hurry then, of course, this method won’t work. It takes time. And I must make time to receive and work with it properly, to knock on the door, so to speak, and introduce myself to whatever it holds for me. I have found that if I will make time and space or room to accommodate what I seek to understand, that sooner or later, with enough care and coaxing, the mystery will be revealed, a mystery well worth the effort and time to discover.

The low-hanging fruit is soon off the vine, but those high hard-to-reach understandings require something more from me. Of course I must show dedication, determination, and patience. That is assumed. In addition, I find I must somehow purify or clarify myself in order to come into the presence of the higher astrological mysteries. These deeper mysteries are not so much things in themselves to be found or discovered, but rather are initiations, the process itself of going within. Years ago I used to wonder what I was passing through, and then one day I realized that “I” was passing through.

We find things out and build a habit of finding out things and assume that there will always be more such discoveries down the line, and thus the habit of linear expectations. But a point is reached, we could call it the ‘end of the line’, where there is no more ‘more’ for us, a point where we have literally run out of time and reached what I like to call the ‘turning point’ or the ‘point of no return’, that is: nothing coming back. And at that point, our whole world turns around, especially ourselves, and time finds us humbly retracing our steps back to where we came from, like a blind man feels along a corridor. I will summarize:

I know this concept rolls off the pen and into the ears very smoothly, but a verbal understanding of a concept cannot but fail to mean anything close to what the actual experience is all about. Abstract understanding is mostly meaningless. What little meaning it has can only point to experience we have yet to have. It takes personal experience to bring meaning to life. And only true meaning in life can lead, in time, to what is called ‘realization’, or as Shakespeare so perfectly said:

“You are yourself no more than you now here live.”