Nice collection of pseudoscience articles by the UCSC graduate students in the first edition of 2022. The UCSC Science Communication Program students covered: Brain Supplements; Chemtrails; Cryonics: Crystal Healing; Cryptozoology; Dowsing; Numerology and Tarot Cards.
Of course, to get to these articles I flipped past the Astrology page.
John Bartron
Boulder Creek
[Editor’s Note: I had a good chuckle at John’s letter, and then the question occurred to me: “What does our astrologer Rob Bresnzy think about it?” So I asked him! I thought readers might be interested in his response. Regarding the perception of astrology as a pseudoscience, he wrote:
“Western astrology’s best practitioners don’t claim that astrology is a science—which means that it can’t be a pseudoscience! The lyrical and practical truth is that astrology is a blend of psychology, storytelling and mythology. In the words of Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, astrology ‘is the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.’
In my words, astrology is a symbol system that, when used with integrity, engenders soulful approaches for deepening our connection to life’s great mysteries—not predictions of literal events.
Psychologist James Hillman spoke of the joyous work of learning our soul’s code—the blueprint of our destiny. That’s what astrology does best. To imagine that this can be done in a scientific way is irrelevant and delusional.
Astrology is meant to open our minds to the mythic patterns that underlie the surface-level interpretations of what we’re all about. It’s not meant to compete with scientists’ rational, logical analyses of how the world works.
And of course we need both: the mytho-poetic and the logically analytical. I can’t imagine any truly intelligent person who would think that one or the other is better or more important.”]
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