Why astrology is not a science?

Faith or belief can never be the criterion for some subject to be science, reasons Asit Mohanty

Is astrology a science? Famous Philosopher Bertrand Russell commented: Most of sciences in their inception have been connected with some form of false belief which gave them a fictitious value. Astronomy was connected with astrology, Chemistry with alchemy. (History of Western philosophy, chapter III). But in this modern age when astronomy and cosmology have shaken off all fanciful ideas of the past and has developed into exact sciences should we still resort to teaching Astrology as a science? The defenders of astrology argue that physics is advanced and exact science but physiology or psychology is not that much exact. Many unknown things, unverified theories and speculative ideas are there. Astrology may be such a science, even less developed than psychology. In this line of argument Hari Goutam, the present Chairman of the UGC, defends astrology saying that investigation and research is needed in this subject, otherwise the subject would die in a few years...etc. To defend the subject he also said that noble laureate scientist Dr CV Raman had called it a science. Some argue if it is not a science how the predictions of famous astrologers do tally? Why then so many people are going to the astrologers if it is altogether baseless?

The first point is that there is a democratic procedure of implementing any decision in the academic matters. The social necessity of this subject is not recognized by the academic circles and for that reason it is not taught in any standard university. Before imposing any subject should not they have taken the opinion of the academic community? They were sure that in that case the opinion would have been negative, thus they avoided the procedure and went ahead with their plan. And while the UGC refuse to give any grant for most of the important subjects, in this case in their eagerness to introduce this and such other subjects, they used the promise of substantial grants as bait to attract the university authorities. Is not this attitude highly dubious?

Secondly, there may be a difference in the degree of exactness between physics and psychology but in any science there can be no place for myth, baseless, unverified assumptions and faith in particular. Dr CV Raman did not believe in astrology. It is a lie which Goutam did not hesitate to base on! But even if he or any great scientist had any personal faith in astrology, that in no way made astrology a science. Not the faith and acceptance of the masses also make it a science. Many glaring examples are there where scientific truth had to go against popular belief. Faith or belief can never be the criterion for some subject to be science. The very argument is strictly unscientific and fallacious. A discipline can be called science only when the premise on which it stands is experimentally verified and every inference is drawn on the basis of causalty. The scientific method based on experiment, observation and inference is the only procedure, which develops a science.

In any branch of science in face of unknown situations often a scientist depends on some theory or hypothesis, which may appear to be speculative. But it is strictly against the principles of science to accept any theory on blind faith or because any famous scientist has propounded it. Rather science will always challenge a theory, question it, try to disprove it and if a theory withstands this attack still it will be kept as theory, ie a probable explanation of certain aspects of nature, until it is substantiated by experimental results. Then only it is accepted as law. The history of science abounds with examples of many such speculative theories being rejected and discarded on the anvil of casual and experimental verification. For this reason sciences do not stand still. They continue to advance, develop, reject the old and wrong notions, get rid of their discrepancies, accept and discover newer facts and with passage of time become more and more perfect and accurate. In the backdrop of these criteria it is to be verified if astrology is a science?