How astrology paved the way for predictive analytic
If you Google “Why are millennials”, the top result says “obsessed with astrology”. Whatever the answer, scientists will be furious at the question alone, as most would call astrology a blatantly ridiculous pseudoscience.]
Astrology was significant in science's history, however unpleasant. Some modern scientists are embarrassed to admit that Johannes Kepler, the 17th-century German mathematician who established the laws of planetary motion, cast horoscopes for his boss, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.
Doctorate-in-physics data scientist Alexander Boxer's recent book challenges that view. The book A Scheme of Heaven: Astrology and the Birth of Science shows how astrology was part of natural philosophy until Kepler and Galileo's 17th-century scientific revolution.
In the second century BC, scholars like Hipparchus believed that only with good data could astrological forecasts and diagnoses be accurate, thus they made meticulous astronomical observations.
“The sun, moon and stars were useful for navigation,” Boxer says. According to him, “the motivation for planetary observations had always been astrology” in the past.
Boxer rightly worries about his book's reception. He writes, “Invoking the rallying cry of science for a book about astrology, the arch-pseudoscience, may come across as a little preposterous.”