Chronobiology

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The clock gene has been discovered ... it goes back 700 million years ago. Basically circadian -- light/dark sensitivity. Apparently no genomic evidence discovered so far of the 28 day lunar cycle link to 28 day menstrual cycle however. But there are clocking mechanisms for lunar cycle and annual earth/sun cycle.

The distance between chronobiology & Ebertin's cosmobiology is one small step for (wo)man but a large one for humankind -- perhaps a cosmobiologist could construct a convincing presentation -- there being genomic structures that time death -- like a fatal disease kicking in at a particular time that hypothetically is triggered by a cosmic event like an eclipse aspecting the anareta (or some such)

and presto chango the amazing randi's fortune is ours!

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I also find these issues interesting subjects. I believe the concept of cosmobiology can be linked with astrology. Were there astrological effects before there were humans? I don't see why not.

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Were there astrological effects before there were humans? I don't see why not.
That depends on how you define astrological effects!

Did the number 12 exist before humans?

Is Mars red, or Saturn slow (before humans perceived them as such)?

Can astrology (and therefore the astrological) exist in the absence of symbol-making animals?

Can astrology be stripped of its symbols/symbolism and still be called astrology?

Is astrology about the meaning of something, or the meaning for someone?

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Bill poses important, deep questions. For me:
1) an infinite, eternal, universal immanent macrocosm IS
2) techniques may be invented and applied by human microcosms in order to investigate/directly experience that macrocosm (of which they themselves are an intrinsic and inseperable component)
3) one technique for investigation/experiencing of the macrocosm involves celestial phenomena; it is not the only technique for such investigation, but it is one such technique
4) to communicate meaning among people using such a technique, symbols are developed; all the people (of the particular group using that technique) agree upon the meaning of the symbols they have invented regarding that investigative technique; this body of meaningful symbols regarding that technique may be passed on from one generation of such people to another
5) a common (English language) word for one such approach to investigating the macrocosm using celestial phenomena is "astrology"

The above is pretty much how I personally look at what "astrology" and its symbols are.

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I don't think I could support an entirely symbolical view of astrology. It collides with the use of hard facts like ephemerides, birthtimes and -places. Un uncomfortable amalgama, like water and oil that don't mix. If astrology would only work when we humans give planets, aspects etc meaning then I would have the feeling that it all would be a self suggestion. Dealing with a troublesome situation then would work like this: "Stress is reduced when control over a situation is increased -- and if real control is not possible, an illusion of control will do. Many experiments have shown the power of this illusion", Susan Blackmore (quoted on Rudolf Smit's website)

If I summarize Bill's questions, in short my answer would be that astrology can be stripped of the meanings humans gave to planets and their positions and still could be called astrology.

Dr. Farr's 4th point reminds me of the theory of memes (in the same article just mentioned):
"Memes are any kind of information (ideas, skills, stories) that is copied from person to person. Like genes, memes are replicators, and both compete selfishly to be copied whenever they can. It is this focus on replication that gives meme theory its explanatory power. Meme theory is still new and controversial but it successfuly explains many human attributes that are otherwise difficult to explain such as our capacity for language (Blackmore 1999, 2002)."

To me this means that someone could get rid of astrology if it could be explained by memetics alone, just like someone can leave church and become an atheist. It's difficult to shake off one's culture or belief and may even affect following generations but it is possible.

To return to SGFoxe's initial post, there is thus a clock gene, something that relates us with the circadian rythm. Perhaps there might be an astrology gene that relates us and any life form with planets, the astrology meme could then be the 'filling' and different in each culture. Just compare it with a snake. The fact is that it's an animal that moves without legs and changes it's skin once in a while. This latter issue could have given to several cultures that the snake symbolises eternal life or regeneration. In Judaism/Christianity though, the snake is a bad symbol for seducing man to disobediance of God. Whatever the symbolic meaning we give to this creature and whether which one is true or none, the natural facts remain the same.

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Hi, I think that Chronobiology is a branch of Astrology as Cosmobiology it is too. It doesn't really matter the name they put to the discipline, is about Astrology and Biology, both together.

Astrology is about Time, about correlations of events in time, about relationships between earth events (including mind events) and natural symmetries in the solar system environment.

It is all about synchronicity of events after all.

Sonia

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Astrology is about Time, about correlations of events in time, about relationships between earth events (including mind events) and natural symmetries in the solar system environment.
Hi Sonia,
Here are my thoughts on the matter, for what they are worth.

It is true that astrology concerns time, or rather the experience of temporality and change. However, it is not simple to define what one means by time. Similarly, and despite this difficulty, there seems to be many different versions of 'time' (psychological time, mathematical time, space-time, 'the arrow of time', cyclic time, chronological time, etc).

As I understand it, chronobiology mainly refers to the entrainment or adaptation of living organisms to diurnal, lunar and solar rhythms of various kinds. These very rhythms are the ones used to calibrate our experience of duration, primarily because they are the most uniform and reliable recurring phenomena in the experienced environment.

Thus we are talking about clock and calendar time. These have a potentially objective universal quality, even though there are cultural variations in calendars and so on. The point is that the diurnal cycle, for example, has the same interval of duration for everyone.

On the other hand, there is the individual subjective experience of time, which is a very different matter. This includes a linear sense of duration, which can be expanded or contracted depending on one's cognitive state (bored, intensely focused on an activity, asleep, stoned, etc.). This is associated with transience, or the experience of 'time passing'.

It also includes the concept of a moment, which has no strict definition, but which we associate with the simultaneity of events in the experienced present (such as first independent breath and corresponding clock time). We also have a sense of rhythm, which relates to the recognition of pattern in the sequence of events that mark out the experience of change.

The events which are conventionally used to mark time, such as sunrise, can be given a number or quantified. So sunrise happens at the same clock time on a given day in the year at a particular place. January 27th always has the same place on the wall calendar, and each year it is identical to the next.

On the other hand, each sunrise in a given place on a particular day is actually unique, both in itself, and in how anyone might experience it. No sunrise ever repeats itself, except in the abstracted idealised form of clock time, calendar time and ephemerides.

Astrology is in my opinion not only about the experience of events 'in time', but more importantly is about <i>unrepeatable</i> events 'in time'. This is why astrology can never be called a science, because science only deals with repeatable phenomena, or at least places a fundamental emphasis on the criterion of reproducibility.

Chronobiology deals with <i>repeating</i> cycles of entrainment and adaptation, and so is quite different to astrology. Because astrology concerns qualitative experience, no two cycles are experienced the same way. You cannot repeat last year's solar return cycle. The fact that it is a cycle which will happen again next year is the least important thing about it.

Apart from anything else, astrology is not about physical planets, but about symbols derived from planets. Leaving aside the important question of where the prototypical meanings of the symbols come from, their interpretation is only possible when one takes the context into account. And the astrologer is part of the context.

All this tends to separate out astrology from the more scientific disciplines of chronobiology and cosmobiology.

The relationship between astrology and the experience of time is far more sophisticated and mysterious than any scientific or historical discipline's take on the subject. Astrologers have in a sense invented their own way of calibrating time, one which is designed to attune to qualititative and subjective aspects of the experience of change. It of course includes symbolic diurnal, lunar and solar cycles, but also those derived from the planets orbits, as well as their progressed versions which are essentially a metonymic extrapolation from the solar or lunar cycles, depending on the type of progression (one day of the cycle 'stands for' the cycle). There are even converse progressions, and other forms of directing the planets which are completely disconnected from physical celestial reality.

So I would not agree that astrology is about earthly events and natural symmetries in the solar system environment. Much of astrology is about imaginary/imaginal symmetries, whether talking about those derived from planetary cycles, or the symmetries built in to the zodiac (which itself has no physical reality). The symmetries are projected onto the heavens by humans, and are not intrinsically there, any more than Mars is intrinsically red.

In a post on another thread you mentioned that you felt it was very important to realise that astrology is not about celestial influences. I agree with you completely on that. The study of celestial influences is called astronomy, or astrophysics, or maybe geophysics, and maybe it also includes chronobiology, or is a mixture of all these. Whatever, its not called astrology, which has a completely different purpose to those other subjects.

On the other hand, the way astrologers talk about their subject is full of the language of causal influences, even from those who would also agree with your comment. It's very difficult to not slip into talking about 'the energy of Saturn', or 'the effect of Mars' or 'the influence of Mercury'.

Although this is commonly an unconscious metaphorical use of language, it is not always so. Some astrologers feel far more comfortable with the celestial mechanical model of astrology than any other. Whatever, it can be very confusing for the novice, who usually comes to astrology educated to some degree in the mechanics of the solar system, who know about gravitational planetary influences, that the moon pulls the tides, and so on. It is natural to assume that astrology must be some sort of extension of this way of looking at the influence of the heavens on earthly experience.

From this perspective, chronobiology and cosmobiology have a comforting ring to them, as they seem to be covering the same territory as astrology. This simply isn't the case, and I think it is important to distinguish between the terms, as names carry power.

Anyway, that's my opinion on the topic.

All the best (and your English is very good, by the way!).

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Hi Bill,

thank you for your long and detailed post, I certainly found it very interesting.

I agree with you that we should be able to distinguish terms and differentiate disciplines in their specialized areas, as in the case of medicine, psychiatry, biological psychiatry, neuropsychiatry and neurology. These different specialties are medicine-based, and in the same way I think that chronobiology, cosmobiology and whatever similar new specialized areas with new names are in fact also astrology-based.

Let me explain you why I consider this like that... I agree that whilst chronobiology studies uniform and recurring cycles, astrology specializes more in irrepetible and unique cycles (ie. the birth chart), this is very true, however astrology is much more than that, it also studies recurring cycles and its correlations with human and social developments, see as example the big cycles of the exterior planets which are recurring in time once and again on very different and long periods through time. Each of these periods are of course irrepetible in their own quality but the recurring cycle is also a reality studied by astrologers from all times, say a Uranus-Neptune cycle as example.

Once biological clocks are synchronized to extraterrestrial environment this is astrology in whatever specialization of study or branch of astrology whatever they can call it for to properly analyze it. I think is really time for to take a step ahead in the true nature and understanding of astrology for to understand is true complexity of application and relation with many similar disciplines considered scientific today.

I consider Astrology to be a science because it is based in real and measurable facts, not only in anecdotal experience. Gauquelin et al. demonstrated it. Another completely different issue is the challenge that astrology represents to ortodox science as it is a too sophisticated, complex, individualized and subtle science that is almost impossible to measure and replicate astrological facts in a systematized way.

I put as example my natal Moon in Cancer. Scientists cannot isolate this factor alone in a systematized study (ie. statistical study) because the quality of my Moon in Cancer is combined with other factors as its house position and the aspects that it makes, all of that altering the quality of the radix Moon in this particular sign. In my case I have my natal Uranus making an exact square to my natal Moon which dramatically alters the traditional meaning of the nature of my Moon in Cancer and its overall quality.

It's because this high complexity of chart factors interconnected ones to others that current scientific methods fails to measure astrological facts. Not mention how each person reacts individually to these factors -- maybe in a long future we have a much more developed scientific methodology that can take into account the deep complexity of these combinations but even then there will always be an element of subjectivity on analysing these just as in the case of psychological testing.

But as conclusion I am of the opinion that astrology is a natural science, a rich and highly sophisticaded one outside the mechanical model of the Universe.

Thanks for exchanging your opinions,

Sonia

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Bill wrote: On the other hand, the way astrologers talk about their subject is full of the language of causal influences, even from those who would also agree with your comment. It's very difficult to not slip into talking about 'the energy of Saturn', or 'the effect of Mars' or 'the influence of Mercury'.
BTW this kind of astrological jargon it could be right for the XII century but is completely ridiculous for the XXI century, with astrologers and astrological institutions using this jargon is completely normal that Astrology keeps seen as a completely crazy and marginal discipline by most in society today.

It's time to update very basic concepts I think.

Sonia

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soniah wrote:
Bill wrote: On the other hand, the way astrologers talk about their subject is full of the language of causal influences, even from those who would also agree with your comment. It's very difficult to not slip into talking about 'the energy of Saturn', or 'the effect of Mars' or 'the influence of Mercury'.
BTW this kind of astrological jargon it could be right for the XII century but is completely ridiculous for the XXI century, with astrologers and astrological institutions using this jargon is completely normal that Astrology keeps seen as a completely crazy and marginal discipline by most in society today.

It's time to update very basic concepts I think.

Sonia
I often wonder what's so objectionable about any possible causal/physical relationship between the planets as material things and humans? It seems that this objection has a rather 'religious' origin.

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Eddy, it has nothing to do with religion, I am not religious by the way.

It's standard astronomy knowledge that planets aren't source of energy.

To perpetuate ancient superstitions doesn't help to build an accurate and modern understanding of Astrology, instead it keeps it in the darkness of the middle ages.

It's important to re-think the fundamentals of astrology and I personally think that astrological institutions have a responsibility on this.

I recommend this book as a good basic introduction to the subject:

http://www.theoryofastrology.com/cosmology/book.htm

Sonia

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Hello Eddy. I tend to agree with you, still I do not think this (religious tone) to be bad at all. Astrology does give room for a "spiritual", faithfull thinking. Also, it's more logical to accept that there is no causal link to it (as bizarre as it may sound to use 'logical' here) than the contrary.

Speaking for myself, I find a middle ground to be healthier. Without the scientific drive, we could not hope to see reliable researches on the subject, and even with inconclusive results, I tend to think these help us gather knowledge about astrology. It does take a leap of faith to believe in a art that does not have any way to be proved that we could envision any time soon (and likely, ever). But it would be arrogant to state it is this or that, as of now there is no theory attaching it to empirical finds and vice versa, but that could be just a 'yet'.

From a sociological standpoint, it is easier and more correct to just let it slip in religious ground than trying to bring it to the scientific enviroment. And again for me, astrology is "a gate to God", but that's me.
Last edited by PFN on Sun Apr 11, 2010 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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