Yes, I’m a F*****g Pisces

I have a feeling some of you (if anyone reads this, ever) might have seen this coming. I’ve been pretty vocal in the past about my feelings towards astrology. I’m not the biggest fan.

To be blunt (and in this sentence at least, unbiased), astrology is a lens of interpreting the universe in which the locations and trajectories of the stars at the time of birth and after encode information about yourself and your future. It is rooted in spirituality rather than observation. It is not testable nor interpretable; I can’t design an experiment to test its predictions nor write down a beautifully concise equation to describe its properties. In this sense, it is the antithesis of physics.

It is, however, powerful. It’s an industry, much like science is, and it is currently winning. My star chart has been read in front of me on multiple occasions, usually at parties. One cannot say the same for the brilliance of the Standard Model Lagrangian or Dirac’s Equation. Many apps are out there providing analysis of one’s daily horoscope and what the future has in hold for them that day. Is there such a demand for a “science fact of the day” or “another theory you didn’t know about, but your cell phone wouldn’t exist without”? Frankly, I’m jealous.

The closest humanity has come to a "Theory of Everything."

Astrology and numerology are not a modern fad. Astrology and astronomy in fact once had a common goal, and diverged sometime between then and now. They certainly predate the bulk of modern science, synthesized by Newton in the 1600’s. To speak broadly, as science’s interpretations have grown, God and spirituality have shrunk. God was once credited for storms, earthquakes, and other natural phenomena we regularly attribute as scientific today. In modern cosmology, God (Genesis, if you will) has claim over the Big Bang (in my opinion). And to speak broadly again, most things after t=0 that you can find in a popular science article have a quantitative scientific explanation, with some experimental backing. A notable exception is dark energy (causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe) and dark matter (gravitationally interacting particles which we cannot see nor find), which combined compose 95% of the Universe and for which the literature has no consensus on explanations. So perhaps my use of “most” was not justified.

There is no need for me to provide commentary on the current state of science. One only needs to read the news to find that the input of scientists continues to be belittled in nearly every avenue of the subject, and is at the benighted criticism of rampant pseudoscience that does not adhere to any doctrine of how to pursue questions critically and scientifically.

I wonder what the state of affairs would be if science was something regularly enjoyed and discussed by the masses. Would the sky be bluer? Well, maybe on the west coast of the United States, as their ecosystems regularly sustain ritual burnings due to climate change. Would the world be safer? Well, we could’ve avoided a pandemic. And even if that wasn’t the case, we certainly wouldn’t be in our current position where the COVID virus is mutating enough to cycle through the entire greek alphabet in naming. God help us if we ever get to the ξ variant; I don’t know anyone who knows how to properly write or say this letter.

There was a petition started by physicists in 2018 to ban ξ from the greek alphabet. Unfortunately, we cannot claim ownership of a whole language.

I am not blind to the fact that science in practice is hard. PhD’s are hard and quantitative analysis is hard, but we have always had those virtuous enough to pursue it and further humanity’s understanding of Nature, which in turn improves the quality of life of the masses. I do not consider myself in this bubble, as I shamelessly aspire to work in industry. Future pioneers need support from the rest of us in celebrating scientific ideas and encouraging future scientific discovery.

Science is cool, and it is very possible to enjoy and discuss science without getting lost in the nuances of how it’s conducted. That is for myself and others to worry about.

If you’ve made it this far, then before you say it, I know, I know…I’m such a Pisces.