Scientific methodology and its limits

Law of large numbers and attribution bias, in combination with what is almost always a huge and inevitably lack of information and data we might call totalizing, are able to call into question almost everything. These two 'laws' of scientific thought can only be refuted positively, by actual and adequate demonstration of proof by exhausting all other possibilities of explanation. Since astrology was brought up let's apply the laws to it.

Astrological events that correspond to earthly or psychological events or patterns can either be seen as evidence for the truth of astrological significances or for the fact that we attribute meaning where we are looking for it, retroactively, and that there are statistically-speaking enough "significant events" in any scope of history to where we might imagine it is inevitable that certain patterns or alignments might emerge. Another big problem is that even if we note very consistent and surprising patterns these can still be "wished away" by appeal to the law of large numbers by saying that no matter the startlingness of the coincidence it's statistically given that such coincidences would happen in a universe, world, and history as extensive and deep as ours. And further that we are attuned to attribute meaning to such coincidences far more than to the far more numerous moments we might point to where no such coincidence obtains.

I personally have suspended judgment on astrology and on most "supernatural" phenomena, I find it very difficult to state an opinion one way or another on these sort of things, because firstly I've had my own strange experiences but none approaching anything like giving me a sense of undeniable certainty about larger significances thereof, and also because philosophically-speaking our reason is able to accommodate either view: reason can either affirm or deny such things or the possibility or likelihood or unlikelihood of such things, there doesn't seem to be any real ground or basis for bringing those two different kinds of views together to verify one and refute the other. At best it usually happens that some "philosopher" or scientist ends up arguing with a layman or religious person, each throwing out their own manner of psychological need and rationally-gravitating methodologies given the kinds of experiences and thought-patterns they've each been accustomed to-- not much objective, actual philosophy, or irrefutable data for either position is offered.

So anyway I'm just interested here in outlining the basic situation as it relates to all this. I see the only thing I can state with certainty is that either position can assert a strong certainty in its defense, and thus I can also be certain that the dilemma represents a true problem, one that cannot be resolved by merely retreating into our respective positions and our own "certainties", no matter if these really are incontrovertibly certain to us.

Common ground is needed. This is very difficult to conceive, given the logical problems I mentioned here (attribution bias, law of large numbers, relative/psychological certainties, and a lack of overwhelmingly certain and objective data-experience).

I've often casually proven astrology to be true by predictions of what a chart would look like given some characteristics. I've done it in the other thread, conjuring up people I was sure to have oppositions. It's not up for question for me any more than gravity is - but it sees at first equally inexplicable.

As a general but accurate rule, the only people who do not believe in astrology are those who haven't seriously looked into it. I've seen the transformation in everyone I confronted with his chart. I've learned not to do this anymore as it is oppressive; but neither as I think Hume has a point that we don't know for certain if the sun is going to come up, do I feel there is a point to doubt astrology when the empirical evidence is as overwhelming as it is for the gravitational constant.

All you have to do is measure it, but you do have to do that.

But indeed it is hard to explain this in terms of what we already know - but given that man still knows virtually nothing, it's not surprising to me that the more we come to know, by the philosophical work of our friends and ourselves, the less strange or unlikely it becomes that we are products of more than just configurations of molecules on Earth, that we actually stand as in the center of a cosmos; that our being is far too subtle to not be influenced by the cosmic majesty of order, which was fleshed out as the argument for possibility itself.

I get it, I feel it even - it is ugly compared to philosophy - it shouldn't go near it - it feels arbitrary.

But it's one hard motherfucking fact of life we're gonna have to get realistic about.

Not that it's arbitrary, but that it is the opposite. Today, I have gone a long way to explaining it based on Parodites' conception of the origin of the mind - as the re-anchoring of beings in the world, in coherence, in being, after the instincts had been 'threshed' by the self-analyzing being; the 'empty mind', or the chaotic firstborn-mind opened itself up to the cosmos as a gaping wound to receive any possible ointment of constancy. And this is still the way that shamans rip open the fabric of causality to the spontaneous dance of the soul under the sky in which the connection between the two is the actual being. This is why the lightning is the symbol of divinity - the coherence of our mind reflects the discharge of cosmic order into the vacuous proto-consciousness represented by the threshing floor, where the wills of the gods bundle to play with man.

Common ground. I think it is somewhere in chemistry. Astrology is alchemical, as is science. Lack of information and bias: does value ontology not predict them? Value. Science doesn't seek value, it seems to me to give value depth, practicality. To apply huge maths to intuitions by relating evidences. This problem of not being able to achieve a totality points to that we have not allowed science to run wild, a separation between psychological need and independent, ideal potency which is not possible as absolute. Rather philosophy waits at the other end.

Yes, I think science's lack is the obsession on absolute rather than specific. The principle is what concerns us.

Capable's post seems simple, but each turning point has already been examined in other posts. Reason.

I think I'm wrong about chemistry.

Common ground will not come that easy.

About astrology, I will say that it is an opposite of supernatural. I is very much chemical, dealing with gravity and light... It could be said to be the effective result of that which any science aspires to as the highest degree of inter-relation.

The ultimate reference for animality. But this is all very anti-philosophical. I will need more space of space and of mind to get back to this. Let it be recorded that philosophy has not yet engulfed science.

I wrote this post an hour or so ago on an empty stomach. I've eaten lentil soup with sausage now.

The status of the argument is as follows:

under scrutiny is astrology.

Note: I can't allow any relation of this field with the term 'supernatural' or any other phenomena falling under that term, this is a specific field of inquiry and relates to fields that are vague only in the sense of having a vague understanding of it. It is ruthlessly exact and there is no room for doubt about the consistency of influences.

It is a culturally imposed superstition that leads people to doubt astrology. All serious cultures take it seriously, because you can not tae calculated risks without it and you can not build greatness without a lot of good fortune.
They called the farao's the cosmic architects. It's a field of knowledge that leads to long term power. If anything it's the actual gift of Prometheus; fore-sight. That this is often deadly is the reason astrology is shunned, but for a philosopher this fear is not quite as well founded as it is for people with lesser inclinations to know themselves. In all western wars serious astrologers are consulted, and newspapers print 'horoscopes' that prescribe events based on sun signs, which is impossible, it is very clear why astrology is discredited, but it is not clear why it is working so well. Again; my best argument is the one I've given today - the moment that being had disconnected the instincts from each other, man stood erect; the moment man stood erect he was crowned by the heavens. As the earthly causal chain was broken, the celestial one was forged. The moment in between is the great possibility that Parodites' philosophy describes and thereby opens up for 'use', and this moment underlies all consciousness. Astrology functions as a particular set of laws on the field of the daemonic formative process, but it is no less adequate to the phenomenology of human fate as physics is to the phenomenology of falling objects. This absurd consistency is why I make such a point of it. It's not that it's merely interesting, it's rather that it is an entire field of exact knowledge that is disregarded with this mere disregarding as grounds for the conclusion that it isn't proven to work. Yes, it is proven. It's been proven to work a long, long time ago and never not been proven since. It's only not been clear at all how it works. But the same goes for gravity, and a lot of things of which we only now that it works.  The actual, historical reason man started disbelieving astrology is that he started believing in the Bible which forbids it. I' sure took Newton a while to get people to believe that such exactitude of prediction could be possible, before he could get them to actually test out his laws. Now the effective terms of astrology are not less exact than the terms of mass, but our words for our own states of being are slightly less exact. Astrologers therefore prefer to work with the astrological names wherever they can. They are by far the most exact terms we have for "human being".