The disclosure that President Reagan and the First Lady have depended at least in part on the advice of an astrologer in making decisions at the White House is just one more manifestation of the resurgence of astrology in recent years. This durable art-form has been elevated to a level of popularity it hasn't enjoyed since the eve of the Renaissance. In what has thus far been a relatively successful attempt to cash in on the triumphs of twentieth-century science and technology, contemporary astrologers unashamedly claim far and wide that their craft is rationally consistent, that it is scientifically based and, above all, that "it works".
In Astrology: True or False? two professors of astronomy, Roger B. Culver and Philip A. Ianna, have produced a highly readable and well-referenced response to these claims. Astrology: True of False? elucidates, often in the words of the astrologers themselves, the glaring internal inconsistencies associated with many of the basic concepts of "modern" astrology, including the zodiac, house divisions and even the fabled Age of Aquarius.
The authors trace the historical develeopment of astronomy and astrology and leave little doubt concerning the differences, both historical and modern, between astronomical science and astrological art-form.
The book's most telling chapters, however, are those dealing with the empirical evidence concerning the supposed astrological influences. This revised edition offers the reader the most complete, up-to-date summary of the available evidence. In every instance the empirical astrologer is found to have no clothes!
Finally, the oft-stated claim that "astrology works" is investigated and laid to rest under the debris of more than three thousand "busted" predictions made by astrologers, ranging from the start of World War III to the existence of an "Anti-Earth" orbiting on the other side of the Sun.
Culver and Ianna provide a sobering commentary on the possible implications of the astrological resurgence. Astrology: True or False? should be read by anyone with even a passing interest in the current astrological phenomenon.
Dr. Culver is Professor of Astronomy at Colorado State University; Dr. Ianna is Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia.