Sir, - I am a great admirer of Richard Dawkins and I enjoyed his article (January 21st) on the subject of the validity of astrology. While I share his scepticism regarding the opportunistic tabloid astrologists his advocacy of outright censorship of the practice moves perilously close to scientific arrogance. Given the series of extraordinary new scientific revelations which have occurred over the past decade, in particular, I would have thought that Dawkins would have displayed a little more caution. His faith in his own science is particularly impressive when you consider the pre Hubble perspective of the origin and age of our own universe last year compared to this year.
For example the Rubble colour photographs published in this paper recently of "several hundred galaxies, never seen before", we are told, allow astronomers to "peer back in time to within a million years of the Big Bang". Now there's confidence! To believe such scientific claims or to accept such concepts as fact requires almost as much faith as those who believe in a God creator or for that matter, astrology! - in using scientific logic to dispute astrology, Dawkins states that when we look at Andromeda we see it now as it was 2.3 million years ago, when Romo Australopithecus walked the earth. Apart from the fact that all dates have apparently been revised since Rubble, Australopithecus is currently dated at 1.7 million years old; but what's a million years between similar branches of sciences! The truth is that astronomy, like its sister science Anthropology, is, to put it in plain language, making it up as it goes along.
Finally, in so far as astrological claims having an impact on health and welfare, perhaps Professor Dawkins should have mentioned the major clinical study published in the medical journal, the Lancet by Phillips et al in 1993. They examined the deaths of 28,169 adult Chinese Americans, and 412,632 randomly selected, matched controls coded "white" on the death certificate and found that Chinese Americans, but not whites, die significantly earlier than normal (1.3-4.9 years), if they have a combination of disease and birth year which Chinese astrology and medicine consider ill fated. The more strongly a group was attached to Chinese traditions, the more years of life were lost. Their results held for nearly all major causes of death studied. As Brecht said "the purpose of science is not to open a door on infinite wisdom, but to set a limit on infinite error". - Yours, etc.,
Glenvara Park,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.