ASTROLOGY AND ASTRONOMY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

ASTROLOGY was an integral part of astronomy and science from Ptolemy onwards. Many astrologers lived before A.D. 170, when Ptolemy flourished at Alexandria ; but he conveniently dates the beginning of an astrological fervour by giving the science a philosophy. Kepler dates the finish of the astrological vogue much less sharply, for the horoscopes only melted slowly out of seventeenth-century science. There were, of course, dissents during the long astrological grip on the best minds : they were active in the beginning and they were gathering towards the end. Astrology, however, as the history of science from Ptolemy to Kepler shows, is one firmly established and finally discarded hypothesis of science.