The Durability of Astrology

books:


	• Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer Anthony Grafton Harvard University Press, 2001 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Excellent if partial

partial in the sense that it leaves stuff out that is maybe interesting.

It was only after finishing this that I realised that Girolamo Cardano was the same Cardan who crops up in any one volume history of mathematics in the discussion about calculating the roots of polynomials and the development of complex numbers. Cardan was not really a major mathematician, but he did more than carry a spear in an important episode (note added in proof: in fact I've just learned from the current NYRB that Richard Feynman regarded it as catalytically important for western science) - and in the end it was that role, not an entertaining memoir, that makes him important; it's a strange lapse on Grafton's part - especially since he does manage to get in that Cardan invented a neat mechanical coupling.

Still, for all that, this is a splendid exercise in historical empathy, and well worth a read.

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The Durability of Astrology

When examining the practice of astrology from a contemporary scientific viewpoint, the entire enterprise initially strikes one as anachronistic. Figures such as Nostradamus lend the impression that aspiring fortune-tellers played upon the public's hopes, expectations and fears in order to further their own personal and monetary gain. Given this impression, it becomes important to ask how astrology as a scientific discipline fits into the overall history of science, particularly in relation to the disciplines of optics and medicine. In his book "Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer" (1999), Anthony Grafton extensively describes the social and political milieu within which the practice of astrology took place during the sixteenth century as experienced by the Italian astrologer Giorlamo Cardano (1501-1576).

As Grafton makes clear, astrology is an ancient yet durable discipline. Irrespective of time or place, astrologers "worked from the same cosmological premises, projected the same beneficent and threatening images into the heavens, and used for the most part the same mathematical techniques" (p. 5). Consequently, the "continuity of the astrological tradition is, perhaps, unmatched in the intellectual history of the West" (p. 6). The origins of European astrology drew from Mesopotamian celestial interpretation as well as ancient Greek cosmology. To the extent which astrology permeated sixteenth century society, Grafton describes an "omnipresence of astrology" that does not distinguish between "high and low, [or] elite and popular culture" (p. 10). In this deeply pervasive picture, we find that "as in the Hellenistic and Roman world, no one escaped the celestial economy" (p. 11). It was in the new social context of the Renaissance, coupled with the advent of the new media of widespread publishing, that allowed astrology to permeate all aspects of society.

For Grafton, providing an account of this society by way of a figure like Cardano is a potentially problematic enterprise. The very field of the history of astrology is what renders the project difficult. Some historians will take an internalist approach, while others will attempt to explain the cultural impact of early modern astrology. Grafton wants to combine both of these approaches, so as to allow the reader to gain a wholistic picture of the history of astrology. Ultimately, Cardano becomes for Grafton the ideal subject with whom to explore this history, as his work "forms a great, constantly changing screen, on which the reader can watch an expert in several ancient divinatory arts blending their surviving texts in order to recreate what the textual record did not reveal" (p. 20).

A potential sequel to Grafton's book might easily explore the legacy of sixteenth century astrology on subsequent generations. Writing in 1933, the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung argued that the psychological void produced by the spiritual loss experienced by the modern European individual was filled in part by a "return" to astrological beliefs. Prior to the twentieth century, the advent of Enlightenment thinking had presumably reduced the need for political leaders and other educated individuals to seek out astrologers for advice. Yet we are aware that former First Lady Nancy Reagan regularly consulted an astrologer for advice with regard to White House affairs during the 1980's. Grafton records that a "papal bull" of 1586 forbade the practice of astrology and denied the influence of the stars. Clearly this act did not succeed in eliminating belief in astrological interpretation from the public consciousness.

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Girolamo Cardano was an Italian doctor, natural philosopher, and mathematician who became a best-selling author in Renaissance Europe. He was also a leading astrologer of his day, whose predictions won him access to some of the most powerful people in sixteenth-century Europe. In Cardano's Cosmos, Anthony Grafton invites readers to follow this astrologer's extraordinary career and explore the art and discipline of astrology in the hands of a brilliant practitioner.

Renaissance astrologers predicted everything from the course of the future of humankind to the risks of a single investment, or even the weather. They analyzed the bodies and characters of countless clients, from rulers to criminals, and enjoyed widespread respect and patronage. This book traces Cardano's contentious career from his first astrological pamphlet through his rise to high-level consulting and his remarkable autobiographical works. Delving into astrological principles and practices, Grafton shows how Cardano and his contemporaries adapted the ancient art for publication and marketing in a new era of print media and changing science. He maps the context of market and human forces that shaped Cardano's practices--and the maneuvering that kept him at the top of a world rife with patronage, politics, and vengeful rivals.

Cardano's astrology, argues Grafton, was a profoundly empirical and highly influential art, one that was integral to the attempts of sixteenth-century scholars to understand their universe and themselves.

(20010222)

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