The chaotic bridge between astrology and science

The development, progress and fall of beings; along with the creation and the destruction of the universe lies under the authority of Grah (Planets). - excerpt from बृहत् पराशर होरा शास्त्र

What you just read is almost used as a compass in ज्योतिष शास्त्र (Indian Astrology). But how on 'Earth' is it possible to fathom the impact of a substantially distant planet, that too inanimate, on a newborn mortal (unless its a Krypton-Superman affair). Astrologers even go as far as to claim that these planets also decide/impact the future of the mortal. This whole cosmic social network tale is what is still bought around (vehemently in India), believed by adults and oldies, and also plays a crucial role in important social events such as marriages. But seriously Astrology! You want me to believe that Saturn was the reason that I am reading this blog right now at this place on earth?? For a moment even if I believe these 'planets' to be mere metaphors, the prospect of an amalgamation of my location and time of birth with these planets determining my fate seems quixotic. This cannot be true!

Or can it? 

An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. 

The aforementioned creature is often known in the scientific community as Laplace's daemon. Laplace's daemon stresses the fact that if we are able to pinpoint every speck of matter, every spike of energy and whatever lies amidst; then we can predict the future as easily as recalling the past.  This often gives rise to the notion of lack of free will amongst us. For instance, you reading the word 'word' right now was pre-decided right during the big bang, or even before. There was nothing else that you could have accomplished at this particular point in time. Thus you are just the result or a part of a long-running contrivance that started right from the origin of the universe. Thus there is nothing like free will, as everything is just the result (and not a cause). However, the current moment and all the ancillary phenomena going within and around us are so intricate that we think each of the involved components is independent and hence 'free'.

For instance, have a look at this double pendulum:

At first glance, it may seem that this pendulum has control over its own motion and it can turn abruptly midway its trajectory. But this is nothing but a 'chaotic' dynamical system which is an established, systematic domain of scientific study. Actually, if you know the starting point of this pendulum with perfect accuracy, then you can retrace the whole trajectory as it is. So what seems like a 'free will' here is actually pre-decided. Dynamical systems are among the few areas in science that gained traction not by unraveling methods to enhance our scientific acumen but by exposing the limitation of our scientific approaches. For instance, with the advent of Newtonian Physics, it was believed that physical interactions among bodies are largely sorted. One can easily predict the position and velocity of objects if their initial configuration is known. But this assumption proved brutally wrong under the 3 body problem. In this problem, 3 bodies were to be predicted for their position under the influence of each other's force. But this problem is 'chaotic' in nature and hence is almost impossible to predict unless the initial configuration is known with infinite precision (Please note that chaos has a precise mathematical reference here and not to the colloquial English reference to randomness). This is also one of the reasons why weather prediction still has a prediction window of only 7 days or so. The weather itself is a chaotic dynamical system that involves innumerable parameters that contribute infinitesimally but crucially towards the resulting weather. This is also popularly discussed as the Butterfly Effect (a butterfly fluttering its wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane in another). In fact, chaos has invaded almost the existence of the universe itself as we know it. The solar system itself is a chaotic system. The ice age is known to follow a chaotic pattern. The Darwinian theory is known to have been challenged by the evident resurrection of extinct species (which is against the proposed evolution model) due to chaos. Even the human brain and the heart leverage chaos for their smooth functioning. All these systems portray a general fact: Even a slight change in the initial conditions can lead to a drastic change in final behaviors. In fact, such a scenario leads to a peculiar dichotomy: extreme determinism of a system leads to sheer unpredictability. That being said, the more precisely we know about the starting conditions of a system, the better we can predict it. 

Now lend me your attention and unabashed imagination to consider this:

The fact that we are more inclined towards science/observations and proofs is the reason why we shun seemingly baseless and impractical subjects like astrology. So let us extrapolate that scientific approach of us and dissect our body for a minute. Inherently we are nothing but a lump of matter which includes solids and liquids interacting with each other, resulting into and from electric pulses and other physical reactions. Our thoughts/consciousness/feelings are supposedly nothing but different combinations of the aforementioned reactions. So in a way, we all are just a chemical contraption that started way back when we were born and is still continuing. Everything that ensues (thoughts/feelings/events) is just a product of that ongoing chemical/physical contraption. Now that this contraption view is established, we can draw a direct analogy from the double pendulum. Just like the double pendulum, if we can precisely map the starting conditions of this contraption (ourselves) and its environment, we can supposedly obtain useful claims concerning our future. It may be the case that while your 'matter' was accumulating together as a newborn, the ambient universe had a big role to play in how that 'matter' will shape and behave and will continue to do so.

This is exactly the place where I behold the concert of science and astrology. It may strongly be the case that ज्योतिष शास्त्र tries to map the conditions where it all began for us and based on that predict the upcoming behavior of the contraption (us). With so many interacting entities within this world, the resulting system is bound to be a 'chaotic' system and thus bound to be influenced by the Butterfly Effect. And this probably is the reason why the heavenly bodies (if not a metaphor), the location and time of birth might play a significant role in determining our destiny!

This might seem to be a far-fetched conjecture for now but it gives ample reason to dig deeper into the relationship between astrology and science!