Pathway to the Stars

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What's your sign? When the film director Otto Preminger, no stranger to stars of the cinematic kind, was once asked the question, he replied, "I am a do-not-disturb sign." Whether people born under the astrological sign of Sagittarius, as Preminger was, are more likely than others to be creative in films hasn't been scientifically determined.

But researchers in Britain — who insist they're skeptics — are taking a closer look at aspects of human affairs to see if they can find correlations with the positions of celestial bodies. At the same time, some astrology boosters are pressing for the introduction of university-level courses to explore astrology's role in history, science, religion and the arts.

"Astrology in the academic community is a tender plant," says Christopher Bagley, a social psychologist at the University of Southampton, who heads the Research Group for the Critical Study of Astrology. Begun with a $12,000 grant from the Sophia Project, set up by an unidentified benefactor thought to be a British businesswoman, the center has as its primary aim, says Bagley, "to disprove the theory that astrology shapes people's lives or determines their personality and psychology in any way."

Scientists who view astrology as a pseudoscience rightly edged out of academia by astronomy in the 17th century are disturbed by its attempts to take root again. "Astrology is in the same category as fairies," fumes Richard Dawkins, professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford. "By all means, study them if you want to, but universities have better things to do with their money, time and effort than put them into departments of fairy studies. The same goes for astrology."

Others see the academic inquiries as, at the very least, interesting. "People derive meaning from astrology in the way that they do from poetry, art and music," says Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Liverpool, and know that "it is not part of checkable reality." At Southampton, Bagley is working with three doctoral students, each of whom is testing a "null hypothesis." Simply put, they set a high standard of proof for a notion, then try to disprove it. If they cannot, then the hypothesis may have some merit.

Pat Harris — an astrologer with a master's degree in health psychology — is attempting to determine whether the success rates of in vitro fertility treatments can be improved by timing the procedures with movements in the star charts of couples seeking to conceive. Can astrological factors, like psychological ones, influence matters? "Saturn has always been seen as a planet of barrenness," Harris says, "and Jupiter as a bountiful planet, one that brought blessings." She intends to include at least 150 women in her study and publish the findings by June 2002.

The other Southampton researchers are exploring the purported links between drug or alcohol dependency and positions of Jupiter at the time of birth, as well as the selling of Nepalese girls into prostitution in a culture that places great significance on "good" and "bad" star signs.

The Sophia Project aims to establish astrology as a recognized, fully accredited area of higher education at a British university, and plans for funding additional programs are to be announced shortly. While research at European universities has been confined to a handful of individuals, France's best-known astrologer, Elisabeth Teissier, dreams of creating a chair of astrology at the Sorbonne. The only institution in the western hemisphere authorized to issue degrees in astrology is Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences in Seattle — named for the late-16th century thinker Johannes Kepler, credited with first explaining planetary motion.

"If only to dispel the mythology," the sun and moon are "fair game" for astrological study, says astronomer Andrew Cameron of Scotland's University of St. Andrews. "The real problem comes when you start involving other bodies" that have no gravitational or light influence on Earth.

Among the less skeptical, many see a bright future in astrology's stars. For most academics — especially scientists — though, astrological inquiries should be raised in university snack bars, not classrooms.