A SCHEME OF HEAVEN: Astrology and the Birth of Science

Astrology combines two powerful human tendencies: our compulsion to find connections in everything, and our fascination with ourselves. The earliest civilisations had astrological structures, most famously Egypt's pyramids and our own Stonehenge, and what they may have meant for their originators is a centuries-old conundrum. For Boxer, astrology is intimately bound up with the development of science, and to start with he takes us through "a quick spin around the celestial sphere". In second-century Alexandria, the intellectual capital of the world, a remarkable collection of 123 unique horoscopes have been preserved, prompting the author to compute mathematically the probability of a horoscope's being repeated. Is it really unique? A chapter on algorithms follows, with the author discussing a 13th century system of Houses which seems to him to embody a theoretical ideal. Tycho, Kepler and the Gregorian Calendar play their part in the story, and "Big Astrology" examines the popular revival of astrology that strangely coincided with 20th century space exploration of the moon, turning it into a source of empirical data. The astrological almanac trade was at its highest in the 16th century and then became eclipsed, as one might say, until Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society gave it new impetus in the late 19th century. In 1930 the Sunday Express in London became the first modern newspaper to publish a horoscope, and it struck lucky by predicting that the infant Princess Margaret would experience important events at the age of seven, which she did in the form of the abdication that made her father King. A fascinating history. 319pp, colour photos, diagrams.