Observation and Prediction in Ancient Astrology
Lehoux, Daryn History of Science and Technology Programme, University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada
Studies In History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, Volume 35, Issue 2, June (2004)
Abstract
What role does the observation of astronomical phenomena play in the predictive apparatus of the ancient astronomer/astrologer? This question will be explored by looking at the astrological uses of a family of texts and instruments known as parapegmata, and then comparing them with other kinds of astrological text. By contextualizing a given day or date in a larger temporal cycle, these instruments were used for predicting natural phenomena such as weather, and for regulating agricultural practices. This tradition finds parallels in several 
different omen traditions, common throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, where different kinds of fortuitous events (including astronomical events such as eclipses) frequently had ominous significance. By about the fifth century B.C., however, astronomy had distinguished itself from the other omen traditions by developing methods for predicting even the astronomical events from which its omens were derived. But the very adoption of these new predictive methods served to canonize the timing and character of the astronomical events, which means that the texts and tools of early astronomy became, to some extent, normative. Now, in making his predictions, the astronomer/astrologer (in spite of his rhetoric to the contrary) can be seen to be primarily working from texts and instruments, rather than from observations in the natural world.
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