I am currently reading a rather odd book that I found in Norwich and borrowed: it is about how astrology was used during WW2 by the Germans and the British secret service. It starts with a long discussion about early 20thC German astrological movements, one of which found a lot of events were happening which they couldn't explain - they therefore posited that there must be another, invisible planet, that hadn't yet been discovered, influencing events - so they invented one, and an orbit for it - which would account for things. However, this still didn't account for everything, so they posited a second undiscovered planet, different orbit etc. Eventually they had 8 additional imaginary planets that needed to be included in a horoscope and provided ephemeris charts for all of them.
Hmmm.... of course this didn't work, because astrology isn't a science - but I couldn't help being reminded of cosmologists using a similar method - if the maths doesn't work there must be another factor, say "dark matter" or "dark energy" - these remain to be proved, but in some cases probably cannot be proved. I suppose the German astrologers were using some sort of scientific process on unscientific matters - presumably the cosmologists are on firmer ground?
Hmmm.... of course this didn't work, because astrology isn't a science - but I couldn't help being reminded of cosmologists using a similar method - if the maths doesn't work there must be another factor, say "dark matter" or "dark energy" - these remain to be proved, but in some cases probably cannot be proved. I suppose the German astrologers were using some sort of scientific process on unscientific matters - presumably the cosmologists are on firmer ground?
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