Episode 110

The first episode in a series featuring religious studies scholar Angela Voss, exploring the history and nature of astrology. We begin with a quick historical sketch, with Angela highlighting an important transition that occurred in ancient Greece where astrology moved from a divinatory art to a mechanistic/predictive tool based on notions of causation. The Renaissance astrologer, philosopher and composer Marsilio Ficino gets a special mention before we go on to look at the fundamental misunderstanding he attempted to clarify. Kant's notion of "positive knowledge" and Carl Jung's "active imagination" are touched upon before we move on to the current wave of vigorous skepticism (led by Dawkins, et al.). Once again, Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary is discussed in this context.

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• Angela Voss
• astrology
• Ancient Babylon
• Michael Baigent, Astrology in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Science of Omens and the Knowledge of the Heavens (2015)
• Aristotle
• Geoffrey Cornelius
• Renaissance humanism
• Rowan Williams
• Marsilio Ficino
• neoplatonism
• Carl Jung
• experiments showing "no predictive power" in astrology
• astrology software
• Immanuel Kant
• positive knowledge
• logical positivists
• Richard Dawkins
• The Enemies of Reason (BBC TV series)
• Iain McGilchrist
• I. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary