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Rational Astrology and Empiricism, From Pico to Galileo
Scott E. Hendrix
Abstract
In the modern world ‘scientific’ is typically equated with ‘rational,’ a
viewpoint that has led modern intellectuals to portray the emergence of
modern science as a process involving the rejection of superstition. For this
reason many historians, philosophers of science, and scientists have depicted
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Galileo Galilei as heralds of scientific
rationalism for their ‘rejection’ of superstition in the form of astrology. In the
traditional narrative, Pico’s Disputations Against Astrological Divination is
often described as a landmark on the movement toward modernity. However,
when read carefully it is clear that this work does not present the wholesale
rejection of astrology that many have assumed, and in fact the evidence
indicates that Pico never broadly opposed astrological theory or practice.
Looking forward to Galileo, the progenitor of the scientific method, there is
considerable evidence that he was a practitioner of judicial astrology
throughout his life, demonstrating that he never rejected either the concept of
celestial influence on earthly events or the practice of predicting the future
through the use of the discipline. Furthermore, the astrologer’s model of a
mechanistic cosmos functioning with absolute mathematical regularity may
have positively influenced Galileo’s own developing mechanical philosophy.
Therefore, the history of astrology should be revaluated: well into the early
modern period it was not a ‘superstitious’ belief system that retarded the
development of a ‘modern’ worldview, but in fact may have positively
contributed to our current model of scientific rationalism.
Key Words: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Galileo Galilei, Marsilio Ficino,
Albumasar, Jean Gerson, astrology, scientific rationalism, science,
modernity, Disputations Against Astrological Divination.
*****
When we discuss modernity and the modern world, definitions
immediately become very fuzzy. Is modernity a set of ideas? A form of
behavior? Does it have an individual ontological status or does it only exist in
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contrast to that which is not modern? An overall discussion of the topic
would be far beyond the bounds of this paper, but there is a key element that
I wish to address: the role of scientific rationalism, and its relationship to
what we now think of as ‘superstition.’ As the philosophers of science, Boris
Castel and Sergio Sismundo have said, ‘The modern world, and perhaps what
it means to be modern, is thoroughly entwined with science,’1 which has led
to a redefinition of the terms ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ as virtual synonyms in
our modern world. Therefore, I will focus on two intellectuals, both Italians,
who have been held up as icons rationality, the fifteenth-century humanist
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the seventeenth-century progenitor of the
scientific method, Galileo Galilei. Both are viewed as making strides toward
a modern sensibility in no small part due to a rejection of irrational
superstition, symbolized in the popular imagination and all-too-often in the
scholarly one as well by their opposition to astrology. What I will argue is
that not only did neither of these iconographic figures reject astrological
divination based on the shared belief that the heavens affect terrestrial
creatures and events, but also that adherence to a belief in celestial influence
was both wholly rational and in fact may have played a positive role in the
development of Galileo’s scientific ideas.
Before exploring these ideas, however, I should pause to explain
what I mean by astrology, and to describe very briefly its place in the
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intellectual landscape of Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. The
discipline owes its conceptual beginnings to the ancient Babylonians, who by
410 BC at the latest were casting horoscopes intended to describe an
individual’s future.2 But more importantly for Western science, the Greeks
appropriated and adapted these ideas for their own ends. The idea that the
heavens influenced events on Earth seems to have been universal among
Greek natural philosophers, with Plato’s Timaeus describing the flow of
celestial influences downward to terrestrial objects and Aristotle asserting
that such forces were responsible for birth and death here on the Earth.3 By
the time that the great second-century Hellenistic cosmologist Ptolemy wrote
the work that would come to be known as the Almagest at Alexandria,
interest in celestial influence provided a major impetus to study of the
heavens. Ptolemy maintained that the celestial bodies are ‘letters inscribed
(and yet moving) in the heavens,’ pouring forth heat on the sub-lunar world
and thereby affecting all terrestrial creatures.4 These ‘letters,’ as he called
them, spelled out different messages as their combinations changed, and by
reading them one knowledgeable in astrology could learn much of use for
directing one’s life. The importance placed on understanding this influence
can be seen by Ptolemy’s devotion of more than half of the Almagest to direct
discussions of it, a point that we should keep in mind.
From our twenty-first-century perspective it might seem odd that the
hyper-rational Greeks and their Hellenistic descendants would have so
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thoroughly embraced astrology. But it was precisely because of their
rationality that intellectuals from Plato to Ptolemy found astrology to be so
attractive. As scholars such as Cecil J. Schneer have noted, the major trend in
Greek and Hellenistic thought was to explain the world and events within it
through the interaction of physical rather than supernatural forces. ‘Greek
rationalism’ is itself synonymous with an approach that emphasizes
explanations that are both logical and replicable by others trained in Greek
philosophy.5 Astrology as it reached its fullest development in late antiquity
in the work of Ptolemy presented a model of the universe in which physical
bodies interacted with one another with perfect, mathematically describable
consistency. Such a cosmological model required no belief in invisible
entities or divine intervention to explain everything from the movements of
the planets to the coming to be and passing away of living things on the earth.
Indeed, the Ptolemaic model was one in which the entire universe functioned
with machine-like regularity, a point to which I shall return.
Eventually the Muslim world appropriated Greek knowledge and
Ptolemaic astronomy, developing and adding to these ideas in creative ways.
The most important scholar to do so was the ninth-century Persian, Abū
Ma'shar al-Balkhī,6 or Albumasar as he came to be known in the West, and
he was the first to grapple with integrating concepts of celestial influence and
judicial astrology—that is using the art to answer questions about the world,
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including the course of future events—within a monotheistic religious
context that at this period still highly valued human free will, as I have
analyzed elsewhere.7 Accused by one opponent of ‘studying astrology until
he became an atheist,’ Albumasar’s reaction was to develop the position that
the heavens incline, but do not compel, human action. Therefore, ‘the wise
man,’ meaning one who understood these influences and could counteract
them, ‘dominates the stars,’ an idea that both preserved the predictive power
of astrology to a large degree as well as the freedom of the human will.8 After
the transmission of Albumasar’s works to the West in the twelfth century, 9
this compromise would eventually make astrology acceptable to most
Christian intellectuals by the fourteenth century.10
Albumasar’s contributions to the history of astrology are directly
relevant to understanding Pico della Mirandola’s approach to the discipline.
Renaissance humanism promoted a ‘back to the source’ approach to
scholarship that demanded a bypassing not only of commentaries on
foundational works, but of translations as well. It was for this reason that the
Italian scholar studied Arabic and sought out the works of the most important
contributors to the Arabic intellectual heritage in their original language in
order to gain a direct understanding of their content.11 Albumasar’s
negotiated compromise between astrological determinism and human free
will encapsulated in that dictum, ‘the wise man dominates the stars,’ would
have been quite familiar to Pico whether he learned about it directly or
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through the works of the thirteenth-century German theologian, Albert the
Great, who made great use of it in his own works.12 Both the works of Arabic
intellectuals as well as those of Albert the Great held a prominent place in
Pico’s personal library.13
Pico would have found this formulation making astrological belief
congruent with the concept of free will very useful. His own veneration for
human freedom has been enshrined in his justly-famed Oration on the
Dignity of Man, which proclaims that ‘to man it is allowed to be whatever he
chooses to be,’ either akin to an angel through the cultivation of the intellect,
or a beast otherwise.14 However, what is often forgotten is that Pico wrote
this Oration to serve as the preface to his 900 Theses. This work came under
papal ban in 1486, in part because of the reverence for astrological influence
that Pico exhibits throughout the work, driving Pico to flee to France.
Influenced by Proclus’ late fourth or early fifth-century commentary on
Plato’s Timaeus, eight of the theses argue that specific types of intellect
derive their appropriate human skills through the power of the heavens.15
Regardless of Pico’s lofty prefatory comments about human freedom - which
may well have been intended to counteract expected criticism to the theses
-the papacy viewed this as an argument in favor of astrological determinism.
Nevertheless, Pico’s position was not surprising. He may have
believed that celestial influence had greater force in human life than many of
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his contemporaries, but it had been centuries since anyone had voiced an
outright rejection of the power of the stars. Even such critics of astrology as
the fifteenth-century French theologian and chancellor of Paris, Jean Gerson,
voiced concerns about potential abuses of the discipline while arguing that
celestial divination was simply too complicated for it to be effective rather
than rejecting the idea that the heavens influence terrestrial events.16
Furthermore, Pico’s sometime friend and contemporary, Marsilio Ficino, was
such a strong proponent of the importance of understanding celestial
influence upon humans that he was forced to defend his views before the
Pope in 1489.17 This was not because Ficino’s belief in the force heavenly
bodies imparted to terrestrial objects was in any way unusual, but rather
because he argued rather too forcefully that application of astrological
knowledge allowed people to elevate themselves to a closer relationship with
God.18 While such a statement might sound odd, all he really meant was that
celestial forces influence people to act in ways that are not always consistent
with what God would want, by imparting impulses such as lust or gluttony.
But if we understand the source of these impulses then we can more easily
resist them and act in accord with our intellectual, rather than our physical
desires.19
Ficino was on very solid ground, for by the time of his writing more
than two centuries of tradition supported the notion that the heavens affect
humankind’s corporeal essence, influencing the soul secondarily through the
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body’s ‘pulling and tugging’ upon the soul.20 By the fifteenth century the idea
that everything on earth experienced a constant bombardment of celestial
force was so well established that no natural philosopher would have argued
against the point, and intellectuals and professionals working within a variety
of fields felt it necessary to be skilled in astrology. Neither alchemists nor
physicians would have attempted to ply their trade without a thorough
command of the discipline and almost every court across Europe had at least
one astrologer in residence.21 Clearly, while in his 900 Theses Pico might
have gone too far in his stress upon the role of celestial influence in human
life, his belief in the power of the stars to affect humankind was entirely
within the mainstream of learned opinion of his day.
Given the intellectual climate within which he worked, and the
strong support for astrology evidenced in Pico’s 900 Theses, one would think
that there would be little need to argue in favor of the importance of the
discipline for the Italian humanist. Unfortunately, in the last years of his life
Pico complicated matters greatly with the writing and posthumous
publication of his Disputations Against Astrological Divination.22 The title
certainly sounds straightforward enough and the assessment of a great many
scholars - including the modern editor of the volume, Eugenio Garin stresses Pico’s absolute rejection of divinatory astrology. This rejection has
been highlighted by those such as Louis Dupré as a significant step on the
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path toward modernity.23 Unfortunately such a position does not stand up to a
close reading of the text itself, a fact that recent scholarship is beginning to
acknowledge.24
Turning to the text, it is first important to note that when Pico died
the work was unfinished and unpublished. Therefore, the version that is
available to us today was edited by the scholar’s nephew working together
with Pico’s personal physician, and it is altogether likely that the finished
product has been heavily influenced by their work.25 While this makes
interpretation problematic, it is clear that Pico’s intent was to critique
astrology as, in his words, ‘prohibited by law, damned by the prophets,
ridiculed by saints, forbidden by popes and sacrosanct synods.’26 However, as
strongly worded as that statement is, we must be careful about Pico’s
meaning. Does he intend to lump all astrology together in his condemnation?
In a word, no. Rather, Pico accepted that the heavens transmit influence to
terrestrial creatures, including people, stating ‘we defend this [belief in
celestial influence] as far as this, that nothing comes to us from heaven
except with light having carried it.’27 While he does go on to lash out at
‘casters of nativities-‘ meaning those who compose birth charts - as
promoting ‘the most infectious of all frauds,’28 ultimately Pico seems most
concerned that astrologers might lead people into a focus upon worldly forces
and away from an attentive regard for God.29 This is much the same concern
that had led some medieval theologians, such as Jean Gerson, to reject
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astrology out of fear that it might lead those who practiced and put faith in it
into idolatry.
The context of what Pico was and was not arguing against in his
Disputationes is important, for the work’s modern editor, Eugenio Garin, has
attempted to establish a direct link between the text’s arguments and the work
of a later Italian intellectual - Galileo Galilei. As a leading figure in the
development of the scientific method, it has long been an article of faith
among not only scientists but also historians that Galileo was a ‘constant
adversary of divinatory astrology,’ to quote Garin.30 This attitude toward
Galileo has also been common among philosophers of science such as Karl
Popper as well as scientists such as Carl Sagan.31 For these intellectuals, the
story arc runs from Pico’s rationalist ‘rejection’ of astrology to Galileo’s
‘opposition’ to astrology in seventeenth-century Italy. However, just as Pico
had no desire to reject celestial divination, Galileo was even less inclined to
oppose the discipline.
The nineteenth-century editor of Galileo’s collected works, Antonio
Favaro, published an article entitled ‘Galileo Astrologo’ in 1881, which has
recently been translated and included in a special volume on Galileo’s
Astrology released by Culture and Cosmos in 2003.32 Although Favaro’s
conclusions were tentative and he suggested that perhaps Galileo had lost
interest in astrology as he aged, the evidence he presents leaves the reader
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with no doubt that Galileo frequently cast horoscopes. We see this not only
through such things as the natal chart Galileo cast for the Grand Duke
Cosimo II of Florence, but also in the epistolary discussions of horoscopes in
which Pico engaged with important but distant figures such as the Cardinal
Allesandro d’Este as well close friends such as Giovanfracesco Sagredo.33
Yet even today historians attempt to explain away Galileo’s astrological
pursuits as an activity intended to garner patronage from powerful people
such as the Dukes of Florence,34 quickly pass over it as an activity in which
he ‘dabbled,’35 or ignore it altogether.36
This approach to Galileo is inexcusable, for as Darrel Rutkin has
argued, if we wish to understand the great scientific innovator on his own
terms, we must be willing to examine his body of work as it is, not as we
would wish it to be.37 If we take the time to examine the horoscopes that
Galileo cast there can be no doubt that he was completely earnest in his belief
in the importance of the discipline. In MS. Gal. 81 we find not only
horoscopes that could have been intended to garner the support of a patron
-such as the aforementioned one for Cosimo II- but also those that Galileo
did for himself, his daughters, and twenty as yet to be identified people.38
Rutkin has devoted some time to analyzing the natal charts for Galileo’s
daughters and for his friend Sagredo and he notes the care with which these
charts are constructed. These charts are now available on the website of
Skyscript and, using Galileo’s own birth chart as a point of reference, I would
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note a point that goes unmentioned in Rutkin’s work that reinforces his
argument - the corrective notes that one finds throughout the chart. In the
upper left-hand corner of Galileo’s horoscope one finds a horizontal table
listing information on each of the planets plus the sun and the moon as well
as the ‘head of the Dragon,’ meaning the north node of the moon. There are
then four rows below the symbol for each astronomical point detailing its
motion on the day in question using noon as a referent point. The important
point is that there are mathematical corrections visible under the headings for
both Saturn and Mars, as well as on the body of the horoscope itself.39 If
Galileo had cast these horoscopes merely for the purpose of patronage or to
earn money, why would he have been so concerned with accuracy?
The importance of the existence of this sizeable number of
horoscopes is that they make clear that Galileo was not at all unfamiliar with
the workings of judicial astrology. These horoscopes all seem to date to the
late 1580s and 1590s while he was at Padua, but there is nothing to suggest
that he changed his mind about the discipline after his appointment to the
position of ‘Chief Mathematician of the University of Pisa and Philosopher
and Mathematician to the Grand Duke’ of Tuscany in 1610. Instead, it is just
as likely that other concerns simply kept him too busy for such pursuits,
especially since he became increasingly anxious to solidify his status as a
philosopher rather than simply a professor of mathematics.40 In the absence
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of evidence to the contrary we must assume that Galileo maintained his early
interest in astrology throughout his life.
This point is not merely one of antiquarianism. To repeat an earlier
point, the astrologer’s worldview was one in which the cosmos existed as an
interlinked whole, as distant celestial bodies interacted with one another and
the earth in entirely consistent and mathematically describable ways. The
Christian version of this system as articulated by medieval natural
philosophers placed the beginning of the system of influences with God, but
Western theologians agreed that he did not ordinarily intervene in his
creation thereafter, allowing it to function with mechanical precision, as if it
were clockwork in the phrase of Nicole Oresme.41 This is the astrological
system that Galileo inherited, and it is interesting to speculate upon the
influence of the mechanical aspects of this model upon Galileo’s own system
of thought. One thing that is certain, though: whether astrological theory
provided an impetus for the burgeoning mechanical philosophy of the
Scientific Revolution or not, there can be no doubt that it is anachronistic to
look for a rejection of astrology during this period as a sign of scientific
rationalism. After all, for Pico just as for Galileo, belief in astrology, based as
it was on the best natural philosophy of their day, was rational.
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Notes
1
Boris Castel and Sergio Sismundo, The Art of Science, Toronto, UTP Higher Education, 2003, p. 9.
Abraham Sachs, ‘Babylonian Horoscopes,’ Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. VI, 1952, pp. 54-56.
3
S. J. Tester, A History of Western Astrology, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1987, p. 177.
4
Quoted in John D. North, ‘Celestial Influence-- the Major Premiss of Astrology,’ in ‘Astrologi Hallucinati:’ Stars and the
End of the World in Luther’s Time, Paola Zambelli, ed., New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986, p. 52.
5
Cecil J. Schneer, The Search for Order: The Development of the Major Ideas in the Physical Sciences from the Earliest
Times to the Present, New York, HarperCollins, 1960, pp. 17-51.
6
The most thorough analysis of Abu Ma’Shar is Richard Lemay’s Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth
Century, Beirut, American University of Beirut, 1962.
7
Scott E. Hendrix, ‘Reading the Future and Freeing the Will: Astrology of the Arabic World and Albertus Magnus,’
Hortulus vol. 2.1, 2006, online.
8
Ibid.
9
Lemay, xxx-xxxi.
10
For this story, see Scott E. Hendrix, Albert the Great’s Speculum Astronomiae and Four Centuries of Readers, Lewiston,
The Edwin Mellen Press, forthcoming.
11
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, New York, Columbia University Press, 1981, p. 206.
12
Paola Zambelli, ‘Albert le Grand et l’astrologie,’ Recherches de Théologie
Ancienne et Médiévale, vol. 49, 1982, pp. 146-147.
13
Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936, pp. 62, 70, 86.
14
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, as included in Philosophic Classics: Medieval Philosophy, Walter
Arnold Kaufmann and Forrest E. Baird, eds., Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall, 2007, p. 515.
15
Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology, Leiden, Brill,
2006, pp. 55-56.
16
Jean Gerson, Tricelogium astrologiae theologizatae, in Oeuvres Complètes, edited by Mgr. P. Glorieux, Paris: Desclée,
1962,caput X, pp. 111-112. Note Gerson’s opening statement on celestial influence: ‘Admisso quod caelum in talibus initiis
fortius agit aut influit.’
17
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964, pp. 3753. For a consideration of Pico and Ficino’s sometimes strained relationship, see H. Darrell Rutkin, ‘Astrology, Natural
Philosophy and the History of Science, c. 1250-1700: Studies Toward an Interpretation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s
Disputationes adversus astroligiam divinatricem,’ Indiana University, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 2002, pp. 261-263.
18
Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 56.
19
Marsilio Ficino, Three Books of Life, Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark, eds., Binghamton, The Renaissance Society of
America, 1989, caput, 3.12.122.
20
Perhaps the strongest proponent of this notion was Albert the Great, who expressed this viewpoint in almost everything he
wrote. See chapter 2 of Hendrix, Albert the Great’s Speculum Astronomiae.
21
On alchemy, see Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Astrology, and the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press, 2006, chapter 1. For medicine, see Hilary Carey, Astrology at the English Court and University
in the Later Middle Ages, London, Macmillan Academic and Professional, 1992, pp. 49-51.
22
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Disputationes Adversus Astrologiam Divinatricem, Eugenio Garin. ed., Florence,
Vallecchi Editore, 1946.
23
Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture, New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1995, pp. 56-57.
24
Both H. Darrel Rutkin and Steven Vanden Broecke develop this idea in their work.
25
Rutkin, pp. 339-342.
26
Pico, vol. I, p. 94. ‘Quis iam igitur audeat homo christianus (cunctis enim nunc mihi sermo) astrologiam tueri, sequi,
extolerre, a lege prohibitam, a prophetis damnatum, a sanctis irrisam, a pontificibus et sacrosanctis synodis interdictam?’
27
Pico, vol. I, p. 253. ‘quod hactenus defendamus, nihil ad nos a caelo nisi luce vehente pervenire, quod Avicenna quoquo
dixit in libris meteorlogicis, lumen vocans vehiculum virtutum omnium caelestium et Albertus in libro de somno vigiliaque
confirmavit.’ ‘Hactenus’ can refer to a point that is no longer maintained, meaning ‘no longer’ or ‘up until now,’ or it can
mean ‘as far as this,’ or ‘this and no more.’ In the context we are considering here, it must carry the latter meaning in the
sentence, for Pico does not juxtapose a rejection of this important astrological doctrine with the statement.
28
Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1978, p. 19.
29
For a much more comprehensive consideration of Pico’s attitude toward astrology see Rutkin, pp. 230-305. Steven
Vanden Broecke develops a compelling argument that what Pico was calling for was a reform of astrological practices,
rather than a rejection of the discipline. See Vanden Broecke, chapter 3.
30
Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life, Carolyn Jackson and June Allen, trans., Routledge,
1983, p. 10.
2
31
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 176; ‘The
Harmony of the Worlds,’ Cosmos, Carl Sagan, PBS, 1980.
32
Antonio Favaro, ‘Galileo Astrologo,’ Julianne Evans, trans., Galileo’s Astrology, special issue of Culture and Cosmos,
vol. 7.1, 2003, pp. 9-19.
33
Ibid., pp. 11-13.
34
Richard Tarnass, The Passion of the Western Mind, New York, Random House, 1993, p.295.
35
Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation Between Galileo and the Church, New York,
Arcade Publishing, 2003, p. 295.
36
Peter K. Machamer, The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, passim.
37
H. Darrel Rutkin, ‘Galileo Astrologer:’ Astrology and Mathematical Practice in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth
Centuries,’ Galilaena, vol. II, 2005, p. 143.
38
Ibid., p. 117.
39
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/galchart.html, accessed 4 Jan. 2010.
40
Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1994, chapter 1.
41
John North, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, New York, W.W. Norton, 1995, p. 265.
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Scott E. Hendrix is an assistant professor of history at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI (USA). His teaching spans the
medieval and early modern periods and he writes on the history of astrology as well as mysticism.