A Scheme of Heaven - Astrology and the Birth of Science

Despite a resurgence in popularity, horoscopes are generally considered to be pseudoscience today - but they were once a cutting-edge scientific tool. In this ingenious work of history, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines a treasure trove of esoteric classical sources to expose the deep imaginative framework by which - for millennia - we made sense of our fates. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world's most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history's most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. A Scheme of Heaven explores the wonderful subtleties of astrological ideas. Telling the stories of their inventors and most influential exponents, Boxer puts them through their paces using modern data sets - finding that the methods of today's scientists are often uncomfortably close to those of astrology's ancient sages.

Product details

• Authors: Alexander Boxer
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.01.2020
• EAN: 9781781259634
• ISBN: 978-1-78125-963-4
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 240 mm x 33 mm
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); SCIENCE / History, BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Astrology / General, Astrology, History of Science, Popular astronomy & space, Astronomical charts & atlases, Astronomical charts and atlases