THE MAIL
mention India, where scientific prog-
ress and astrology have long coexisted.
The sage Varahamihira, who lived
fifteen hundred years ago, studied the
sciences, such as astronomy, and also
astrology. In contemporary India, it is
not unusual to meet people who are
scientists at work and read horoscopes
at home. Though believing in both sci-
ence and astrology is not new, follow-
ers of astrology would do well to re-
member that harboring such a serious
contradiction in thought may be per-
ilous. One doesn’t need a horoscope to
predict what the equation of non-sci-
ence with science might bring about
in India and elsewhere.
Sriram Khé
Eugene, Ore.
1
NEW ON THE BLOCKI enjoyed Adam Gopnik’s review of
Liz Cohen’s “Saving America’s Cities”
(Books, October 28th). I disagree, how-
ever, with the suggestion that no il-
lustrations of a successful middle-
ground approach to creating affordable
housing exist. On the contrary, the his-
tory of the built environment includes
promising examples. From 1972 until
the late nineties, the World Bank’s
Sites and Services projects supported
the construction of low-income urban
housing across Latin America, the Ca-
ribbean, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Residents owned their own lots and
designed and built their own homes,
and the neighborhoods grew into
largely middle-class areas, high-den-
sity but varied, that housed millions
of people in dozens of countries. Such
public-housing successes offer hope
that a productive approach to urban
planning is attainable.
David Kemper
Kansas City, Mo.READING THE STARS
Christine Smallwood’s article on as-
trology fails to mention a crucial fact—
that astrology is nonsense (“Starstruck,”
October 28th). In terms of intellectual
respectability, astrology falls some-
where between flat-earth conspiracy
theories and belief in intelligent de-
sign. To treat it as “a literary language
whose truth can neither be validated
nor invalidated by empirical science”
is a mistake. Science has thoroughly
documented the weaknesses in human
psychology that lead people to believe
in astrology, such as the Barnum effect
and confirmation bias. Meanwhile,
there is no empirical support for the
claims of astrology. The fact that an
increasing number of Americans make
life decisions based on such a belief
system is cause for concern. Society
will improve only to the extent that
we engage with reality to solve our in-
dividual and collective problems. If we
choose, instead, to retreat into fantasy,
we will get the world we deserve—one
in which charlatans and demagogues
hold sway.
Dan Robinson
Denver, Colo.
Smallwood’s article leaves me, a stu-
dent of astrology who is also scientifi-
cally trained, in a quandary. Astrology
has been definitively disproved: astrol-
ogers do no better than chance at
matching horoscopes with psycholog-
ical profiles in a double-blind study.
Nevertheless, I continually gain insight
about myself and others through as-
trology, and, as I get to know people,
astrological predictions about their per-
sonalities often come true. Perhaps, just
as science guides the study of nature,
astrology may guide our relationships
with others.
Ed Weinberger
New York City
I was surprised that Smallwood, who
notes that many millennials today “see
no contradiction between using astrol-
ogy and believing in science,” does not
•
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