Hendrixfor Rational Magic WITHCOMMENTS

Rational Astrology and Scientific Rationalism in Premodern
Europe
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, one of the progenitors 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

2 Rational Astrology and Empiricism, From Pico to Galileo
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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: 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
virtual redefinition of the terms “rational” and “scientific” as near synonyms
in our modern world.2 Therefore, I will examine the intellectual background
of two premodern scholars, both Italians, who have been held up as icons of
rationality, the fifteenth-century humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and
that 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 neither of these iconographic figures
rejected astrological divination, but instead they shared a belief that the
heavens affect terrestrial creatures and events, which was common to most
intellectuals of the premodern West. Furthermore, adherence to a belief in
celestial influence and the predictive astrology that flowed from this belief
was wholly rational within the context of Renaissance and early modern
natural philosophy with its Greek, Arabic, and Medieval underpinnings.

Scott E. Hendrix 3
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Finally, we should be willing to consider the possibility that interest in
astrology may have even played a positive role in the development of
Galileo’s scientific ideas. In other words, a belief system now thoroughly
rejected by modern science may have prompted some of the foundational
scientific developments of the West.
Before exploring these arguments, however, I should briefly pause
to consider two points: the meaning of the terms “rational” and “astrology.”
Beginning with the question of what it is to be rational or behave rationally
even a surface skimming of the literature demonstrates that such a seemingly
basic and non-contentious term as “rational” is nothing of the sort. The
debate itself is a wide-ranging one, based as it is on such larger concepts as
the nature of evidence and the ontological status of knowledge itself, and I do
not intend to attempt a solution here as that is too far beyond the scope of my
study, and in any case my colleague Brian Feltham has dealt with the larger
questions with far more perspicacity than I could manage in his chapter,
“Magic and Practical Agency,” included earlier in this volume. However, it is
necessary for me to explain very briefly my understanding of “rational” so I

1
Boris Castel and Sergio Sismundo, The Art of Science, Toronto, UTP
Higher Education, 2003, p. 9.
2
I discuss this issue at some length in my article, “Natural Philosophy or
Science in Premodern Epistemic Regimes? The Case of the Astrology of
Albert the Great and Galileo Galilei.” Teorie vědy / Theory of Science:
Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science, XXXII.2 (2011):
forthcoming.
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can demonstrate how Renaissance and early modern astrology met the
criteria of rationality.
In short, my view follows that of Steven Lukes, whose foundational
principle in his analysis of the subject is that “there are contextually-provided
criteria for deciding what counts as a “good reason” for holding a belief,”
removing “rationality” from the realm of unchanging concepts with
independent ontological status.3 In turn, Lukes has been influenced quite
fruitfully by the work of Peter Winch, who argues that there is no single
rationality, but rather that this concept is only explicable on a contextual
basis. Whether an individual is seen as rational can only be adjudicated based
upon whether or not he or she acts—or thinks—in a way that conforms to the
norms of the culture to which the person belongs.4 This position should not
be taken as necessarily relativist in regards to the reality of the
phenomenological world. Rather, the focus of this approach is the way in
which objective phenomena are interpreted and understood through the lens
of the basic beliefs of the individual. Such beliefs are constructed upon the
foundational knowledge and ideas the individual has acquired as part of his
or her historical and cultural heritage, and are seen to be held not as a set of
3
Steven Lukes, ‘Some Problems About Rationality,’ Archives of European
Sociology, vol. VIII, 1967, pp. 247-264, 263.
4
Peter Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society,’ American Philosophical
Quarterly, vol. I, 1964, pp. 307-324.
Scott E. Hendrix 5
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ideas accepted by choice, but rather as a conceptual framework “forced upon
him by his experience of the world.”5 Therefore if we want to understand
rationality in any given time and place, we must consider the background and
cultural norms making up the constituent building blocks of each particular
form of rationality, since there is no single absolute model upon which one
may rely.
Within this model of rationality, drawing upon the thought of the
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, rational actors are seen to perform rationality
through “a sort of metanoia [meaning a personal change or metamorphosis]
marked in particular by a bracketing of beliefs and of ordinary modes of
thought and language, which is the correlate of a tacit adherence to the stakes
and the rules of the game.”6 By the time of the high Middle Ages the rules of
this game were set through the exercise of institutional capital orchestrated
within the locus of the various universities that had been established across
Europe beginning with the University of Bologna in 1189.7 Within this
context intellectuals dealing with natural philosophical questions were almost
always university graduates, creating a situation whereby the investigation of

5
Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason, Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2005, 2nd edition, p. 17.
6
Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Peculiar History of Scientific Reason,’ Sociological
Forum, vol. 6, No. 1, 1991, pp. 3-26, p. 8.
7
Edward Grant, The Foundations of the Modern Sciences in the Middle Ages,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, chpt. 3.
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the natural world through the application of rules established by Greek and
Hellenistic thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy was dogmatically held to
be the very form of what it was to be a rational individual.8 The result was a
premodern European intellectual class that shared a set of presuppositions
taken for granted and held to be beyond dispute - a habitus - inculcated
through their common education. The component parts of this education that
are most relevant to our current study included the reading of a shared
literature written primarily by Greek and Arabic authors understood through
shared forms of analysis driven by basic assumptions about the world derived
from this common experience and reinforced by the authority of professors,
degree-granting institutions, and the professionalization of the intellectual
class in Europe.
This understanding of rationality is not peculiar to the premodern
world; the questions an intellectual asks and the basic contexts within which
data are to be interpreted or ideas are evaluated ordinarily derive from the
society within which one lives.9 Therefore, in the absence of revolutionary
paradigmatic change beliefs within a society typically develop from older
ideas, as individuals analyze the world around them through the lens of their
8
Cf. Bourdieu’s analysis of the functioning of investigators within the
modern scientific fields. Bourdieu, p. 8.
9
Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1990, p. 12.
Scott E. Hendrix 7
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education, experiences, religion, and other important aspects of their
worldview. Very few if any beliefs can be considered free-standing; instead,
concepts, interpretations, and analyses are conjoined to those a person has
acquired through his or her cultural and intellectual heritage.10 It is the
conjunctive nature of beliefs that make astrology in premodern Europe
thoroughly rational, built as it was on an internally consistent set of principles
validated both by empirical evidence interpreted through the lens of the
astrological conceptual model as well as methods of analysis constructed
over many centuries that had survived repeated challenge and testing.
This brings us, then, to astrology itself. For the purpose of this
study, this term refers to the study of the influences transmitted by the
heavens, usually done in order to make prognostications about terrestrial
events. The discipline owes its conceptual beginnings to the ancient
Babylonians, who by 410 BCE at the latest were casting horoscopes intended
to describe an individual’s future.11 There is much that we do not know about
the Babylonian astrological system, but we do know that by the end of the
fourth century BCE or the beginning of the fifth, priests trained in
mathematical astronomy and divinatory techniques not only interpreted the
meaning of celestial phenomena as they occurred, but also regularly made

10
Swinburne, pp. 4-9.
11
Abraham Sachs, ‘Babylonian Horoscopes,’ Journal of Cuneiform Studies,
vol. VI, 1952, pp. 54-56.
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predictions about future events based on analyses of the future positions of
celestial bodies.12 These officials based their predictions not on internally
speculative judgments, but rather on an evaluation of empirical data gathered
from centuries of celestial observations informed by complex mathematical
modelling and theoretical analysis that scholars such as G.E.R. Lloyd have
argued fits the definition of “science” for the complexity and coherence of its
ordering.13
But more importantly for Western intellectual history, the Greeks
appropriated and adapted these ideas for their own ends. The concept 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.14 By
the time the great second-century Hellenistic cosmologist Ptolemy wrote the
12
Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, Dover Publications,
1969, 2nd edition, pp., 29-30.
13
Geoffrey E.R. Lloyd, ‘On the ‘Origins’ of Science,’ Proceedings of the
British Academy, 105, 2000, pp. 1-16. However, while Lloyd’s point about
the conceptual and theoretical sophistication of this early form of astrology is
well taken, I should note that the application of such terminology seems to
me to be dangerously anachronistic. I develop this argument at some length
in my article, “Natural Philosophy or Science in Premodern Epistemic
Regimes? The Case of the Astrology of Albert the Great and Galileo Galilei.”
14
S. J. Tester, A History of Western Astrology, Woodbridge, Boydell Press,
1987, p. 177.
Scott E. Hendrix 9
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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.15 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
the subject, a point that we should keep in mind given the important place
that this work would hold in the study and practice of astrology in the
following centuries.
However, Greek and Hellenistic writers did not simply take the
rationality of astrology for granted. This evaluation was built upon the
premise of the centrality of the earth in the cosmos coupled with the basic
assumption that all heavenly bodies emit a powerful, affecting force in accord
with a model of transmission based on Platonic and Neoplatonic notions
about the role of light as the universal element linking the entire universe
together.16 Therefore, the supralunary world of celestial bodies in constant

15
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.
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motion was held to influence terrestrial events through the transmission of
rays of light imparted with heavenly power. Aristotle presented this model of
the universe as a tightly-ordered and interlinked whole in his Metaphysics,
returning to the notion in De caelo (On Heaven) and De generatione et
corruptione (On Generation and Corruption); the result was the foundation
for what would become the normative cosmological model in Greek and
Hellenistic thought.17 As Ptolemy states in his Tetrabiblos
A very few considerations would make it apparent to all that a

certain power emanating from the eternal ethereal substance is
dispersed through and permeates the whole region about the
earth, which throughout is subject to change, since, of the primary
sublunar elements, fire and air are encompassed and changed by
the motions in the ether, and in turn encompass and change all
else, earth and water and the plants and animals therein.18
Within this cosmological model in which all things are interconnected, the
human body was presumed to be a microcosmic representation of the larger
macrocosm of the universe. Celestial motion, combined with the qualities of
individual celestial objects, affected the four humors of the human body by
imparting these light rays. This explains why Greek natural philosophy held
16
S. J. Tester, A History of Western Astrology, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Boydell
Press, 1987, chpt. 4.
17
A.J. Festugière, La revelation d'Hermès Trismégiste, avec un appendice
sur l'hermétisme arabe par L. Massignon, Paris, Lecoffre, 1944, vol. 1, p. 89;
North, pp. 45-51.
18
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Loeb Classical Library Edition, F.E. Robbins, ed.
and trans., Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940, p. 7.
Scott E. Hendrix 11
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celestial influence to be one of the most important determining factors for
doctors to consider when attempting to cure any human ailment.
From our twenty-first-century perspective it might seem odd that the
hyper-rational Greeks and their Hellenistic descendants would have so
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.19 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 terrestrial objects.
Indeed, the Ptolemaic model was one in which the entire universe functioned
with machine-like regularity.
19
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.
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It was the very rationality of this system coupled with its intrinsic
usefulness due to its explanatory and predictive potential that made it
attractive to Muslim intellectuals during the period of Islamic expansion that
began in the seventh century of the Common Era. Islam spread first through
the Arabian Peninsula and in the centuries thereafter its followers would
come to dominate the Near East - including much territory that had been
under the control of the Byzantine Empire for centuries - , Northern Africa,
and almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula. In this wide-ranging region,
intellectuals who shared Arabic as their common language became
acquainted with Greek learning through a variety of channels, with perhaps
the most important being the Nestorian Christians in Syria who were
thoroughly immersed in Hellenistic culture due to their Byzantine roots; as a
persecuted religious minority they had no love for the Byzantines and did not
hesitate to work with their new Muslim masters. However, it was not Greek
poetry or drama that attracted the scholars of the Islamic crescent, but the
fields of knowledge that offered the concretely useful tools that could be
applied to make their lives immediately better through the benefits derived. It
is for this reason that Greek medical knowledge became so highly prized in
the new Muslim-dominated territories, which led to an interest in astrology

Scott E. Hendrix 13
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due to its close associations with medicine thanks to its diagnostic power.20
Still, there were no Arabic translations of comprehensively astrological
treatises until the ninth century, which both limited the practice of astrology
and fostered suspicion of the poorly-understood predictive discipline. The
first translation of an astronomical text did not occur until 803, when either
Ibrahim al-Fazari or his son Muhammad translated the Indian Sindhind, a
work based on Alexandrian Greek learning. The Sindhind was a treatise on
astronomy and mathematics not designed for practical application, so it did
little to promote astrological practice but it did provide an immediate catalyst
for heightened interest in the study of the heavens. Shortly thereafter, an
unknown scholar translated Ptolemy’s Almagest to fill the gaps left by the
Sindhind. The Almagest, along with Euclid’s Elements, provided the basis for
the practice of applied astronomy, or what would come to be known as
astrology.21
However, intellectuals in the Muslim world did not simply
appropriate and regurgitate Greek knowledge and Ptolemaic astronomy;
instead many developed and added to Greek ideas in creative ways. The most
20
David Pingree, “Astrology,” in Religion, Learning, and Science in the
‘Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L.Young, J. D. Latham, and R. B. Serjeant,
Cambridge, Eng., Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 290- 99.
21
George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during
the Golden Age of Islam, New York: New York University Press, 1994, pp.
67-68.
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important scholar to do so was the ninth-century Persian, Abū Ma'shar al-
Balkhī (787-886),22 or Albumasar as he came to be known in the West. 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,
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.23 Accused by one opponent of “studying astrology until he
became an atheist,” Albumasar refused to back down in the face of
religiously-motivated attacks. And with good reason, for within the context
of his education and philosophical belief system, to have done so would have
required that he surrender rationality itself, for astrological forces were
integral to the universe that he observed, as seen through the lens of the best
Greek and Hellenistic natural philosophy available to him.
In fact, the centrality of celestial forces to the cosmological model
that Albumasar inherited from the Greek world led him to argue that
astrology was superior to all other forms of natural philosophy. He believed it
provided the basis for the other sciences, while such fields as medicine
22
The most thorough study of Abu Ma’Shar is Richard Lemay’s Abu
Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, Beirut, American
University of Beirut, 1962.
23
Scott E. Hendrix, ‘Reading the Future and Freeing the Will: Astrology of
the Arabic World and Albertus Magnus,’ Hortulus, vol. 2.1, 2006, pp. 30-49.
Scott E. Hendrix 15
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merely expanded its principles in a narrowly utilitarian fashion.24 In order to
promote astrology, Albumasar wrote compendia of astrological axioms
intended as practical manuals and beginner’s primers.25 However, he viewed
himself as much more than simply a compiler of others’ ideas. He believed
that all thought was derived from a single antediluvian revelation; thus, by
piecing together elements from different sources, a scholar could arrive at a
single “Truth.”26 Although not scientific, and indeed he was working almost a
millennia before the development of the scientific method, his model was
certainly systematic and logically elegant. Ultimately his methodology led
him to an important original contribution reconciling astrology with Islamic
religious principles, at least to his own satisfaction. Albumasar introduced the
concept of the “rational soul,” or man’s free will coupled with the cognitive
abilities that differentiated him from animals, which was free from the
influence of the stars and distinct from what he saw as the passive potency of
the “intellectual soul” in Platonic traditions.27 This soul, along with all else
that a person possessed, came from God. In a blending of Aristotelian and
Neoplatonic ideas, Albumasar envisioned the soul as a divine gift to man,
descending from the heavens through three spheres: the divine (the sphere of
light), the ethereal (the eight celestial spheres), and the hylic (the sublunar
core, including the Earth).28

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As with other monotheistic interpreters of Aristotle, Albumasar
associated God with the Aristotelian Prime Mover, who was the efficient
cause of all earthly actions, following Aristotle’s delineation of causes. 29
Thus God creates man, provides him with a soul, and influences that “rational
soul” toward actions; but since man has free will, this is an influence,
powerful though it may be, that one can overcome through exercise of the
will. Likewise, as the soul descends from the divine sphere through the eight
celestial (sub)spheres to the hylic (the lowest sphere of changeability and
corporeality), along the way various influencing distortions are acquired,
each of which affects the initial divine force. These distortions are, in effect,
impurities in the influencing force which is the light transmitting God's
divine power from the first heaven down to the terrestrial realm, driving us to
act in ways contrary to God’s will. However, since the soul descends from
24
Lemay, Abu Ma’ shar, p. 242.
25
David Pingree, The Thousands of Abu Ma’ shar, Leiden: Brill, 1968, pp.
14-18.
26
Ibid., pp. 18, 33.
27
Lemay, Abu Ma’ shar, p. 84.
28
Vicky Armstrong Clark, ‘The Illustrated Abridged Astrological Treatises of
Albumasar: Medieval Astrological Imagery in the West,’ Unpublished Ph.D.
diss., University of Michigan, 1979, p. 22.
29
Lemay, pp. 84-85.
Scott E. Hendrix 17
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the divine to the hylic realm, it desires to return, signifying a desire within the
human soul to understand the divinity of God and act in accordance with his
will. But in order to achieve connection with God in the mystical sense, and
to comprehend his divine plan for the universe so that an individual may
order his or her life by it, it is necessary to understand God’s divine plan as
outlined in the celestial intermediaries as well as the distortions imparted
during the soul’s long downward journey so that one can overcome these
accretive impulses. According to Albumasar, these effects 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.30
Understanding Albumasar’s model of celestial influence and
astrology is important for a number of reasons, not least of which is the
influence his work enjoyed in the Latin Christian West, as we shall see in a
moment. But perhaps just as importantly, the development of his thought
represents a perfect example of the way in which basic beliefs functioning
conjunctively with beliefs logically developed or derived from them can lead
to a thoroughly rational system operating within different parameters than
those established by modern science.31 In short, beginning from the
30
Hendrix, ‘Reading the Future and Freeing the Will,’ pp. 32-33.
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presumption that Aristotelian physics is the best possible model for
understanding change and causality in the world, placed within a
Neoplatonically-influenced monotheistic cosmological model in which God
as the Prime Mover transmits his impelling force through he cosmos via the
agency of light, the concept of celestial influence makes perfect rational
sense. Working from those base set of assumptions, belief in the predictive
and analytical power of astrology becomes an almost necessary entailment.
For the individual who accepts the premise that celestial patterns determine
or influence events in the terrestrial realm, astrological analysis of past or
present events or phenomena and prediction of future events through scrutiny
of the influence that the heavens transmit as they move in their perfectly-
ordered fashion becomes simply a matter or mathematical astronomy. One
can see how an individual beginning from Albumasar’s starting premises
would have arrived at his conclusions about the effectiveness - and
importance - of astrology simply through the process of logical development
of his initial premises. One could legitimately question the entire intellectual
edifice within which Albumasar functioned by raising questions about
properly or improperly placed or supported beliefs within the larger meta-
structure, but such critiques do not negate the rationality of maintaining
beliefs that are logically consistent and coherent within a closed system
deemed to be well-founded by those schooled within its traditions.

Scott E. Hendrix 19
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Well founded and consistent or not, astrological beliefs were always
highly contested within the Muslim world due to concerns about potential
conflicts with Islamic tenets. These concerns would lead to a splitting of the
discipline of the study of the heavens that had been joined since antiquity into
two related fields of study, astrology and astronomy, as well as an
accelerating decline in the study and practice of astrology in the Muslim
world beginning in the eleventh century.32 Therefore, Albumasar’s most
important impact would be felt elsewhere. During the twelfth century a
number of adventurous intellectuals travelled from the Latin-Christian
regions of Europe to Muslim Spain in order to translate the most important of
the Arabic-language philosophical works into Latin. The technical challenges
involved with these translation activities were vast, as there were neither
language schools nor multi-lingual translation aids available. Nonetheless,
those such as Adelard of Bath (died c. 1152) overcame these difficulties,
either learning Arabic to accomplish their goals or, as was more common,
working with local multi-lingual scholars—frequently Jewish—to make the
riches of the Arabic-language world available to the West.33 The texts chosen
31
Richard Swinburne addresses both ‘basic beliefs’ and the ‘conjunctive
nature of ideas’ in his Faith and Reason, pp. 3-24.
32
Hendrix, ‘Reading the Future and Freeing the Will,’ p. 34.
33
Anwar Chejne, ‘The Role of al-Andalus in the Movement of Ideas Between
Islam and the West,’ Islam and the Medieval West, Khalis I. Semaan, ed.,
Albany, State University of New York Press, 1980, pp. 110-133.
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for translation were wide ranging, but among the earliest such works were
those that were astrological in nature with Albumasar’s being so prominent
that Richard Lemay has argued that these provided the primary vehicle for
the introduction of Aristotelian natural philosophy to the West.34 While this
argument is less than convincing, Albumasar’s astrological writings certainly
aroused great interest among Western intellectuals and were both some of the
earliest works to be translated from Arabic as well as some of the most
lastingly popular texts so translated. Not only do forty medieval manuscript
copies of his popular Flores, intended to provide a concise guide to
astrological practice, exist, but this text also went through six printed editions
between 1488 and 1506.35
It was an important factor in the development of the discipline that,
as the academic study of astrology began to take off in the West, those who
undertook such study approached the subject through the lens of Arabic
language texts (in translation) that had already grappled with the question of
how a branch of learning with presumed predictive powers could be
reconciled with free will. This concern was central to the anger that
astrological study aroused in many Christian religious leaders, reaching a
34
Lemay, pp. xxx-xxxi.
35
Paul Kunitzsch, ‘Abu Ma’shar, Johannes Hispalensis und Alkameluz,’
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, no. 120, 1970, pp.
103-125.
Scott E. Hendrix 21
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feverish peak in the thirteenth century. The best examples of this opposition
are to be found in the attacks on the discipline that came to pass in Paris, with
the opening assault occurring on 10 December 1270. On that day Stephen
Tempier, the bishop of Paris, issued a list of thirteen condemned
propositions,36 two of which were aimed squarely at astrology, at least as
anti-astrological activists understood the discipline. The condemned
propositions in question are:
(4) that all that happens here below is subject to the necessity of the
heavenly bodies.
(9) that free will is a passive power, not an active one, and that it is
necessarily moved by the object of desire.37
There is little evidence that ideas with such fatalistic implications ever
circulated, let alone that they were widespread. In fact, the only thirteenth-
century intellectual who may have espoused something approaching the
belief system that Bishop Tempier attacked was the Tuscan astrologer and
physician Guido Bonatus.38
36
John F. Wippel, ‘The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris,’ The
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. vol. 7, no. 2, 1977, pp.169-
201, p. 179.
37
Ibid., p. 179; Henri Denifle and Emile Chatelain, O.P., eds., Chartularium
Universitatis Parisiensis, Paris, Delalain, 1889, vol. I, p. 487.
38
George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimore, Williams
and Wilkins, 1931; reprinted 1961,vol. II, p. 989.
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In fact astrology as it was studied and practiced in medieval Europe
was seen as a discipline that did not conflict with free will, as European
scholars inherited not just the discipline that had been developed by Greek
and Hellenistic writers, but also the defense of astrology that had been
developed by Albumasar to answer Muslim criticisms of fatalism. For
example, one of the greatest scholars of thirteenth-century Europe (and one
of the most persistent proponents of astrology), the German Dominican
Albert the Great (d. 1280),39 directly appealed to his ninth-century Persian
predecessor in order to construct his own defense of astrology. Albert did,
however, begin his argument in a different place than Albumasar had,
focusing on the ontological status of the human soul relative to that of the
body, which was necessarily of a lower order of substance due to its
corporeality.40 This position was undoubtedly influenced by the strains of
Neoplatonism that are everywhere evident in Albert’s thought, based largely
on his mistaken belief that the Liber de causis (Book about the Causes) was a
section of Aristotle’s Metaphysics rather than a paraphrasing of ideas drawn
from Proclus and Avicebron.41 Because of the soul/body distinction in his
system of thought, the stars as corporeal bodies were held to influence the
body directly, but the soul per accidens, indirectly.42 Therefore, the will,
which is a component of the intellectual soul, is free to resist corporeal
impulses imparted by the stars. To explain this idea Albert appeals directly to
Scott E. Hendrix 23
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Albumasar’s Introductorium maius (Greater Introduction), though
erroneously citing Ptolemy as his source, reiterating the maxim, “the wise
man will dominate the stars.”43 Albert elaborates upon this statement to
explain that one learned in the influences of the heavens can avert many
negative things while maximizing positive effects - if one only makes the
willed effort to do so.44 Unfortunately, most people rarely exercise their will
to oppose corporeal impulses, which means that astrological predictions are
usually accurate if performed correctly. However, such accuracy is not
assured as a willed action can always directly or indirectly negate heavenly
influence. In this way Albert outlines a model of celestial force that allows
for judicial astrology without compromising the freedom of the will.
It would have been odd for Albert not to defend belief in celestial
influence and the importance of astrology. Famed in his day as a
commentator upon Aristotle, it is likely that he was more thoroughly versed
in Peripatetic philosophy than anyone else in Europe.45 Steeped in the Greek
and Hellenistic traditions as well as the writings of Arabic-language authors
such as Albumasar, whom Albert quoted and cited extensively, as well as the
techniques of scholarship and habits of mind he would have developed while
earning his doctorate in theology at the University of Paris, there can be no
doubt that the German Dominican shared in the habitus of European
intellectuals providing the base assumptions from which he would have

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analyzed his world. Thus, his position on astrology was a logical entailment
of his base assumptions and his defense of the discipline was highly rational
within the context of thirteenth-century intellectual traditions. Furthermore,
his writings on astrology and his defense of the subject helped to embed it
ever more deeply into the substance of European intellectual traditions.
Nevertheless, it would be some time before Albert’s position would
gain anything like universal acceptance, and in spite of his reputation in
39
For this story, see Scott E. Hendrix, How Albert the Great’s Speculum
astronomiae was Interpreted and Used by Four Centuries of Readers: A
Study in Late Medieval Medicine, Astronomy and Astrology, Lewiston, The
Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.
40
Albert the Great, De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa II:
Opera omnia, Winfrid Fauser, s.j., ed., Monasterii Westfalorum,
Aschendorff, 1993, vol. XVII, p. 57; Albert the Great, De caelo et mundo,.
vol. V, p. 114; Albert the Great, Liber de natura et origine animae: Opera
omnia, Bernhard Geyer, ed., Monasterii Westfalorum, Aschendorff, 1971, ed.
XII, p. 12.
41
Alain De Libera, Albert le Grand et la Philosophie, Paris: J. Vrin, 1990,
pp. 55-59. This mistake was universal prior to Thomas of Moerbeke’s
completion of a new translation directly from the Greek in 1268. See
Ferdinand Van Steenberghen, The Philosophical Movement in the Thirteenth
Century, Edinburgh, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1955, p. 40.
42
Albert the Great, Speculum astronomiae, The Speculum Astronomiae and
its Enigma: Astrology, Theology, and Science in Albertus Magnus and his
Contemporaries, Paola Zambelli, ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1992 pp. 220; 250-256, chpts. 3; 12.
43
Paola Zambelli, ‘Albert le Grand et l’astrologie,’ Recherches de théologie
ancienne et medieval 49 (1982) 141-58, pp. 146-147.
44
Albert, Speculum, pp. 258-261, ch. 13.
Scott E. Hendrix 25
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thirteenth-century Europe, he would utterly fail to win conservative
theologians over. The most important opponent of the study of astrology was
Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris, who was no doubt frustrated by the
scholars at the University of Paris flaunting his authority; repeated
restatements of his anti-astrological pronouncements of 1270 were for
naught.46 His frustration is evidenced by his actions following Pope John
XXI’s (d.1277) request of 18 Jan 1277 that Tempier investigate rumors of
heresy at Paris. The Parisian bishop hurriedly formed a commission and
completely overstepped his mandate, issuing a list of 219 disorganized and
poorly-thought-out condemnations on 7 March 1277, less than two months
after the pope issued his request.47 While not primarily directed at astrology,
these condemnations did represent a thorough assault on the discipline.
Rejecting the notion that celestial influences dispose people to differing
personalities and gifts, that anyone’s health or sickness is dependent upon the
locations of heavenly bodies, or even that the stars might indirectly affect an
individual’s soul, it is clear that Tempier would brook no sympathy for
45
Albert’s reputation led Ulrich of Strasbourg to refer to him as ‘a man so
superior in every science, that he can fittingly be called the wonder and
miracle of our time.’ Daguillon, Ulrich de Strasbourg, La “Summa de
bono.”Livre I , Paris, J. Vrin, 1930, p. 139. Even Roger Bacon, by no means
friendly toward Albert, stated that Albert was known as an authority in Paris
on a par with Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. Jeremiah Hackett, “The
Attitude of Roger Bacon to the Scientia of Albertus Magnus,” Albertus
Magnus and the Sciences, James A. Weisheipl, ed., Toronto, Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980, pp. 53-72.
______________________________________________________________
astrological beliefs.48 However, he was fighting an uphill struggle from the
beginning, for in spite of religiously-motivated concerns such as these, one
simple fact made it a certainty that interest in the study of the heavens and
astrological divination would continue to grow throughout the middle ages
and beyond: All medieval intellectuals who wrote in the wake of the twelfth-
century renaissance embraced the central tenet of astrology - that humankind
exists within a web of celestial influences affecting the terrestrial realm,
presenting the possibility of predicting future events through a study of the
motions of heavenly bodies. Beginning from the base belief that influence
pouring forth from stars, planets, and other heavenly bodies has an impact on
events on the earth, the extrapolation that it is simply a matter of
mathematical astronomy to predict the future positions and concomitant
influences of these celestial bodies is an almost necessary conjunction. The
idea that these influences affect everything here on earth in fundamental
ways was a concept accepted not only by those who embraced astrology,
such as Pietro d’Abano (c.1250-1318), but even by those who opposed its
study, such as Jean Gerson (1363-1429). 49
Despite the failure of those who opposed the study and practice of
astrology on religious grounds to put a stop to such pursuits, persistent
challenges to astrology’s validity did have an important impact on those who
wrote about celestial divination. Medieval astrologers seeking to affirm the

Scott E. Hendrix 27
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validity of their discipline turned increasingly to empirically-based arguments
in order to counter their opponents. Empirical claims in support of
astrological statements were by no means new; at least since the time of
Hellenistic writers such as Ptolemy arguments from experience had been
used by those who studied the heavens.50 However, during the high and late
medieval period empirical evidence used to support the accuracy of
astrological judgments came to be increasingly a part of the astrologer’s
toolbox, with defenders of celestial divination from Guido Bonatti in the
thirteenth century to Girolamo Cardano (d. 1576) in the sixteenth appealing
to Hugo of Santalla’s (fl. 1160?) translation of the so-called Liber Aristotilis
(Book of Aristotle) as evidence of astrology’s predictive power and
accuracy.51 This text, which was actually drawn from a number of Arabic and
Jewish sources with the works of the eighth-century Jewish astrologer
Masha'allah ibn Atharī (d.815) being most prominent, purported to contain
data drawn from the horoscopes of more than twelve-thousand people.52
While the source of the data was spurious, the incipient empirical impulse
demonstrated by appeals to this Pseudo-Aristotelian work would have
important implications for the future.
As even this brief overview makes clear, understanding astrology’s
true place within the rational worldview of Renaissance and Early Modern
Europe is a complex story, but the contributions of both Albumasar and

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Albert the Great are directly relevant to developments in this later period.
With the passing of the middle ages, one of the most important figures in the
history of astrology would be Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (d.1494). The
Italian intellectual’s approach to the discipline is generally considered to be
wholly antagonistic, but as we shall see such a view is neither well-founded
nor consistent with the contexts within which Pico worked. As a true
Renaissance humanist he was a great believer in the “back to the source”
approach to scholarship that demanded a bypassing not only of commentaries
on foundational works, but also 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
46
Ferdinand Van Steenberghen, The Philosophical Movement in the
Thirteenth Century, Edinburgh, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1955, p. 96.
47
For Pope John XXI’s request, see Denifle and Chatelain, vol. I, p. 541. On
Tempier’s commission and the resultant condemnations, see Etienne Gilson,
History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York, Random
House, 1955, pp. 405-406; Leff, pp. 231-238. The poorly worked out nature
of the condemnations did not escape the notice of contemporaries. For
example, Godefroid de Fontaines complained that some articles contradicted
one another, some were dubious, and others were simply “impossible and
irrational.” Even a member of Tempier's commission, Henry of Ghent
(c.1217-1293), expressed “great embarrassment” over some of the
condemnations. See Roland Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés
à Paris le 7 mars 1277, Louvain, Publications Universitaires, 1977, p. 9.
48
Denifle-Chatelain, vol. I, pp. 551-555.
49
Hendrix, How Albert the Great’s Speculum astronomiae was Interpreted
and Used by Four Centuries of Readers, chpt. IV.
Scott E. Hendrix 29
______________________________________________________________
language in order to gain a direct understanding of their content.53
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 and its importance would have
been reinforced through his reading of Albert the Great’s works.54 Both the
works of Arabic-language intellectuals as well as those of Albert the Great
held a prominent place in Pico’s personal library.55
Pico would have found the efforts of Albumasar and Albert to make
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.56 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 the
Italian humanist 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 develop their appropriate human skills through the
power of the heavens.57 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. Apparently Pico’s rather obscure reference to the
agreement of his ideas with both “true astrology” and “true theology”58 did
not assuage papal misgivings.
Nevertheless, Pico’s position was not surprising. He may have
believed that celestial influence had greater force in human life than many of
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 - a key
element in the European habitus derived from Greek natural philosophy.59
Furthermore, Pico’s sometime friend and contemporary, Marsilio Ficino
(1433-1499), was such a strong proponent of the importance of
50
Julius W. Friend, What Science Really Means, London, Dyson Press, 2007,
pp. 26-29.
51
Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2000, 5th printing, pp. 129-130; Anthony Grafton,
Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer,
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999, pp. 199-202.
52
Charles Burnett and David Pingree, The Liber Aristotilis of Hugo of
Santalla, London, Warburg Institute, 1997, introduction.
Scott E. Hendrix 31
______________________________________________________________
understanding celestial influence upon humans that he was forced to defend
his views before Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) in 1489, a task that he
handled with greater effectiveness than Pico when called before the same
pope.60 Ficino did not arouse papal suspicion because his 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.61 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.62 In the end Pope Innocent VIII agreed that this was a conventional
argument that was entirely in keeping with the theological opinions of the
sainted Thomas Aquinas and his professor and mentor, Albert the Great.63
Innocent VIII’s decision was completely rational, for Ficino was on
very solid ground. 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 body’s “pulling and
tugging” upon the soul.64 By the fifteenth century the idea that everything on
earth experienced a constant bombardment of celestial force was so well

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established that no natural philosopher would have argued against the point
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.65 Clearly,
while in his 900 Theses Ficino’s colleague 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 Pico 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 modern scholarship
addressing Pico's thought has confused the issue, mostly due to a work Pico
wrote in the last years of his life that has been seen to greatly complicate his
view of astrology. This work was published posthumously under the title
53
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, New York,
Columbia University Press, 1981, p. 206.
54
Paola Zambelli, ‘Albert le Grand et l’astrologie,’ Recherches de Théologie
Ancienne et Médiévale, vol. 49, 1982, pp. 146-147.
55
Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1936, pp. 62, 70, 86.
Scott E. Hendrix 33
______________________________________________________________
Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (Disputations Against
Astrological Divination),66 which certainly sounds straightforward enough.
The assessment of a great many scholars - including the modern editor of the
volume, Eugenio Garin - have certainly seen it that way, repeatedly stressing
Pico’s absolute rejection of divinatory astrology. This rejection has been
highlighted by those such as Louis Dupré as a significant step on the path
toward modernity.67 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.68
Turning to the Disputations, 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.69 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,

56
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.
57
Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the
Crisis of Renaissance Astrology, Leiden, Brill, 2006, pp. 55-56.
58
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones sive Theses DCCCC, Joseph
H. Peterson, ed., http://www.esotericarchives.com/pico/conclus.htm
[accessed 22 June 2010], thesis 49.40.
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ridiculed by saints, forbidden by popes and sacrosanct synods.”70 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 transmitted 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,”71 a point that he notes is supported by the
writings of both the eleventh-century Persian authority on medicine Avicenna
and Albert the Great. However, he also attacks “‘casters of nativities’ as
promoting ‘the most infectious of all frauds.’”72 Furthermore, he calls into
question the system of affinities and antipathies so important to astrology,
while warning that this part of the discipline could lead the unwary into
superstition.73 Finally, he cautions against assigning too much strength to
celestial influence, which is transmitted from a distant source by means of a
vehicle - light - that is easily blocked.74 However, one will look in vain for a
clear statement that astrological forecasting is impossible.75 Rather, Pico
seems to be concerned that astrologers will lead people into a focus upon
worldly forces, and away from an attentive regard for God.76 This is much the
same concern that had led Jean Gerson earlier to reject astrology; the fear that
it might lead those who practiced and put faith in it into idolatry.
Scott E. Hendrix 35
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A complete analysis of Pico’s attitude toward astrology would be
too far beyond the scope of this study, but it should be noted that a rejection
of the discipline in its entirety would have been quite a departure from
mainstream intellectual opinion in late Renaissance and Early Modern
Europe. Universities across the continent routinely taught the subject - which
was only minimally distinct from astronomy - as part of the liberal arts
curriculum and physicians had come to rely on astrological prognostications
more than ever in the fifteenth century.77 Far from retreating from the
discipline, European intellectuals fully embraced astrology during the
59
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.’
60
Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964, pp. 37-53. 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 astrologiam divinatricem,’ Indiana University,
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 2002, pp. 261-263.
61
Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 56.
62
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.
63
Thomas Aquinas had been canonized in 1323. Although Albert was
beatified in 1622, the process of his canonization would not be complete until
1931.
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Renaissance, with both Lucio Bellanti (d.1499) and Giovanni Pontano (d.
1503) writing vigorous defenses of the discipline in response to Pico’s
Disputationes.78 Jakob Schonheintz, writing in 1502, went so far as to
proclaim Pico’s “attack” on astrology as a sign of the degeneration of the
times, while in the following century Johannes Kepler (d. 1630) not only
firmly rejected any attack on astrology’s efficacy, but also provided empirical
evidence drawn from his own astrological predictions supporting the
usefulness and accuracy of celestial prognostications.79 Therefore, while
modern authors such as Eugenio Garin may find Pico’s belief in the influence
of the heavens upon terrestrial affairs to be odd, it would have been odder
still if he had actually diverged from the common intellectual habitus of his
day in order to reject a belief in celestial influence and the art - astrology -
dedicated to analyzing such influence and making predictions based on such
analyses. But Pico stayed perfectly in step with educated opinion of his day,
with his ideas being informed by as well as informing the dominant
64
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.
65
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.
Scott E. Hendrix 37
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Renaissance habitus. Therefore, in the context of late Renaissance thought,
his astrological beliefs were completely rational.
The context of what Pico was and was not arguing against in his
Disputations is important to the history of science, for the text’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.80
This attitude toward Galileo has also been common among philosophers of
science such as Karl Popper as well as scientists such as Carl Sagan. 81 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, such positions are only possible if one ignores the context within
which Galileo developed as an intellectual; just as Pico had no desire to reject
celestial divination, Galileo was even less inclined to oppose the discipline.
66
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Disputationes Adversus Astrologiam
Divinatricem, Eugenio Garin. ed., Florence, Vallecchi Editore, 1946.
67
Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of
Nature and Culture, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 56-57.
68
Both H. Darrel Rutkin and Steven Vanden Broecke develop this idea in
their work.
______________________________________________________________
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 2003.82 Although Favaro’s
conclusions were tentative and he suggested that perhaps Galileo had lost
interest in astrology as he aged, the evidence presented leaves the reader 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 Galileo engaged with important but distant figures such as the
Cardinal Allesandro d’Este as well close friends such as Giovanfrancesco
Sagredo.83 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,84 quickly pass over it as an
activity in which he “dabbled,”85 or ignore it altogether.86
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.87 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. Turning to such evidence in MS. Gal. 81

Scott E. Hendrix 39
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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.88 Rutkin has devoted some time to analyzing the natal
charts - those drawn up to determine an individual’s future based on his or

69
Rutkin, pp. 339-342.
70
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?’
71
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.
72
Shumaker, p. 19.
73
The notion of affinities and antipathies was based on belief in a completely
interconnected universe. Celestial bodies affected or repelled earthly objects,
depending upon whether the object in question was indirectly, meaning
“sympathetically,” attached or “antipathetically” opposed to the celestial
body. For Pico’s warning that such beliefs could lead one into superstition,
see Shumaker, pp. 22-23.
74
Shumaker, p. 22.
75
Rabin presents a counterargument. See, Rabin, “Unholy Astrology,” pp.
158-162. She bases her argument on statements made by Pico such as this
one: “since an astrologer looks at signs that are not signs, and thinks about
causes that are not causes, he is, therefore, deceived” (quoted on p.158).
However, the evidence suggests to me that Pico rejected certain astrological
practices, but not the scientia of astrology.
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her time of birth - for Galileo’s daughters as well as for his friend Giovanni
Francesco Sagredo, noting the care with which these charts are constructed.
These charts are now available on the website Skyscript and using Galileo’s
own birth chart as a point of reference, I would like to draw attention to a
point that goes unmentioned in Rutkin’s work that reinforces his argument -
76
For a much more comprehensive consideration of Pico’s attitude toward
astrology see Rutkin, pp. 230-305.
77
Beginning in 1405 medical students at the University of Bologna (where a
chair of astrology still existed as late as 1799) were required to study
astrology for four years. Tester, p. 184; Hilary Carey, Astrology at the
English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages, London, Macmillan
Academic and Professional, 1992, p. 51.
80
Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life, Carolyn
Jackson and June Allen, trans., Routledge, 1983, p. 10.
81
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 176; ‘The Harmony of the Worlds,’
Cosmos, Carl Sagan, PBS, 1980.
82
Antonio Favaro, ‘Galileo Astrologo,’ Julianne Evans, trans., Galileo’s
Astrology, special issue of Culture and Cosmos, vol. 7, no. 1, 2003, pp. 9-19.
83
Ibid., pp. 11-13.
84
Richard Tarnass, The Passion of the Western Mind, New York, Random
House, 1993, p.295.
85
Wade Rowland, Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation
Between Galileo and the Church, New York, Arcade Publishing, 2003, p.
295.
86
Peter K. Machamer, The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1995, passim.
Scott E. Hendrix 41
______________________________________________________________
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 reference point. The important thing 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.89 If Galileo had cast
horoscopes merely for the purpose of patronage or to earn money, why would
he have been so concerned with accuracy when creating charts for family,
friends, and for himself? The purpose of such charts could not possibly have
been to earn a fee or garner patronage.
87
H. Darrel Rutkin, ‘Galileo Astrologer:’ Astrology and Mathematical
Practice in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,’ Galilaena,
vol. II, 2005, p. 143.
78
Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in
Intellectual Patterns, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 28-
31.
79
Shumaker, p. 31; Sheila K. Rabin, ‘Kepler’s Attitude Toward Pico and the
Anti-Astrology Polemic,’Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 3, 1997: 750-
770.
88
Ibid., p. 117.
89
http://www.skyscript.co.uk/galchart.html, accessed 4 Jan. 2010.
______________________________________________________________
Clearly, the existence of this sizeable number of carefully
constructed horoscopes in Galileo’s own hand demonstrates that the Italian
scientist was not at all unfamiliar with the workings of judicial astrology, and
that when he did construct a chart he demonstrated both a great deal of care
as well as ability. It is true that 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.90 In the absence
of evidence any other evidence, we have no reason to think that Galileo
rejected astrology late in 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
90
Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of
Absolutism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994, chapter 1.
Scott E. Hendrix 43
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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. Therefore, the cosmos functioned with mechanical
precision, as if it were clockwork in the phrase of Nicole Oresme.91 This is
the astrological system that Galileo inherited, and it is interesting to speculate
91
John North, The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, New York,
W.W. Norton, 1995, p. 265.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Disputationes Adversus Astrologiam
Divinatricem. Eugenio Garin (ed.) Florence, Vallecchi Editore, 1946.
–––, Oration on the Dignity of Man, in Philosophic Classics: Medieval

Philosophy, Walter Arnold Kaufmann and Forrest E. Baird (eds) Upper
Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall, 2007, p. 515.
Jean Gerson. Tricelogium astrologiae theologizatae, in Oeuvres Complètes,

Mgr. P. Glorieux (ed.) Paris: Desclée, 1962.
Marsilio Ficino. Three Books of Life, Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark
(eds.), Binghamton, The Renaissance Society of America, 1989.
Secondary Sources
Biagioli, M. Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of
Absolutism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Broecke, S.V. The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of
Renaissance Astrology. Leiden, Brill, 2006.
Carey, H. Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle
Ages, London, Macmillan Academic and Professional, 1992.
Castel, B and Sismundo, S. The Art of Science. UTP Higher Education,

Toronto, 2003.
______________________________________________________________
upon the influence of the mechanical aspects of this model upon Galileo’s
own system of thought. Furthermore, familiarity with the work of medieval
astrologers and defenders of astrology would have made Galileo quite aware
of the importance of careful observation of the heavens and the gathering of
data to support his claims. If nothing else, interest in astrology and the desire
Dupré, L. Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature

and Culture. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995.
Favaro, A. ‘Galileo Astrologo,’ Julianne Evans (trans.), Galileo’s Astrology,

Culture and Cosmos, vol. 7.1, 2003, pp. 9-19.
Garin, E. Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life, Carolyn Jackson

and June Allen, (trans.), Routledge, 1983.
Hendrix, S.E. Albert the Great’s Speculum Astronomiae and Four Centuries
of Readers. Lewiston, The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.
–––, “Natural Philosophy or Science in Premodern Epistemic Regimes? The

Case of the Astrology of Albert the Great and Galileo Galilei.” Teorie vědy /
Theory of Science: Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Science, XXXII.2
(2011): forthcoming.
–––, ‘Reading the Future and Freeing the Will: Astrology of the Arabic
World and Albertus Magnus.’ Hortulus, vol. 2.1, 2006, 30-49.
Kibre, P. The Library of Pico della Mirandola. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1936.
Kristeller, P.O. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. New York, Columbia
–––, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Stanford, Stanford

University Press, 1964, pp. 37-53.
Lemay, R. Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century.

Beirut, American University of Beirut, 1962.
Scott E. Hendrix 45
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to produce accurate horoscopes would have provided a strong incentive for
Galileo to think deeply about the motions of the heavens. Regardless of the
positive influences that his role as an astrologer may or may not have had,
though, one thing is certain: Whether astrological theory provided an impetus
for the burgeoning mechanical philosophy of the Scientific Revolution or not,
Machamer, P.K. The Cambridge Companion to Galileo. Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Moran, B.T. Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Astrology, and the Scientific

Revolution. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2006.
North, John D. ‘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.
–––,The Norton History of Astronomy and Cosmology, New York, W.W.

Norton, 1995.
Popper, K. Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach. Oxford, Oxford

Rowland, W. Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation

Between Galileo and the Church, New York, Arcade Publishing, 2003.
Rutkin, H.D. ‘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.
–––, ‘Galileo Astrologer:’ Astrology and Mathematical Practice in the Late

Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.’ Galilaena, vol. II, 2005, pp.
107-143.
Sachs, A. ‘Babylonian Horoscopes,’ Journal of Cuneiform Studies. vol. VI,

1952, pp. 49-74.
Sagan, C. ‘The Harmony of the Worlds.’ Cosmos. PBS, 1980.

______________________________________________________________
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
Galileo just as for Pico, Albert, and all who had developed their approach to
natural philosophy based on Greek precedents, belief in astrology was
rational.
Schneer, C.J. 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.
Shumaker, W. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in

Intellectual Patterns. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978.
Tarnass, R. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York, Random House,
1993.
Tester, S. J. A History of Western Astrology. Woodbridge, Boydell Press,

1987.
Yates, F. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago, University

of Chicago Press, 1991.
Zambelli, P. ‘Albert le Grand et l’astrologie.’ Recherches de Théologie

Ancienne et Médiévale, vol. 49, 1982, pp. 141-158.
Commentary and Response
Comment by Dr. Brian Feltham, Lecturer in Philosophy at the

University of Reading.
I learned a great deal about some key moments in the intellectual

history of both science and magic from Hendrix’s study; I also found myself
in considerable sympathy with the analysis offered. There are too many
things I’d like to discuss, but I will confine myself to the following plan.
First I shall raise some concerns about the particular kind of habitus on which
Scott E. Hendrix 47
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Notes
Hendrix focuses; second, this will lead to some reflections on the viability
and combinability of particular modes of thought; however, I shall end on a
more mystical/spiritual note.?
Like Hendrix, I am greatly inclined to think that rationality is

contextual. This idea is supported by two widely accepted features of the
activity of thinking and reasoning. First, it is finite: we cannot think about
everything, let alone challenge or vindicate every step in our reasoning -
every lemma, every inference. Second, we are of limited perspicacity: even
if we could examine everything, we could not conclusively validate or
invalidate every point. Given these limitations, it is plausible that our
thinking, and our reasoning, proceeds from our particular starting points; and
furthermore that it is heavily informed by our cultural inheritance: our
language, especially, as well as inherited notions of evidence, inference,
association, causality, etc. This does not mean that we cannot challenge the
status quo; it just indicates that such challenges come from somewhere, and
that that somewhere is not a socially unconditioned God’s eye view. Not
everyone will accept this move from the limits of reasoning to socially
contextual rationality (the early modern rationalists would reject it); but it has
some plausibility, and I spent a good part of my chapter in this volume trying
to motivate it. However, we should recognise that this is still some way off
from some of the suggested features of the kind of habitus Hendrix describes
when he draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. In general, a habitus is a way
of thinking, incorporating certain background ideas and beliefs. If I
understand Hendrix correctly, in a Bourdieu-like habitus, rational thought
involves bracketing certain issues (making presuppositions, assumptions) and
adhering to rules, much like the rules of a game (inference, association of
ideas, and so on). Possibly, this is meant as a description of all kinds of
habitus. Without rejecting this idea, I’d like to suggest that the Bourdieu
______________________________________________________________
inspired concept of a habitus should still be treated with great caution. I shall
mention two worries.
First, our inability to examine everything at once does not imply a

mentality of unquestioning acceptance; we may instead find ourselves in an
unending process of questioning and challenging assumptions, so far as we
are able and within the limits of our practical objectives (you don’t question
gravity when seeking shelter from an avalanche!). We, of course, needn’t
consciously set aside anything as unquestionable. But nor need we
unconsciously treat any category of ideas (be they procedural features of
reasoning, or particular things believed) as unquestionable. For some of us,
some of the time, it may be that nothing is unquestionable, but merely
unquestioned. While that may be rather tough to achieve, it can far more
easily figure as an aspiration. Very often, science is said to have such an
aspiration. As such, we may worry that using the notion of a habitus of the
kind described risks obscuring certain possibilities; and that it may fail to
capture one of the key features of scientific rationality.
A second concern is that many of us are involved in multiple modes

of thought; and this would seem to have been the case with many of the
figures that Hendrix discussed. Hendrix describes Pico as both informing
and being informed by “the dominant Renaissance habitus”. So there are
others, albeit not dominant. This is not strange. To switch to a concept more
familiar to me, my own contributions to this volume have been informed by a
number of different traditions of thought: different “schools” of philosophy,
literary traditions, magical traditions, religious traditions, and so on. They all
have their different typical patterns of thought, methodologies, and common
(working) assumptions. Hendrix, of course, is perfectly aware of this, and
part of the job of his chapter was to navigate some of the different modes of
Scott E. Hendrix 49
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thought, and see who was working in which traditions of thought. But these
reflections give us a way (one way) of sharpening a central question: Are the
features of a scientific mode of thought radically different to those which
sustained astrology? This opens up a range of interesting possibilities; some
historical, some analytical. Historically, for example, we might say that
scientific rationalism grew out of the pre-modern rationality which had
sustained astrology. But this is consistent with the following three analytical
hypotheses: 1) that scientific rationalism is discontinuous with “astrological
rationalism”; 2) that scientific rationalism is in some way incompatible with
“astrological rationalism” (perhaps in the sense that anyone employing both
concurrently is irrational); 3) that one of these modes of thought is seriously
flawed, and can be shown to be so either internally (employing its own
content) or externally (employing the content of the other one, or some
further mode(-s) of thought).
Following up this last possibility, I want to raise a particular doubt

about the central pre-modern habitus that Hendrix describes. It appears,
especially in respect of astrology, to be foundationalist. A range of ideas,
beliefs, inferences, etc., are not only unquestioned, but they are also used to
derive further ideas - by logical entailment, or perhaps partially conditioned
by experience of the world - and these further ideas are affirmed on the
ground of this derivation. Foundationalism may have its (limited) place; but
in this case it is distinctly unscientific. Too much of what gets into the
foundations depends on authority (did Aristotle write it?) and historical
happenstance. Not only is this mode of thought unscientific, it may also be
faulty. According to René Descartes, foundationalism would be appropriate
when the foundations are certain. Is something certain, in the right way,
because Ptolemy or Aristotle wrote it? Or because it is an interpretation of
Scripture? Or because it has had currency for hundreds of years? I suspect
______________________________________________________________
that pre-modern resources themselves could raise doubt here; but certainly
scientific rationalism can do so. We might (and many would) say that this
particular habitus is irrational. The people doing the reasoning might be
relatively rational, given the limitations of their circumstances, but their basic
mode of thought might be said to be rationally flawed. This would be most
plausible if we could isolate an internal inconsistency; but even without such
a coup de grace, it is still a charge worth addressing.
So far, I’ve discussed modes of thought that might be opposed to

each other or co-exist happily. But I haven’t discussed the idea of their
applying to fundamentally different categories of thought and practice.
Hendrix’s chapter describes a spiritual dimension to astrological beliefs
including the prospect of coming closer to God and being a better (including
more rational and freer willed) person. At least some of this has nothing to
do with the business of science. Science alone is unable to tell us what is
good; nor what is holy; nor is it able to debunk either of these notions
(though scientistic philosophy might (try to) do this). The concept of
freedom of the will is notably not a scientific one, for all that science can tell
us interesting things about psychology and brain chemistry. One general
hallmark indicating that something is not the business of science is that it is
immune to error; and, more modestly, that it cannot be disconfirmed by
empirical evidence. Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that even the predictive
capacity of a sophisticated astrology falls into this latter category. Consider a
suitable development of the thesis that the heavenly bodies have an influence
upon our actions which inclines but does not compel. No quantity of failed
predictions of human action could, then, disprove such an astrology (though
it might shake our confidence). And so long as we remain careful and
flexible over the nature of the influence, this thesis may be impossible to
Scott E. Hendrix 51
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disprove. However, for the basic point I want to make, we needn’t claim so
much. We could simply focus on the spiritual gains of thinking of oneself as
inclined but not compelled, etc. So, the last idea I want to raise is that there
may well be a non- (not un-) scientific astrology that is, so far as science
goes, as rationally unimpeachable in a contemporary scientifically educated
person as it would have been in Pico, or Albert, or Albumasar.
Comment by Professor Uchenna Okeja, Lecturer in Philosophy at the

Catholic University of America:
This piece by Dr. Scott Hendrix is as enlightening as it is revealing.

In contemporary times, looking at the dominant picture of Europe, especially
from a position outside it, say from the colony, there are a great deal of
adumbrations about a rational Europe. So great is the influence of this sort
that a notable African intellectual, Senghor, epitomized it in his intuition to
the effect that reason was European just like feeling was African. Well,
indeed, his was a special case; but the issue here is different. With keen
interest, I read through this piece by Hendrix and discovered, with some
surprise, that commonplace knowledge could indeed be of little use, when
scientific concerns are at stake. The issue in this regard is that humanity and
human nature are interwoven in such a manner that it is impossible to
conceive of reason as occurring anywhere in its pure form. This, then, is the
starting point of the reply here. There are three basic issues that I need to take
up in Hendrix’s work, namely, the issue of what we are to make of the
retention of partial or, to use Hendrix’s words, “judicial” magical practices
by both Pico and Galileo (1) the import of Albert the Great (2) Pico’s and
Galileo’s appropriation of the astrologer’s model (3) and the cross-currents of
Hendrix’s re-evaluation of astrology.
______________________________________________________________
Let us begin with the first issue. It is indeed to the point that Hendrix
addresses the question of how it is possible that the hyper-rational Greeks
retained thoughts of astrology in their inquiries. That this should be an issue
of concern is made clear by the fact that almost all the major intellectual
figures of Greek thought were of this proclivity; Plato, Ptolemy, Aristotle
and, when we look further, we also see the Stoics, Pythagoras and Pilo of
Alexandria amongst others portraying this characteristic. The question in this
connection, however, is this: what was so appealing in astrology that made
these intellectual heavyweights not abandon this whole system altogether?
The importance of this question is made clearer when it is noted

with Hendrix that “Greek and Hellenistic writers did not simply take the
rationality of astrology for granted.” I think that the explanation of this
phenomenon lies in the fact that those who used the tools of astronomy in
their engagements with reality did so on a basis that cannot be said to be
lacking a scientific bent in very important respects. This is obvious because
these people “based their based their predictions not on internally speculative
judgments, but rather on an evaluation of empirical data gathered from
centuries of celestial observations informed by complex mathematical
modelling and theoretical analysis.” Thus, this being the case, it was just
commonsensical on the part of the “hyper-rational” Greeks to appropriate
what they found important in this system of thought for their own ends.
Even though it could be conceded that this explanation is the case, it

could still be argued from the perspective of conventional intellectual stance
today that it is odd for these ancient scholars to have embraced astrology so
thoroughly. This point, noted by Hendrix himself needs a little bit of
elaboration. Why does it seem from our twenty first century perspective that
the thorough embrace of astrology by these ancient scholars is odd? What
Scott E. Hendrix 53
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accounts for this kind of view? This elaboration seems important even though
I agree with Hendrix’s explanation of the reason for this situation. Scott’s
explanation is that “it was precisely because of their rationality that
intellectuals from Plato to Ptolemy found astrology to be so attractive.” He
noted further with scholars like Cecil J. Schneer that “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.”
To explain the reason for our conventional twenty-first century

posture towards the situation described above, it is important to call to mind
the fundamental assumption behind such reasoning in the twenty-first
century. The twenty-first century is marked by the situation of the
technologization of life in the society. By this, I mean that things are usually
seen from the perspective of workability. Thus, to postulate a realm that
cannot be practically controlled or accessed is to fall outside the realm of
what makes sense. This, to my mind, seems to be the foundational orientation
that gives rise to the thought pattern mentioned above, namely, that it seems
odd from our twenty-first century perspective that the “hyper-rational”
Greeks embraced astrology so thoroughly. Without wanting to claim that
there is no good in being sceptical about postulations that fall outside our
current conventional epistemic framework, it seems rather problematic to
maintain such a stance. The reason for this is that the current epistemic
framework is itself limited in many important respects. Besides, that a
postulation is not immediately open to our current framework of knowledge
does not mean that it cannot be, or rather, could never have been to other
epochs of human history. In this context, I would opine that the contexts of
rationality are indeed dynamic. This is why what makes serious rational sense
to an epoch would seem odd when qualified as rational in another epoch.
Thus, on this ground, I would infer that the opposition to the practice of
______________________________________________________________
astrology from a religious point of view failed because it was not based on
any claims to truth about astrology as pseudo science but on the tendency to
preclude by all means a different framework of knowledge that threatened the
monopoly of truth by religion.
The second point that this brief comment set out to elaborate has to
do with the issue of Pico, Albert the Great and Galileo’s appropriation of the
astrologer’s model. First, it is important to point out how this was done. In
Hendrix’s consideration, the common-place consideration that Pico’s
approach to astrology was antagonistic is either not well-founded or
consistent with the context within which he worked. The truth of this claim
was demonstrated very adequately by Hendrix through his consideration of
background of Pico’s celebrated work titled Oration on the Dignity of Man
where Pico underscored the centrality of freedom to human nature. By
considering how Pico had to navigate around the powerful censorship of the
papacy during the reign of Innocent VIII before whom he had to defend
himself, Hendrix provided a prelude to the explication of why Pico cannot be
said to be antagonistic to astrology. As Hendrix shows, “Pico might have
gone too far in his stress upon the role of celestial influence in human life,
[but] his belief in the power of the stars to affect humankind was entirely
within the mainstream of learned opinion of his day.”
This brings us to a central issue in this second point we are

considering. The issue is this: could it be said that, given the background
knowledge that thinkers like Pico, Albert the Great and even Galileo had,
they appropriated the knowledge of astrology just because it was the order of
the day? Could the appreciation of knowledge of this kind be said to be
dependent on approximation to mainstream could there have been an
independent reason for this interest? Looking to the example of Pico, who
Scott E. Hendrix 55
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was noted as having had the intent of critiquing astrology as “prohibited by

law, damned by the prophets, ridiculed by saints, forbidden by popes and
sacrosanct synods”, it seems that there was something more than a
bandwagon effect in the appropriation of astrology by most of the intellectual
heavyweights of the day. This is because these thinkers, even in their
appropriation or rejection of astrology did not do so in a “blanket-cover”
fashion. They based their judgement on what seemed “convincing” enough to
them. Since this practice is what defines intellectual activity even in our
present age, it could be stated that Hendrix is very much to the point when he
suggests that the postulations that seek to underscore Galileo and/or Pico’s
rejection of astrology “are only possible if one ignores the context within
which Galileo developed as an intellectual; just as Pico had no desire to reject
celestial divination, Galileo was even less inclined to oppose the discipline.”
Now, let us turn to Scott’s re-evaluation of astrology. One of the

most important points that serve as a harbinger to Hendrix’s re-evaluation of
astrology could be gleaned from his insistence with regard to Galileo that “In
the absence of evidence to the contrary we must assume that Galileo
maintained his early interest in astrology throughout his life.” The reason for
this is that “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.”
For this reason, the cosmos was seen as functioning with a mechanical
precision. And since the majority of the great intellectuals of the past
centuries inherited this framework of knowledge, Hendrix’s conclusion that
“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 Galileo just as for
______________________________________________________________
Pico, Albert, and all who had developed their approach to natural philosophy
based on Greek precedents, belief in astrology was rational,” can hardly be
bettered.
Within the context of my own paper, I agree with Hendrix in many

important respects but one question that his consideration led me to think of
is this: in what sense could it be said that rationality is context specific? This
question is cogent even if we are to make allowances for the claims that the
scholars considered by Hendrix - Albert the Great, Pico and Galileo - all
made their own independent judgements about the kind and degree of
astrology they appropriated. Moreover, the reluctance with which the Arabic
scholars appropriated the texts of Greek astrology sharpens the focus of the
foregoing question. This, then, is a fundamental concern that I would be
interested in learning more about from Scott.
Comment by Dr. Danijel Sinani, Professor of Anthropology, University

of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
Did you check your horoscope today? Even if you don’t believe in
the astrological principles might it not make you feel better to know that the
stars predict your monetary income, a journey or an interesting meeting? Or
you might feel a slight discomfort if the planets foretell a work injury, or if
they recommend that you should drive more carefully today, or if (indeed)
they announce a new acquaintance for your partner?
Personally, I have always been skeptical about horoscopes and the

potential planetary influences on our lives so, naturally, I have had my share
of disagreements with the followers of astrology; but no matter how far you
go into elaborating the “pointlessness” of horoscopes or how ready you are to
explain their “uselessness”, one thing is clear – astrology is a worthy
Scott E. Hendrix 57
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“opponent”.
As a social phenomenon astrology can be viewed through various

aspects. The attempts of astrologists to declare their work as scientific and to
defend their theories with academic argumentation are going through a
specific kind of revival. In Belgrade (Serbia) there is an “Institute” Johannes
Kepler that is not recognized by the state or any of the academic institutions,
but which enrolls new students every year where they study astrological
postulates and techniques. In this way astrology functions as a pseudo-
science today with a significant numbers of followers. On the other hand, a
great number of people conduct and organize their lives in detail following
the advices of their astrologists. These astrological “inputs” relate to any life
questions varying from whether we should curl our hair today or wear
something yellow to neutralize unfavorable planetary influences, the choice
of food that we ought to consume in a particular period or determining the
best moment to start a job or to get married and even plan the perfect time to
have children. Therefore, as a pseudo-religion, astrology also has a large
number of followers, even among the people who declare themselves the
followers of traditional religions, just as active members of traditional
religions often accept certain interpretations about planetary influences or are
at least familiar with the basic characteristics of their own horoscope signs.
As a part of the entertainment industry astrology represents a special

phenomenon which, through the mass media, has become a part of everyday
life and has achieved an enormous popularity. However, if we mention the
names of the intellectuals Pico della Mirandola or Galileo, the first thought
that would cross our mind is hardly their dedication to astrology. One a
famous humanist and philosopher, the other a prominent promoter of the
scientific method and rationality in European scientific thought, Pico and
______________________________________________________________
Galileo still delved into astrological traditions and may have also been
contributors. That’s exactly what Scott Hendrix’s study is about.
In his paper Hendrix gives us a great review of the development of

astrological thought from its hazy beginnings in Babylon, through Greece
and their Hellenistic successors, Arab authors, European Middle Ages and
Renaissance to Early modern Europe. In this way Hendrix presents us with
the historical continuity of astronomical and astrological knowledge that
forms a specific testimony about one segment of human efforts to understand
and explain the world surrounding us, as well as the natural laws by which it
is ruled.
Rereading the sources and rethinking the problems as some of the

basic postulates of modern historiography brings exceptional results in
Hendrix’s study. Hendrix argues that not only were Pico and Galileo familiar
with astrology and actually practiced it, but also that the mechanical model of
the world developed in the contemporary astrological system of ideas
actually allowed Galileo to develop his own scientific method and to come to
his best known achievements.
We come to the most significant contribution of Hendrix’s study

which is his insistence on contextualization – almost a mantra in
anthropological circles. Hendrix justly claims that the intellectual legacy of
that period was grounded in, among other things, astrological knowledge that
was inherited and developed by generations of academics who in this way
tried to, according to the level of knowledge of that period, find answers to
the crucial life questions. Logically coherent, based on the researches of prior
generations and harmonized with new discoveries, in the time of Pico and
Galileo astrology definitely presented a rational system - a system which was
Scott E. Hendrix 59
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approached with scientific researching methods and through which the

astrologists searched for causalities in order to form scientific postulates. We
shouldn’t forget that in the period that we are discussing astrology had its
strongest opponents mostly among church and religious officials, who often
considered it a heretical discipline because its postulates brought up the
question of the existence of God’s plan and his role in the creation of
mankind. In that sense, defending astrology meant, up to a certain degree, the
defense of a rational approach from the mere religious acceptance.
Hendrix’s interpretation presents Galileo as a man who, within his

cultural context and historical moment, made an effort to develop scientific
thought. Did his possible belief in astrological principles make him a
superstitious and semi-skilled adventurer who could not find the way to come
to the right conclusions from the wrong premises? History tells us of his
results. Let us remind ourselves that it is the scientific error which often led
to new discoveries. Was it not Newton who was obsessed with alchemy – a
discipline characterized by vast number of scientific errors?
In the end, we can summarize that astrology made a long journey

from religion and science to the entertainment industry and subsequently
pseudo-religion and pseudo-science. It would be interesting to bring up the
question of whether historiographic methods can help us understand better
the processes of scientification of astrology on the one hand, and its
sacralization on the other, which represent active tendencies in modern
societies.
Author’s response:
Brian Feltham raises the altogether logical concern “that using the
notion of a habitus of the kind described [by Hendrix] risks obscuring certain
______________________________________________________________
possibilities [. . .] it may fail to capture one of the key features of scientific

rationality.” I would have to say, all too ambivalently for Feltham’s tastes
I’m sure—perhaps, and perhaps not. One of the key strength of science is the
procedure of evidence-based testing that the scientific method involves, but
over the last four decades it has become increasingly clear that scientists, like
everyone else, are embedded within a certain intellectual, social, and cultural
milieu that influences the work they do. In other words, they are conditioned
by a certain habitus developed in large part from the hegemonic discourse
that informs what is accepted as “rational” within any given society, how
questions are asked, and what those questions will be about. Does that mean
that those working within a framework cannot or do not go against the grain
of a particular type of scientific rationalism? Certainly not. But I would argue
that such counter-thinking occurs most often when a scientifically-minded
individual is forced to confront particular stresses within a system of thought
that informs his or her habitus, the unquestioned ideas that normally form the
bases of the scientifically-rational individual, or indeed any other person.
Take the example of Albert Einstein and the ether. For many
decades the best scientific minds of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries assumed this poorly understood substance first described by
Aristotle must serve as the plenum through which light, among other things,
travelled. Unseen and resistant to all attempts to measure it, every failed
experiment intended to understand it resulted only in ever greater theoretical
elaboration about why its untestability proved its existence. Even Albert
Einstein accepted the existence of the ether and assumed that his scientific
colleagues’ explanations for why one could not uncover evidence of it were
correct, until, in wrestling with problems related to time and the speed of
light, he eventually had an epiphany that time and speed could not be
Scott E. Hendrix 61
______________________________________________________________
considered as two completely separate units of measurement. This epiphany

negated the need for the existence of the ether and Einstein’s work would, in
the decades to come, relegate the idea of it to the dustbin of history-but only
after the concept of the ether had enjoyed a continuous lifespan of more than
two millennia.
Similarly, Galileo certainly could have challenged the intellectually

bases of astrology, using the developing scientific method to disprove its
predictive power or his increasingly sophisticated understanding of the sheer
size of the cosmos to argue against the ability of heavenly bodies to affect the
earth due to the great distances involved. But he had no motivation to do so.
The affecting power of the heavenly bodies had been a part of the habitus of
natural philosophers since the time of Aristotle, at the very least, and there
was nothing in Galileo’s emerging science to problematize the concept. After
all, he was primarily interested in demonstrating the strength of the “new
physics” that he was so instrumental in developing while proving that the
Copernican model of the university was the correct one. Neither of these
areas of research created a conflict with his astrological beliefs, and in the
absence of conflict, he had no reason to examine closely astrology’s
intellectual justifications. Instead, he seems to have simply accepted it as part
of the habitus he inherited from his forebears.
All this being said, Feltham is absolutely right that premodern

astrological beliefs were foundational. I have written elsewhere, for example,
about the way in which Albert the Great’s astrological beliefs provided the
basis for his understanding of what properly constitutes human rather than
animal action. However, I would argue against the idea that this
foundationalism represented irrationality on the part of these intellectuals.
Instead, as I suggested in the body of my essay above, I would argue that
______________________________________________________________
within the boundaries of a habitus that saw logic as the essential tool for
knowledge production, there was no reason not to accept the validity of
astrological beliefs. Furthermore, these beliefs were inherently useful,
representing a powerful anxiety-reduction mechanism, to borrow a phrase
from the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, providing a means of
explanation for things that were otherwise unexplainable. Given its
compatibility with the premodern habitus coupled with their usefulness, what
could have been more rational than to hold astrological beliefs? True to
Feltham’s closing comments, astrologers were not, and I would argue still are
not, “performing” science, and therefore by the standards of scientific
rationalism would (are?) not involved in a scientifically rational exercise. But
as Steven Lukes has argued, we should not assume that there is only one
model of rationality.
For this reason I find Okeja’s comments regarding the

“technologization of life” to be very apropos-but with a caveat. Within our
current epistemic regime, looking back at the Greeks and their medieval
successors, it is easy to find ourselves surprised at their belief in astrology.
After all, a modern intellectual could point to multiple empirical studies that
undermine the bases of the discipline. To such an individual the
“workability” of astrology, to borrow Okeja’s useful term, would be
completely undermined, making acceptance of the tenets of celestial
influence and its effects on terrestrial subjects irrational. However, even
within our modern discourse, those who accept that a study of astrology can
tell them much about the world in which they live attain many benefits from
this belief, at least according to research findings reported by the
psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo in the 19 Oct. 2010 edition of Scientific
American. Here Valdesolo reports that those with “magical” ways of
Scott E. Hendrix 63
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thinking experienced benefits ranging from sports performance enhancement

to anxiety reduction. Therefore, I would argue that even today astrology has
a great deal of “workability” for those who truly believe in it. That does not
mean that those who accept the predictive power of the study of the stars are
participating in an activity that is within the framework of “scientific
rationalism.” But as Feltham suggests, nor does it mean that such beliefs
cannot participate in another form or rationality even in our modern age. This
certainly raises interesting questions for future research, as suggested by
Okeja’s closing comments about the context specific nature of rationality,
and is further evidence that even with foundational beliefs, such as those
surrounding astrology in premodern Europe or scientism in the current age, it
is certainly possible for alternate models of rational knowledge to coexist.
Furthermore, despite the foundational nature of modern “scientism,” there are
still rational reasons why some modern people accept magical ways of
thinking, suggesting that there are subaltern versions of rationality in the
modern world that are certainly worth exploring.
Consideration of those subaltern rationalities leads directly into a

discussion of Sinani’s comments, which strike to the heart of why it is
important to study the history of astrology. As he says, there has been a
revival of interest in astrology in the modern world, with institutes and
institutions of higher learning such as the Kepler College of Astrological Arts
and Sciences emerging in the U.S. (and for several years receiving state and
federal funding thanks to the provisional accreditation it held for a time from
the state of Washington) providing a measure of respectability to the
discipline while in cities across Europe, the United States, and Latin America
astrological advisors provide economic advice to investors. Modern
scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Gould have expressed bafflement
at continuing interest in astrology, but if we consider the ups and downs that
______________________________________________________________
the discipline has experienced over the years in terms of its reputation then
the modern fascination is easier to understand. With the close of the
Renaissance, even before Galileo cast horoscopes in Italy, the subject began
to become tainted in France due to associations with unrest and public
disorder during the years of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), as
Denis Crouzet argues in his two-volume Les Guerriers de Dieu. Its negative
reputation only worsened during the years of the British Civil Wars (1642-46
and 1648), leading to astrology’s marginalization until a revival of interest
occurred in the latter years of the nineteenth century thanks largely to the
efforts of William Frederick Allen, known to the world as Alan Leo. This
history is far too complex to do more than mention here, but the point is that
with the coming of modernity and all its complexities, including the loss of
faith that many experienced in regards to traditional religions, astrology stood
ready to provide an alternative belief system complete with the same anxiety-
reducing benefits that it had provided to centuries of premodern believers.
My final words on the subject- here at any rate- begin from the
presumption that there is no such thing as “rationality,” in my estimation, but
rather there are “rationalities.” Differing eras have differing constructs of
what rationality is and what it is to be rational, imparted to individual
members of society through a hegemonic discourse that inculcates a habitus
within the individual. This is explicitly not a rigid set of beliefs from which
one cannot diverge, but rather a set of starting assumptions that typically
(though not always) go unexamined, influencing but never mandating how
people will view the world. However, one does not have to dig very deep to
find modern people who hold esoteric beliefs. Sometimes these are held in
addition to or apart from those ideas that are part of the discourse of scientific
rationality-such as we find with the rusje whom Sinani has studied-or
Scott E. Hendrix 65
______________________________________________________________
sometimes they are held instead of scientifically rational views-as Okeja

argues in regard to many African believers in magic. But there is a third
category, and one in need of much more research: those who hold beliefs that
could be called magical alongside their scientifically rational worldview.
The key here is that many of these people accept the very form of rationalism
that would seem to invalidate their adherence to astrological or other esoteric
beliefs, yet they manage to balance multiple forms of rationality
simultaneously, and I would argue this occurs in many cases without the
cognitive dissonance that one would expect to find in such people. Thus, a
person may hold a form of astrological rationality, which could be very
useful to maintain, along with a more “traditional” scientific rationalism
without feeling the angst that one might expect. One reason for this might
well be the deep history informing and supporting astrological beliefs, which
may be far more “combinable” with scientific modes of thought than many
moderns might be willing to recognize.

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Rational Astrology and Scientific Rationalism in Premodern

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

I wish to address: scientific rationalism and its relationship to what we now

think of as “superstition.” As the philosophers of science, Boris Castel and

to be modern, is thoroughly entwined with science,”1 which has led to a

virtual redefinition of the terms “rational” and “scientific” as near synonyms

in our modern world.2 Therefore, I will examine the intellectual background

rationality, the fifteenth-century humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and

that 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 neither of these iconographic figures

intellectuals of the premodern West. Furthermore, adherence to a belief in

natural philosophy with its Greek, Arabic, and Medieval underpinnings.

astrology may have even played a positive role in the development of

Galileo’s scientific ideas. In other words, a belief system now thoroughly

rejected by modern science may have prompted some of the foundational

scientific developments of the West.

Before exploring these arguments, however, I should briefly pause

Beginning with the question of what it is to be rational or behave rationally

even a surface skimming of the literature demonstrates that such a seemingly

basic and non-contentious term as “rational” is nothing of the sort. The

debate itself is a wide-ranging one, based as it is on such larger concepts as

“Magic and Practical Agency,” included earlier in this volume. However, it is

necessary for me to explain very briefly my understanding of “rational” so I

In short, my view follows that of Steven Lukes, whose foundational

principle in his analysis of the subject is that “there are contextually-provided

removing “rationality” from the realm of unchanging concepts with

independent ontological status.3 In turn, Lukes has been influenced quite

rationality, but rather that this concept is only explicable on a contextual

basis. Whether an individual is seen as rational can only be adjudicated based

be taken as necessarily relativist in regards to the reality of the

phenomenological world. Rather, the focus of this approach is the way in

him by his experience of the world.”5 Therefore if we want to understand

cultural norms making up the constituent building blocks of each particular

Within this model of rationality, drawing upon the thought of the

sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, rational actors are seen to perform rationality

through “a sort of metanoia [meaning a personal change or metamorphosis]

marked in particular by a bracketing of beliefs and of ordinary modes of

Europe beginning with the University of Bologna in 1189.7 Within this

context intellectuals dealing with natural philosophical questions were almost

always university graduates, creating a situation whereby the investigation of

Hellenistic thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy was dogmatically held to

premodern European intellectual class that shared a set of presuppositions

taken for granted and held to be beyond dispute - a habitus - inculcated

literature written primarily by Greek and Arabic authors understood through

from this common experience and reinforced by the authority of professors,

degree-granting institutions, and the professionalization of the intellectual

This understanding of rationality is not peculiar to the premodern

society within which one lives.9 Therefore, in the absence of revolutionary

paradigmatic change beliefs within a society typically develop from older

worldview. Very few if any beliefs can be considered free-standing; instead,

concepts, interpretations, and analyses are conjoined to those a person has

acquired through his or her cultural and intellectual heritage.10 It is the

conjunctive nature of beliefs that make astrology in premodern Europe

thoroughly rational, built as it was on an internally consistent set of principles