Yesterday the Japanese lunar satellite SELENE or Kaguya came to the end of its twenty one-month flight and was steered to crash-land on the moon. It had been used to study the origin and geological history of the moon, as well as various features of its surface. The crash itself should give us some useful information about crater formation too - it’s not that often we get to perform a direct experiment firing tonnes of mass into an astronomical body! You can see a picture of it here: look at the bright dot which appears and then fades.
The craft is also responsible for this gorgeous video of an ‘Earthrise‘ from the moon, and spectacular pictures and video of the Earth eclipsing the Sun. (Interestingly, the camera that took these was not on the craft because it was the best instrument for scientific use but because it was the best for producing striking images. I think that’s a great idea: understanding the world is beautiful but so is just looking at it, and taking the opportunity to do both only adds to them. It’s also an acknowledgment that science belongs to the public as well.)
But one person at least is less than happy with its achievements. Satya Harvey writes as though this is a tragedy - because we may have hurt the moon.
In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine… Purposefully crashing something into the moon just to watch what happens is akin to a schoolboy cutting up a live frog to see what makes it jump. It is an example of the domination of the left-brained rational scientific approach over the intuitive… Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?
Now, there are many criticisms to be made of this. The most obvious is - of course - that the metaphor of the Moon as ‘feminine’ does not imply that it is literally a female biological being, with rights and opinions and the ability to feel pain. Another, as Harvey’s colleague points out, is that “moon = feminine” is a rather narrow and Eurocentric view to take of mythology.
But the reason I mention this is because of this woman’s casual dismissal of the ‘rational scientific approach’ and her appeal to ‘many traditions’ - as though a large number of people in pre-scientific societies telling a story somehow makes it more likely to be true. And she’s pitching this from the point of view of an astrologer, which I don’t think is a coincidence. What’s the harm in astrology, people often ask - isn’t it just a bit of fun, or something people take comfort and find their own truth in? The harm, I think, lies in the extent to which it encourages this attitude. Legitimising this kind of fluffy metaphorical reasoning (lunar cycles have a similar length to menstrual cycles so the moon is feminine; Mars is red so its position in the sky controls our aggressive tendencies) by treating it as a valid alternative to science can only lead to a dangerous attitude towards truth. This woman and her followers vote, presumably, and I can only assume that their opinions on science affect their choices. Does she disapprove of nuclear power on the grounds that smashing atoms is cruel, one wonders, or antibiotics because bacteria have a feminine side?
Of course not all astrology believers are nutcases like this woman - and it’s easy enough to find people writing silly things on the internet about any given topic and being paid for it. Millions of people, I’m sure, read horoscopes acceptingly in newspapers without thinking or saying this sort of nonsense. But there must surely be an encouragement there, an easy step from “science dismisses astrology but maybe there’s some truth in it” to complete disregard for the findings of rational inquiry and this kind of “we can’t trust science because it’s all about Victorian men stifling creativity and torturing frogs” attitude.
The scientific method gave us these beautiful pictures. It gives understanding of how our world works, and it allows us to use satellites for communication and further research. It gives us - if we want to talk about femininity and monthly cycles - drugs to curb period pain and increase or suppress fertility. Stories about animals and people living in the sky can be interesting and entertaining and even inspiring, but they do not give us these things and they are not an ‘alternative way of explaining the world’ because they have no explanatory power. Forgetting this, when our daily lives depend so much on scientific knowledge, would be catastrophic.
Astrology story via Bad Astronomy.
