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A Scheme of Heaven - The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data (Hardcover)
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A Scheme of Heaven - The History of Astrology and the Search for our Destiny in Data (Hardcover)
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Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and astrology is the
universe's grandest pattern-matching game. In this refreshing work
of history and analysis, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines
classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific
and mathematical framework. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient
world's most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a monumental
data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history's most
brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. Thousands of
years ago, astrologers became the first to stumble upon the
powerful storytelling possibilities inherent in numerical data. To
correlate the configurations of the cosmos with our day-to-day
lives, astrologers relied upon a "scheme of heaven," or horoscope,
showing the precise configuration of the planets at a particular
instant in time as viewed from a particular place on Earth.
Although recognized as pseudoscience today, horoscopes were once
considered a cutting-edge scientific tool. Boxer teaches us how to
read these esoteric charts-and appreciate the complex astronomical
calculations needed to generate them-by diagramming how the heavens
appeared at important moments in astrology's history, from the
assassination of Julius Caesar as viewed from Rome to the Apollo 11
lunar landing as seen from the surface of the Moon. He then puts
these horoscopes to the test using modern data sets and statistical
science, arguing that today's data scientists do work similar to
astrologers of yore. By looking back at the algorithms of ancient
astrology, he suggests, we can better recognize the patterns that
are timeless characteristics of our own pattern-matching
tendencies. At once critical, rigorous, and far ranging, A Scheme
of Heaven recontextualizes astrology as a vast, technological
project-spanning continents and centuries-that foreshadowed our
data-driven world today.
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