Our awareness of astrology emerges in clear –and threatening—fashion from the Middle Ages, even though it was given some shine by the polish of the Renaissance. Unavoidably, we learn the imposition of Fate; we alchemically search for knowledge with which to placate the gods to avoid their decrees.

In the 16th and 17th century, we see the bloom of scientific measuring; the world is fascinated with describing what is, knowing in detail what and why things are. This is the birth of “Scientific Method,” led by Francis Bacon (c. 1590), inspiring order in experiments; by Rene Descartes (c. 1637) adding the rationale of deduction; and by Robert Boyle (c. 1665), the father of modern chemistry and experimentation paradigms with that knowledge. Science was defining the outer environment, to capture the mechanics of god.

This knowing through measurement took over in astrology and prevailed certainly through the 19th century, that’s some 300 years! And that grip is still strong in our methods and operations … so productive were measurements to mind-set.

Then as the 19th century came to a close, we saw the birth of the Psychological Era, focusing on the human being. It was new for our world, the acknowledgement of the inner environment, the bloom of humanistic understanding, led by grand thinkers like James, Freud, Jung, Maslow, Allport, and the behaviorists. Of paramount importance was the role of activity: how and why will we behave, and, of course, this began to define our ‘modern’ astrology. We now sought for meaning in human terms of reaction to the environment, not in fatalistic decrees.

This adaptation of astrology to the ways of thought in the world was an echo of how our species adapted over a huge time span to natural changes in the environment. With the climatic dispersion and elevation of earliest man’s food supply, our bodies adapted from knuckle-walking to biped mobility.

Later (still some three million years ago), temperature changes on the planet forced our physiology to learn to perspire, allowing us to endure extended chases for food. These changes and the nurturance that they captured gradually increased our modern human brain size. ----Everything coming from natural selection was vivified by human personification.

So it goes … and in modern times now, our indulgent learning to enjoy highly rich foods and adapt minimization of physical activity [even for robots to do our thinking], we face what Harvard anthropology professor calls dysevolution: a threat to our robust birthright. –It’s a dramatic observation indeed that “The ratio of what we spend on treatment [of health problems] versus what we spend on prevention is wrong.”

Where is astrology going in its ever so gradual adaptation within time and circumstance?

We still passionately need to know things. Our inner environment keenly needs to interact with the outer environment for common good. We now will want to impose our knowledge of circumstances past and present upon our experience of time for the future … and I venture that, in astrology, this will not be accomplished by more measurements but by better reasoning. --How can we make time happen in our best interests? How can we thwart the threat of dysevolution and improve the scheme of life development?

It seems to me that we must take this seriously or we may lose our position in pace with the times.

Next Update: July 31, 2009