People tend to believe that there is a connection between the heavenly bodies and human behavior. It must be said clearly: there is no way to predict human behavior in the way that astrology claims to present
On the eve of Passover, after midnight, in excellent timing for those finishing the seder as usual, we witnessed a perfect lunar eclipse. Passover, like Sukkot and Tu Bab, falls on a full moon night, a hint of the magic that the Little Light cast on the ancients. It is possible that the moment when mankind first wondered about the legitimacy of the moon shows was also the moment when science was born. In a world where many events, such as sports games, the weather or the course of wars, cannot be accurately predicted, the moon shows are an island of sanity. Every month, with the precision of Swiss time, the moon is "born", becomes full and then returns to a thin crescent. This is due to the regular movement in which it circles the earth, a cycle that determines the Hebrew month as well as the Muslim month. The understanding of the laws of the lunar cycle is indeed ancient, but it was Newton who brought victory to science in his ability to explain the regularity of the movement of our natural satellite with the help of the laws of gravity. And here, the moon also sometimes does "unexpected" things. Once every few months, and always on a full moon night, the moon is covered by the earth's shadow and we experience an eclipse. Our ability to witness the phenomenon also depends on the time of day and the weather, so practical observation of the eclipse is only possible once a year or two years. Why is there no bleaching every month? And is it possible to predict deficiencies in accuracy?
Determining when the moon will be full again is within the ability of each of us. But knowing when the next total eclipse will be seen in Israel is already the property of a few, who consult astronomical tables. Although the knowledge already existed among the ancient Babylonians, it is likely that only a few of the readers of this article can foresee deficiencies themselves. The reason is that there is a complicated combination of movements here: the movement of the moon around the earth, the movement of the earth around the sun and the daily rotation of the earth around its axis. Due to this complication, deficiencies do not have a simple cycle, and a deficiency does not occur every month. But if it is possible to predict difficult phenomena such as lunar eclipses and heat for hundreds of years in the future, why is it difficult for us to predict other phenomena, even for a period of a few days? Why is there no perfect theory for predicting the weather or describing the behavior of the stock market?
There seems to be a certain degree of complication, beyond which we fail in the ability to predict. The frustration that this evokes is the driving force behind all the absurd predictive phenomena, from the oracles of ancient Greece to the earthquake and drought predictors of today. In several fields, above a certain level of complexity, even the greatest experts, equipped with supercomputers, are not capable of accurate predictions. One can, for example, give a reasonable estimate of the chance that it will rain tomorrow, but one cannot in any way say whether it will rain on December 12, 1997. Polls can be used to predict short-term political trends, but one cannot predict specific political events. A partial explanation for this frustrating situation appears in a relatively new Torah, which deals with phenomena called "chaotic" (from the word chaos - in Greek, chaos, or disorder, the opposite of cosmos, which means order).
To which bank will a floating leaf reach on the swirling waters of a stream? Will a trickle fall at a given moment or single drops fall from a leaky faucet? These are some of the questions that chaos theory tries to answer. These systems, like the weather, behave in an irregular, chaotic manner that is not easily predictable but is also not completely random. Chaos theory makes it clear that chaotic systems are very sensitive to initial conditions, and any tiny change in conditions may lead to a completely different result in the long run. One of the well-known chaos sayings is: "The flapping of a butterfly's wings in China may cause hurricanes in America." Chaos theory opens up hope for a smarter prediction of storms and earthquakes, but also delimits the limits of our ability and clearly shows that there is a wide variety of phenomena that we can never predict.
The most extreme cases of ignorance are in systems of enormous complexity - those involving humans. Man is complicated beyond human imagination: he is made up of a thousand million million cells, and each microscopic cell surpasses a large computer in its complexity. The brain contains about ten trillion neurons, each of which is connected to thousands of others. Although psychology, history and political science enable a sophisticated global analysis of human behavior and social dynamics. But it seems that no scientific theory can ever predict in advance the individual actions of a single person. Some call this uncertainty "the force of fate", but modern science hypothesizes that it is actually a form of chaos.
Modern astronomy allows excellent predictions of the behavior of the moon, planets, comets and most other celestial bodies. On the other hand, the sky presents a host of phenomena that seem difficult to explain and predict to an ordinary person, starting with a lunar eclipse and ending with a rare coincidence such as "the sun in Capricorn and Saturn near Mars". And for some reason people tend to believe that there is a connection between the heavenly bodies and human behavior. This is the essence of astrology, which claims, paradoxically, the influence of the distant and predictable cosmos on the unpredictable human chaos.
The ancient roots of this puzzling phenomenon lie in the link between the (real) ability of the Astagnins to predict a lunar eclipse, which they interpreted to the unconscious masses as an ominous sign, and their (misleading) statements regarding their ability to also predict human destinies. It must be said clearly: anyone who needs this gratuitous approach these days is putting his life and money on the antlers of the deer. There is no way to predict human behavior in the way that astrology claims to present. And even if we ever develop a limited capacity for such prediction, it is clear as day that it will not be based on a correlation between the movement of stars and human actions. There is only one way in which the stars can "influence" human actions: through faith. If a person believed in the words of the oracle that prophesied that his son would be king, then he would be raised as a prince. If a woman believes the astrologer predicting a successful week in matters of the heart, she will gather courage and find a life partner. This real phenomenon of "self-fulfilling prophecy" belongs to the field of psychology, and there is nothing between it and the celestial bodies. The need for crystal balls or coffee grounds, as an alternative to stars, indicates the dubious significance of the entire process. Towards the year 2000, it is essential that we see the lunar eclipse as a signal to strengthen astronomy, the science of chaos and psychology, and not to cling to worldviews that have lost power.
