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How pseudo-scientists get away with it.

Article Excerpt
EACH MONTH more people read astrological journals than read Harper's, The Saturday Review, ETC., and Science combined. Millions of Americans, including many university graduates, guide their affairs at least in part by the position of the stars, juxtapositions of tea leaves, configurations on the palm of the hand, magical verbal incantations, or other occult formulae.

This mystifies the individual who has never gone in for occult and peseudo scientific endeavors. He assumes that during the past few centuries astronomers have not only charted but depersonalized the heavens. Have not scientific findings become a part of our secondary education? Yet millions of individuals retain the faith that the position of planets at the moment of their birth determine their destiny. Astrology has by no means sunk from view in the wake of astronomy and other sciences.

Need this actually be surprising? Opposition to astrology has been largely by appeal to facts and to reason. It is overlooked that human factors such as interpretations, agreements, satisfactions, and interactions are involved. It is this human side which all too often has been neglected by those who discredit the pseudo-sciences. The beliefs and understanding of an individual involve many semantic factors. As foolish as people who believe in astrology and numerology appear to most of us, it is just as foolish to think anything is accomplished by accusing them of being superstitious and naive. Believers and near-believers are not easily swayed. The human capacity for semantic self-delusion must not be underestimated.

Through the years I have known a considerable array of occultists and pseudo-scientists. There were, for instance, the devotees of the black magic cult in Washington, D.C., who felt they were swaying the destiny of the world. There were the mystics in New York who sent out vibrations on a twenty-four hour basis to save the world from collision with a satellite. Inasmuch as a collision did not occur, they held a victory celebration. Believers in the "Mighty I Am" had their bolts of blue lightning to strike down their enemies. There was the lady who dyed her hair violet, her eyelids green and had a large, devoted following. Then there was the lady who dyed only her cat green and had no followers. Perhaps it was because most people did not think very artistic the satyrs she tried to paint on the doors of her friends' houses. There were the Great White and the Great Golden brotherhoods, who made much of secret initiations which were available to anyone with the price and right cast of mind. A noteworthy experience with a fortuneteller dates from the late 1930's. One evening I received a telephone call from a woman who said she needed my help, and we arranged to meet. I was filled with speculations and fancies as to what kind of special difficulties the lady might be in. After all, I was a college student with no special qualifications. On the appointed afternoon, I went directly from the University of California at Los Angeles to a Beverly Hills hotel where she was staying. She turned out to be a matronly and comfortable looking person, and, quickly putting me at my ease, she came forward with a proposition.

She was a numerologist and palmist. She was having difficulties in getting the palm prints of distinguished scientists and philosophers needed for an illustrated book on palmistry that she was writing. Someone had told her I was a student of both Bertrand Russell and Hans Reichenbach, as well as being remotely acquainted with E. T. Bell at California Institute of Technology. Under her flattering persuasiveness my imagination soared. I pictured myself in Reichenbach's office discussing a problem in probability calculus and tossing in, "By the way, would you mind my taking your handprint? Just a collection, you know..,, a hobby."

I was brought down to earth upon learning that in exchange for the handprints of several distinguished men I would be given a new middle name--a new middle name selected just for me on the basis of cabalistic and numerological principles. The name would have proper vibrations, she said, which would benefit me in untold ways. And it would be most simple. No need to have my name changed legally....

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