Message #26901

[Bianca]

But the 18th century set off on its course of scientific empiricism, and determined to ignore the efforts of astrologers to claim that their subject should be included among those to be examined in a similar fashion.

The attitude continues to this day: one scientist at a conference in the 1970s, dissatisfied with statistical evidence offered as proof that some aspects of astrology were worth examination, was asked what kind of proof he would accept, and replied with splendid certainty: 'I can conceive of no evidence which would convince me that there is anything in the subject.'

If there were few serious astrologers in the 18th century, and even fewer in the 19th, there was plenty of money-making activity from quacks; the evidence of this lies in the continuing sale of almanacs. Partridge's annual almanacs continued to sell for over a century after his death, and Old Moore's Almanac is still issued today. In 1764, Old Moore sold over 80,000 copies in a year, although its prophesies were even more general, even more garbled, than those of earlier issues.

One development during the 18th century was the appearance of almanacs directed specifically at women readers: The Ladies' Diary, for instance, which appeared in 1704, and had articles on famous women, recipes and riddles as well as astrological items. Its editor, a Coventry schoolmaster called John Tipper, had the ambition of 'introducing the fair sex to the study of mathematics'. By the 1750s, it was selling 30,000 copies a year, and was widely read by gentlemen.

Such astrologers as there were, were as fiercely partisan in politics as the earlier astrologers had been during the Civil War.

George Parker was a high Tory whose views were so incendiary that the Stationers' Company refused to publish his work; Partridge on the other hand was violently Whig, and greeted the accession of George of Hanover as a day of deliverance from 'popery, slavery and English traitors'.