01684nam a22002171i 450000500170000000800410001702000390005804000250009708200160012210000310013824500800016926400360024930000910028533600210037633700250039733800230042250000510044552009090049665000250140565000360143020210712092702.0210712s2020    enkao||g  ||| ||1 0 eng d  a9781781259634cRM 149.90qhardback  aPPAKbengcPPAKerda04223a133.5091 aBoxer, Alexander,eauthor.12aA SCHEME OF HEAVEN :bASTROLOGY and THE BIRTH of SCIENCE /cALEXANDER BOXER 1aLondon :bProfile Books ,c2020  ax, 319 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates :b illustrations (some colour) ; c24 cm.  2rdacontentatext  2rdamediaaunmediated  2rdacarrieravolume  aIncludes bibliographical references and index.  aDespite a resurgence in popularity, horoscopes are generally considered to be pseudoscience today - but they were once a cutting-edge scientific tool. In this ingenious work of history, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines a treasure trove of esoteric classical sources to expose the deep imaginative framework by which - for millennia - we made sense of our fates. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world's most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history's most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. A Scheme of Heaven explores the wonderful subtleties of astrological ideas. Telling the stories of their inventors and most influential exponents, Boxer puts them through their paces using modern data sets - finding that the methods of today's scientists are often uncomfortably close to those of astrology's ancient sages.10aAstrology xHistory.20aScience and astrologyxHistory.