I'll start with the below from CNN's article "No Your Zodiac Sign Hasn't Changed":
Tattoo parlor owners must be salivating. An assertion in a Minneapolis Star Tribune article that our understanding of the zodiac is off by about a month - and that therefore people have been identifying themselves with the wrong sign - caught fire on the internet Thursday, and many folks are in an absolute panic on social media.
"If my zodiac symbol has been changed to a Libra, what am I supposed to do with my Scorpio tattoo?!?!," read one tweet Thursday.
Some vowed to get their tats removed. Others groaned about losing the sign with which they’ve identified themselves for years. The zodiac and related terms - including Ophiuchus, said to be a 13th and neglected sign - were trending Twitter topics much of Thursday
But before astrology fans scrape the ink from their arms because they think they're now a Virgo instead of a Libra, they should consider this: If they adhered to the tropical zodiac - which, if they're a Westerner, they probably did – absolutely nothing has changed for them.
That's worth rephrasing: If you considered yourself a Cancer under the tropical zodiac last week, you're still a Cancer under the same zodiac this week.
That's because the tropical zodiac – which is fixed to seasons, and which Western astrology adheres to – differs from the sidereal zodiac – which is fixed to constellations and is followed more in the East, and is the type of zodiac to which the Star Tribune article ultimately refers.
Two zodiacs. That's nothing new.
"This story is born periodically as if someone has discovered some truth. It's not news," said Jeff Jawer, astrologer with Tarot.com.
The hubbub started with Sunday's Star Tribune article, which said the following: "The ancient Babylonians based zodiac signs on the constellation the sun was 'in' on the day a person was born. During the ensuing millenniums, the moon’s gravitational pull has made the Earth 'wobble' around its axis, creating about a one-month bump in the stars' alignment."
"When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces," Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, told the Star Tribune.
"Indeed," the article continued, "most horoscope readers who consider themselves Pisces are actually Aquarians." The article also asserts Scorpio's window lasts only seven days, and that a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, used to be counted between Scorpio and Sagittarius but was discarded by the Babylonians because they wanted 12 signs per year.
True enough, Jawer says, the sun doesn't align with constellations at the same time of year that it did millennia ago. But that’s irrelevant for the tropical zodiac, codified for Western astrology by Ptolemy in the second century, he says.
In the tropical zodiac, the start of Aries is fixed to one equinox, and Libra the other.
"When we look at the astrology used in the Western world, the seasonally based astrology has not changed, was never oriented to the constellations, and stands as … has been stated for two millenniums," Jawer said.
People who put stock in astrology can ask whether they should adhere to the tropical zodiac or the sidereal zodiac. Jawer argues for the tropical.
"Astrology is geocentric. It relates life on Earth to the Earth’s environment, and seasons are the most dramatic effect, which is why we use the tropical zodiac," he said.
As someone who studies how people assign/define value and identity [read: arbitrarily], I couldn't have asked for more interesting news. This, along with "make a wish on 11:11 of 11/11/11" make up a couple of examples of why I tend to say "meaning is arbitrary, but creating meaning is beautiful."
The idea is that things like identifying with zodiac signs or religious beliefs - or any kinds of beliefs for that matter - are no less meaningful because their foundations "don't exist" (any bit of study on the physics of space and time will tend to get you thinking that they don't, might I suggest Dan Falk's "In Search of Time: The History, Physics and Philosophy of Time"); it's precisely that we have the ability to infuse these things with meaning that I find to be a compellingly beautiful part of what it means to be human.
I'm particularly fond of this E. D. Klemke reference at the end of Steve Stewart-William (of Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life)'s description of historical vs teleological vs evolutionary approaches to meaning (see: Psychology Today: "The Meaning Of Life Revealed!"):
An objective meaning - that is, one which is inherent within the universe or dependent upon external agencies - would, frankly, leave me cold. It would not be mine... I, for one, am glad that the universe has no meaning, for thereby is man all the more glorious. I willingly accept the fact that external meaning is non-existent... for this leaves me free to forge my own meaning.
I think it's important for me to explain why I say "their foundations 'don't exist'" up there in quotes, so bear with me as I do so through a couple of lateral jumps. The first one starts with this witty Wolfram Alpha search I ran into:
The second jump is about data in the information age. There's a lot of conversation about how we live in a world where data is everywhere, and you're starting to see remarkable numbers about just how much data is being captured ("more data created every 2 days than that created from the dawn of civilization to 2003!"). To me these numbers aren't actually remarkable. This data has always "existed," we just never had a way to observe it in any way that makes sense to us. (see: Why more data "exists" now than before)
That is to say that snapping my fingers creates the data that we can capture with audio recognition systems, but that data has always been generated ever since humans first started snapping their fingers - we just haven't always had audio recognition systems. I'll point to Bruce Sterling's take on it from Shaping Things (pdf), because I particularly like his explanation of why Adam Smith's Invisible Hand was "invisible.":
You might see where I'm going with this, with the "tree falls in a forest" thing. The typical philosophical argument is "well is it more important that the air is vibrating or is it more important that there are people to hear it?" That seems to be the wrong question to me. What matters is not the difference between vibration in the air (data) and having something available to interpret that data (ears), what matters is that data only means something to us in certain contexts.
In this case, we call that context "sound"; you could look at it like this: until the first ear ran into the first vibration of air, we had nothing which to call "sound." So in the case of the snapping finger: until we had computers/etc we had nothing which to call "data."
But of course just because humans haven't yet created something that allows them to accurately perceive the underlying phenomena of the world, doesn't mean that they don't exist. Hence the quotes around "don't exist" that are now way up there in the above. The reality and physics of time/space exists no matter how humans define it, and as the above article makes clear, humans have been defining it and redefining it for ages as we develop better tools for interpretation to overcome our natural limitations for observing the world (our sensory organs are only so good). So the quotes are to indicate that these things exist on a human level, not necessarily on a metaphysical "reality" level.
But again, that makes them no less meaningful - our ability to ascribe meaning to them is indeed beautiful.
