Astrology, Darwinian Truths, and Biochemistry in the Womb

Right pattern, wrong attribution

Feb 10, 2024

This is essay is part of Applied Biofoundationalism. All chapters are linked at the end. Enjoy.

Lying in bed, she turns to me and says “I don't take the astrology stuff seriously, it's just fun. Don’t judge me”. I appreciated her overture, we had discussed astrology earlier and she could tell I, like most men, wasn’t exactly into it. I'm used to most women believing in it, so it’s not a big deal. But I felt like trying to meet her halfway…in my own weird way. This is what I shared as my defense of astrology.

The Steelman

A steelman argument is when you give the strongest defense you can of the opposing side. Steelmanning is making yourself a trial lawyer and advocating the other person's view. You may think he's guilty, but here's the innocent case.

A steelman is the opposite of a strawman. A strawman is when you create a false and/or exaggerated version of your opponent's argument, then attack that. Steelman inverts that and creates the best defense of an idea you don’t believe in. It’s a good practice to make sure you’re being intellectually honest. If you’re having a debate with someone you respect, you should do it.

The best steelman of astrology I can come up with:

Perhaps there’s embedded information in astrology. There’s functional truths in religion after all; the observations they make are true, even if the stories are technically false. Maybe this moon-coded religion has correctly identified a pattern, but with misguided attribution?

I'm seeking a transmission mechanism for concrete claims and I’m not willing to accept that Saturn is responsible for your BPD. Though, maybe, Saturn is a useful heuristic...

Darwinian Truths vs Scientific Truths

Some heuristics can be accurate, for the wrong reasons.

If you see the sun rise after the rooster crows, then think the sun rises because of the rooster, you’re wrong. But if you use the rooster as a sign to let you know sunrise is almost here, you’re right.

Your rooster attribution for the sun rising is incorrect, but your observation is valid in that it has predictive utility for when the sun will rise. You're wrong, but in a useful way!

A Darwinian Truth:

“A porcupine throws its quills”

This is scientifically false. It just isn’t true. But if you act like it’s true, you’re right.

If you behave as if the porcupine throws its quills, you won’t get close to porcupines, won’t get stabbed, and may live longer.

The porcupine quills story is what’s known as a Darwinian Truth: it's scientifically false, but if you act like it’s correct it benefits you or society. A Darwinian Truth means the pattern it detects or behavior it encourages is “right” from a survival standpoint. Religions and some superstitions are prime examples of scientific falsehoods, but Darwinian Truths. You could also call them adaptive fictions.

If it’s useful, how wrong can it be?

Astrology and Darwinian Truths

What pattern, or Darwinian Truth, is astrology noticing with incorrect planetary attributions?

I’m not enlightened enough to believe the location of Jupiter is actually why you struggle with anxiety. I’m not analyzing astrology on those grounds. If you want to accept the answer is cosmic forces or divinity, that’s fine. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I just don’t think it’s interesting. And you’re not reading this because you think I’m going to give that answer anyways.

So let's theorycel this, midcurve style.

Astrology claims to be able to predict behavioral traits using the month of your birth. However what it actually claims to predict is your temperament.

What is your temperament: it’s a person's innate predispositions, their behavioral and emotional template. Your natural and enduring personality traits and tendencies.

Your temperament is responsible for your political, social, and behavioral responses to stimuli and situations. Your personality and beliefs have biological basis, influenced by genetic, hormonal, and physiological factors. Internalizing the biological substrate of human temperament has significant implications for understanding collective human behaviors, as well as your own.

The fundamental claim of astrology is your temperament is the result of your birth month; it makes cosmic rationalizations for how it identifies this. However what it's really noticing are consistent, cyclical traits associated with your mother’s environment leading up to the time you’re born. It looks to the stars for answers that can be found in the trees.

Deduction:

What produces someone’s behavioral and personality traits? Temperament.
What informs temperament? Biology.
How does a birth month correlate with biological differences that could affect temperament…?
Your time in the womb maybe… how could that vary among birth months?
What could be rooted in pregnancy gestation cycles, such that observations can be formed around birth months? Endocrine cycles in the mother.

The hormones you’re exposed to in the womb materially shape you for the rest of your life. Even little things in utero can be formative.

Example: the male and female "interest in things" vs "interest in people" dyad is observable in 1-day-old infants. Exposure to in utero testosterone is largely responsible. A flush of testosterone in the womb influences much of your interests for the rest of your life….

What causes mothers to experience consistent cyclical endocrine changes that impact in utero fetuses? It must be cyclical, otherwise the birth month wouldn’t matter. There has to be a recurring phenomenon here such that every November baby goes through something similar in the womb.

Deduction:

What could alter endocrine cycles in a mother? Her surroundings and diet.
What can cause cyclical changes that shape her surroundings and diet? The weather.
Seasonal changes are cyclical. And they impact your body in consistent ways.

Seasonality and the Endocrine System

Let's examine what seasonal changes can do to our biochemistry.

Spring:

Summer and Autumn:

Winter and additional observations:

Let’s dig more into how extreme seasonal shifts shape your hormones. Remember if it’s altering the mother’s hormones, it’s altering the baby’s development. This could be our astrological answer: it’s giving credit to planets when it’s hormones, nutrients, and seasonality that deserve our recognition.

Harsh winters:

Hot or humid summers:

This isn't trivial, look at how it contrasts with intense winters.

Seasonal and dietary changes can significantly impact our biochemistry. Environmental shifts facilitate disruptions in hormonal output in mom, and thus fetus development, cyclically. In a way that could produce temperament patterns in humans that roughly correlate with birth months….

Astrology: A Proxy for Seasonality’s Impact on Hormones

Let’s say you were conceived in September:

Your 1st trimester is in autumn. There’s relatively pleasant weather and certain nutritional idiosyncrasies with this time. This produces a particular endocrine environment for mother and baby.
Then winter comes. You’re in your 2nd trimester, mom’s endocrine response shifts with the seasonality. Less sunlight, higher cortisol, more melatonin, etc.

Remember, your brain is being formed all this time. How impactful is that lack of Vitamin D in 2nd trimester as opposed to it happening in the 1st? Extra cortisol in 2nd trimester vs 3rd? Hmmm

Then last trimester in spring comes. More FSH and LH, more heat, sunlight exposure, etc. for mom.
Then you’re born in June. Every June baby goes through this pattern.

Conceived in May:

1st trimester: Summer. Reduced thyroid output, more ADH, more Vitamin D, etc.
2nd trimester: A shift in autumn. Reduced sunlight, change in melatonin and sleep patterns, which affect other hormonal outputs.
3rd trimester: Cold conditions. How does increased T3/thyroid levels in your 8th month in utero matter for brain development as opposed to the 4th month? I bet it matters at least a tad.
Then the baby is born in February. Every February baby in a similar geographic region goes through an equivalent hormonal cycle in utero.

This produces comparable endocrine cycles for someone born in October, Sept, April, etc.. which very well could be impacting temperaments, producing observable behavioral differences by month.

Astrology ascribes to the planets what the endocrine system and seasonality impose upon us. It correctly documents personality variance by birth month that is actually due to biochemical cycles in mom the nine months preceding your birth. Right observation, false attribution.

Astrology is a heuristic that correctly identifies how seasonality impacts metabolic and endocrine patterns during pregnancy. This produces temperament patterns in people to observe them by birth month. Darwinian truth!

On Regional Variations

If this theory holds true, that means there’s a "tropical-climate Pisces" and "cold-winter Virgo", due to the disparate surroundings moms have during pregnancy in different parts of the world. The astrological predictiveness would have to be geographically specific, insofar as the geographies have comparable climate patterns.

The regions would produce comparable nine-month gestation periods if their climate cycles and weather extremes correlate with each other. For example: June-born European and South American babies would not go through the same nine-month patterns and seasonal conditions, despite both being born in the same month. A German Leo’s pregnancy environment is not the same as a Chilean Leo.

Conversely, I wouldn't expect there to be much difference between Austrian and Polish Geminis, or Iranian and Egyptian Capricorns (because they’re born in near-identical climates and preceding seasonal cycles).

Like rings in a tree trunk, our personalities bear the seasonal imprints of our development, written not in the cosmos, but in the subtle language of hormones and chemistry.

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