The Heavens and the Laws

Astronomy, Astrology and Positivism in the Late 19th – Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

Proceeding from a fragment of Vasily Rozanov about astronomy, Auguste Comte and horoscopes, our study clarifies the complex ideological relationship between astronomy and astrology in intellectual culture of the turn of the XIX – XX centuries. Both these disciplines were closely related with positivism: the main goal of science— the search for scientific laws — was identified as a key element of positive philosophy. For Auguste Comte and his followers, astronomy became a model of the most advanced positive science. On the one hand, the concept of immutable laws of nature was developed in astronomy. On the other hand, the success of astronomy predetermined the positivists’ interest in astrology, and not only from a critical point of view. Astrology was considered, first of all, as human knowledge stage of development, closely related to the gradual progress in understanding the laws of history, which was reflected in the growth of interest in the history of astrology in the late XIX – early XX centuries. In this article, we will try to determine the historical logic that connects positivism, astronomy, and astrology (which prima facie may not be completely obvious for the modern reader) at the turn of the XX century. We reconstruct the growing historical interest in astrology by analyzing positivist sources, which are the key to the interpretation of astrological texts through intellectual language at the turn of the XX century, which allows us to discover one of the problem fields in which astrology was involved. The starting point of our research will be Vasily Rozanov’s book “The Apocalypse of Our Time”, which is a synthesis of positivist moods and interest in astrology, the explanatory potential of which is combined with the apocalyptic expectations of the beginning of the last century.