Page 20 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Four

organisms to judge relative position within the significant sections of a
year; and lunar phases, also differentiable into two, four or eight equal
segments. Those relatively invariant periods, with the constants of noon
and terrestrial latitude provided by the inclination of the earth’s axis to
the ecliptic plane, are the obvious reliable spatiotemporal external
markers for which life has developed detectors and dependencies. These
are, in computational terms, simple binary relationships, easily built upon
to create increasingly complicated systems of time-keeping and response-
triggering. The next step in complexity might be the implementation of a
trisecting sensitivity, enabling the play of two against three and leading to
the division of a time-circle into twelve equal sections: the familiar thirty-
degree (but not quite thirty-day) signs of the zodiac repeating every orbit
of the earth around the sun.
The mechanism by which organic response to changing sun-earth-
moon aspects operates is possibly twofold. The first, and earliest to be
established, is evident in the real-time behavior of plants and animals
requiring appropriate reactions to changing environmental conditions
heralded by changes in the electromagnetic and gravitational fields of the
two most ponderable external bodies in their environment, the sun and
moon. The universality of those genetically-transmitted structures is well-
known; their study, however, does not extend beyond the gross level of
common instinct. Astrology posits a second type of influence for higher
animals, most notably Homo sapiens: a series of permanent settings at
some critical point in fetal development (possibly birth and the first
breath) keyed to the sun-moon-earth space-time configuration. These
would resemble in function DIP switches in electronic circuitry. In
combination they would represent a relatively unique set of attributes
within a limited population, particularly in a group as small as an
extended family. Although the existence of such an imprinting of
multiple regularly-varying qualities has not been established by genetics
or neurology, any valid “astrology” requires it; otherwise, no level of
double-blind, controlled experiment will ever be well-enough designed or
executed to be convincing. It awaits the complete analysis of the human
animal. This evolutionarily newer means of complex organic life
employing spatiotemporal fluctuation is not a leap into metaphysics:
many more specialized sensory and motor structures have arisen. And
this begs the last question, why should nature have encouraged the
distribution of personality variation at all?
In tandem with other effects of nature and nurture, they would be a
factor in assuring a range of abilities in a social unit dependent on