Preview
  • A Scheme of Heaven

  • The History and Science of Astrology, from Ptolemy to the Victorians and Beyond
  • By: Alexander Boxer
  • Narrated by: Peter Noble
  • Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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A Scheme of Heaven

By: Alexander Boxer
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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Publisher's summary

Humans are pattern-matching creatures, and astrology is our grandest pattern-matching game. 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.

Despite a resurgence in popularity, horoscopes are generally considered to be pseudoscience today, but they were once a cutting-edge scientific tool. Boxer explores their extraordinary subtleties and tells the stories of their inventors and most influential exponents. And he 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.

©2020 Alexander Boxer (P)2020 Hachette Audio UK
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