Astronomy and astrology were considered the exact same legitimate scientific discipline for thousands of years, with early scholars like Galileo and Kepler practicing both without any distinction.

A closer look

Astronomy and astrology were considered the exact same legitimate scientific discipline for thousands of years, with early scholars like Galileo and Kepler practicing both without any distinction. It was only during the Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth century that the intellectual community finally decided to draw a hard line between observing the actual physical laws of the universe and claiming those laws determine whether or not you will find true love on a Tuesday. Now, the two fields exist in a state of eternal hostility, with astronomers spending billions of dollars building space telescopes to uncover the origins of the cosmos, while astrologers make a comparable amount of money on social media by convincing insecure twenty-somethings that the current position of Pluto is exactly why their startup failed and their dog hates them