Abstract
IN A.D. 1605 Sir Francis Bacon appended to the "Advancement of Learning" some prescriptions for posterity. These contain an injunction to construct "A Just Astrology". Bacon had previously assessed the then condition of this science in his main text. Like alchemy, astrology had a noble aim; like alchemy again, it had been more imaginative than rational; and, once more like alchemy, it needed the corrective and the purge. Astrology, as Bacon conceives it, is central and fundamental, for he defines it as "the real effects of the celestial bodies upon the terrestrial". This includes the action of the sun on the earth: without which there would be no astrology, because there would be no astrologers.
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GREGORY, J. Ancient Astrology. Nature 153, 512–515 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153512a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153512a0