Everyone knows that newspapers contain written pieces called "editorials" and "opinion pieces". If you follow the link to the Kansas paper, you'll see that this piece is clearly marked as such.
" The author is a hack, promoting astrology out of one end and Christian fundamentalism out the other."
I followed the link to the author's biography. Here it is:
David Berlinski, Senior Fellow - CSC
Articles by David Berlinski
David Berlinski received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University. He has authored works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics, as well as three novels. He has also taught philosophy, mathematics and English at such universities as Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York and the Universite de Paris. In addition, he has held research fellowships at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France. Recent articles by Dr. Berlinski have been featured in Commentary, Forbes ASAP, and the Boston Review. He is author of numerous books, including A Tour of the Calculus (Pantheon 1996), The Advent of the Algorithm (2000, Harcourt Brace),.Newton's Gift (The Free Press 2000). Forthcoming are his books: The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky (Harcourt, October 2003), A Short History of Mathematics for the Modern Library series at Random House (2004), and Einstein & Goedel: Friendship between Equals (Simon & Schuster 2004). He is currently working on a book analyzing genetic algorithms. "
Sounds like a pretty bright guy, considering he's a "hack" and a wacko and maybe even one of those evil Christians.
If you guys want to convince non-scientists that you're right about your positions, it would help enormously if you removed the excess emotion from your responses.
"The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky" is a book promoting astrology. Check my link to Amazon.
Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the "Mars effect" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it.
Berlinsky's books on calculus and algorithms were rather poor. I read both. Neither was competently written.