Astrology evolved manifold from the original craft developed by the Babylonians between its emergence in human society and the scientific revolution. Unfortunately for the field, the end of the scientific revolution and especially the birth of the enlightenment period permanently damaged society’s faith in the field, as the subject, once a core subject in Scottish universities and integral material other European institutions, fell from grace. However, prior to the enlightenment period, the field of astrology was held in high regard by nobility, academics, and commoners alike.

At Edinburgh University in Scotland, for example, library records showed peak intake of astrology related literature in the 1670’s, which included those purchased by university funds or works of graduating students of their own. Still, the realm of academic astrology at the time was already facing pressures of the shifting philosophies and priorities of the world around them. With the rise of copernicanism too, astrologers -- faculty and students alike -- struggled more and more to remain relevant and respected.

Astrology’s strength as a field began to decline with the rise of copernicanism and heliocentrism (the idea that the sun, rather than the earth, was at the centre of the universe and that planets revolved around the sun), and the increasing popularity of Jacques Rohault’s Tractatus physicus, which prodded at weak points in astrology’s logic and argued against the principles and foundations as a whole. Rohault’s widely influential Cartesian textbook planted a seed of doubt against astrology in the shifting mind of Scotland and the United Kingdom, a sentiment that was parallely reflected in countries all around Europe.

Alongside the transformation of mindset was a revamping of curricula and faculty and many schools across Europe. In Edinburgh, the late 1600’s featured “completely new cohort” as lingering traces of Aristotelianism was swept underneath an aging rug. One notable faculty member was the 1683 hire, Professor David Gregory who served on the faculty of mathematics. Strongly opposed to astrologers’ belief in fate and predictions, Gregory argued that all good men and submissive Christians should adopt physics and deny astrology, which was seen as the less logical of the two. Slowly, following the 1700s, astrology was phased out of academia. Today, it is but a pseudoscience in many of our minds.