Date:
Location:
"Investing in the Stars: The Astrology of Money and Markets in the Modern United States"
Speaker:
Caley Horan, Assistant Professor of History, Department of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
Contact:
Kasper Schiølin
kasper_schiolin@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Thursday, October 25th
Abstract:
In 1984, Stanford Economics Professor Ezra Solomon famously quipped, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” Though intended as a jab at other economists, Solomon’s claim also spoke to a growing trend in market prediction – the application of astrological tools and methods to financial forecasting. Financial astrology, popularly known as “market gazing,” did indeed gain respectability over the past half century. As Solomon suggested, the failures of economists to predict the behaviors of markets undoubtedly played a role in that process. But the rise of astrology in the field of finance can be linked to other historical contexts as well. This talk offers a brief history of the astrology of business, and the business of astrology, in the United States – from the Gilded Age to the present. Special emphasis will be placed on the past 40-50 years, and on what the astrology of money and markets can teach us about the lived experience of uncertainty under capitalism..
Biography:
Caley Horan is an assistant professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is in the process completing her first book, Actuarial Age: Insurance and the Privatization of Security in the Post-WWII United States, under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Horan is interested broadly in the cultural life of economic ideas, and is currently developing a new book project, Investing in the Stars: Astrology and Capitalism in Modern America. This project explores the enduring popularity of astrology in the United States, as both a tool for predicting economic outcomes and a guide for navigating the volatility and uncertainty of life under capitalism.
