Dear Boston Herald Editors:

I find it unbelievable and unacceptable that an academician like John Silber should attempt to denigrate a genuine effort to examine the role astrology has played in human intellectual development and the course of civilization. His criticism of Kepler College, a four-year institution of higher education in the State of Washington authorized to grant degrees in Astrological Studies, is based on his prejudice and ignorance, and not on an intellectual, rational or objective argument. It was, in short, and emotional diatribe, unworthy of his position at the helm of a major university.

I have always thought that colleges and universities were supposed to be bastions of free thought and open exchange of ideas. Silber's attitude is both anti-intellectual and arrogant, and he's unbelievably misinformed about what astrology is or even who Johannes Kepler really was. (Kepler was "Matematicus" at Charles University in Prague. The title was for the "astronomer-astrologer" chair there. There was absolutely no separation between Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology at the time. Most of Kepler's written work was in the area that we now call "astrology," with only three of his treatises now deemed "scientific.")

If he should need any further tutorial in Medieval Studies, he's welcome to contact me and I'll help him get his facts straight.

Gary Lorentzen,
M.A. Germanic Medieval Studies
Kepler College Trustee

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