But his main excuse is the one that still serves so well for sciences with poor predictive power, like economics and meteorology, the excuse from complexity: “The ancient configurations of the planets, upon the basis of which we attach to similar aspects of our own day the effects observed by the ancients in theirs, can be more or less similar to the modern aspects, and that, too, at long intervals, but not identical, since the exact return of all the heavenly bodies and the earth to the same positions, unless one holds vain opinions of his ability to comprehend and know the incomprehensible,
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