Astronomy and astrology: opposition or reflection?

The article examines the dynamics of change and differentiation of the semantics of the lexemes “astronomy” and “astrology” in the Russian context. The relevance of the study is associated with the wide prevalence of anti-scientist phenomena among the population and the difficulty of orienting scientific discoveries and pseudoscientific statements in the information sphere. The distinction between astronomy and astrology can serve as a “classic” illustrative example of the formation of boundaries and criteria of science, previously formulated in the philosophy of positivism. Based on the textual material presented in the National Corpus of the Russian Language, the analysis of the process of differentiation of astronomy as an academic discipline, the scope of mathematical and natural scientific methods and astrology as a pseudoscience is carried out. On the one hand, astrology imitates the structure and form of scientific knowledge, acts as a critique of positively oriented knowledge based on quantitative data and ignoring the sphere of the irrational, spiritual, individually significant. On the other hand, in the context of the historical memory of the scientific system, astrology has a communicative significance and reflexive value, being one of the topics of discussion in numerous discussions about “falsities”.