Topic
Why is UBC promoting New Age pseudoscience?
Sheldrake: 'Morphic resonance' expert.
When Rupert Sheldrake takes the stage at Robson Square on July 20, Vancouver audiences will have a chance to hear the world's leading expert on "morphic fields." But then, he's the only expert in the field, since he invented it.
"Morphic resonance" is his notion that the field of energy -- think of The Force in Star Wars movies -- is affected by what we think. It leads, he supposes, to people knowing when they're being stared at, and telephone and e-mail ESP, which is when the person you're thinking about contacts you. Apparently, it also explains telepathy between pets and owners.
In short, what audiences will actually hear in this lecture, co-sponsored by Hollyhock Retreat Centre and the University of British Columbia, is one of the world's leading proponents of pseudoscience.
Sheldrake's Vancouver appearance is part of the UBC "partnership" with Hollyhock to bring the speakers to Vancouver as they travel through the city on the way to Cortes Island. Hollyhock is part holiday destination and part training ground. On some days people gather there for practical insights on political organizing or internet technologies. Other days, the fare is cooking, yoga...or what can only be described as New Age superstition.
Mystical entrepreneurs have long peddled variations on magic -- such as palmistry, astrology and energy healing -- but Sheldrake is part of the new New Age that capitalizes on widespread scientific ignorance to market books and speaking tours that present his eccentric views as legitimate science.
What are the ethics?
Unlike most of his ilk, Sheldrake has legitimate academic credentials, albeit in fields that don't immediately seem to have much to do with the ideas he's hawking. He has a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge and a respectable track record studying botany. In the past, he has held university posts.
All of which may explain why his prattle has been embraced by institutions that ought to know the difference between knowledge and nonsense.
Dale Beyerstein, who teaches philosophy at Langara College and is an oft-quoted debunker of the woo-woo, says that most people involved in the New Age are true believers, and that it's possible Sheldrake genuinely believes in morphic fields -- despite existing knowledge to the contrary.
But as someone who teaches ethics, he adds that it's "intellectually unethical" for institutions such as universities and newspapers, which are supposedly in the business of gathering or delivering knowledge on behalf of the public, to be so careless.
"If you just accept what these people say, you're failing in your calling," Beyerstein says.
'It's about discussion'
Don Black, director of community programming for UBC's Continuing Studies, which runs the speaker's series, believes that because Sheldrake has a PhD, his views are credible, albeit controversial, which makes him ideal for their speaker's program. They like to give audiences a chance to hear and question speakers in an intimate setting.
"It's about discussion," Black says, although he admits that there is no panel of academics that might inform audiences more fully. And he didn't consult UBC's internationally respected science faculty before inviting Sheldrake -- it's not Continuing Studies policy to do so.
Black doesn't worry about giving legitimacy to a scientist that Salon magazine dubbed "a delightful crackpot" by associating him with one of North American's finest universities.
"We aren't legitimizing [speakers] or giving any support for Sheldrake's scientific views -- we don't position him as being any more informed than other scientists," Black says, adding that the program has no control over how the speakers use their affiliation with UBC to promote themselves.
As for the public, Black says their audiences tend to be well informed, and don't need input from academics. But Black himself confused the fact that Sheldrake has a PhD from Cambridge with a belief that he teaches at Cambridge. And he was unaware that, among scientists, Sheldrake isn't "controversial" so much as discredited.
It isn't clear how Black expects a general audience to know more than he does about this speaker.
Cracking 'MindBodySoul'
Nor is it clear why another institution, The Georgia Straight, is using its MindBodySoul magazine to promote Sheldrake's appearances, including his appearance with the Vancouver Prophets Conference (August 4 to 7). The conference is a franchise business (www.greatmystery.org) that delivers a latter-day version of the old-fashioned traveling tent shows full of healers and mystics. It includes "Adam," the Vancouver teenager alleged to cure cancer by...well, by something mysterious that has to do with energy.
Despite the wealth of information available on Sheldrake, The Straight's headline legitimizes his views by emphasizing his previous work as a scientist: "Staring is telepathy, says scientist Rupert Sheldrake."
Writer Gail Johnson describes those who dismiss Sheldrake's work as an illusion as "cynics." The Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines a cynic as, "as person with little faith in human goodness who sarcastically doubts or despises sincerity and merit."
Perhaps she confused the word scientist with cynic? There is no way of knowing, since Johnson refused to respond to repeated attempts to interview her. While her piece does offer one critical quote from an article written by the executive director of the California-based Skeptics Society -- it notes that psychologists dismiss anecdotal evidence of being stared at -- it hardly provides balance. The piece emphasizes that Sheldrake has also done "studies," which implies that these are just warring opinions, as opposed to a conflict between facts and medieval ideas about metaphysics that pre-date centuries of accumulated knowledge.
The Straight offers Sheldrake a soapbox for his somewhat incoherent explanation of his hypothesis so there's no need to repeat it here. But his comments on naysayers are typical of New Age defenders -- they don't attack the criticism, but the critics for lacking enlightenment or being too lazy to change their world view.
"You have to understand where skeptics are coming from," he told The Straight. "They have a materialistic world-view that the mind is the brain. I'm saying that there's more to the mind than the brain. Some skeptics don't want to believe that...it's easier to question the evidence."
'Readers...make up own minds'
MindBodySoul editor Nick Rockel, who assigned and edited the story, says he trusted staff writer Johnson, who is also The Straight's health editor, to do accurate research and feels the piece is balanced. "We leave it to readers to make up their own minds," Rockel says, echoing UBC's Black.
But, again, how can readers do that when a reporter hasn't included easily available scientific studies that prove people have no more than a random chance of knowing when they're stared at?
Rockel suggests that readers could do their own research. He adds that he believes ethical standards of The Straight's journalism are uniform across their publications, and he has never been told to write something to please advertisers. But he also begs off answering questions because he has just been to the dentist.
Charlie Smith, the newspaper's editor, declined to comment, saying that he didn't assign or edit anything in the magazine.
At least some of the confusion over pseudoscientific claims occurs because of what New Age practitioners call "scientific" studies and research -- and some journalists report as such -- that don't meet the standards of science. The results can't be replicated by anyone else.
"The art of science is in designing the experiment," says Ronald Rensink, a professor of computer science and psychology at UBC. He might be mistaken for a New Age wingnut himself, given that he investigates intuition and perception. The difference is that he employs scientific research techniques and his experiments can be repeated by any other researcher and produce the same results.
Rensink describes the research process as slow and painstaking, as researchers scrutinize their experiments and their data for accuracy. That's one way of distinguishing between pseudoscientists and the real thing. Pretenders like Sheldrake leap to conclusions based on poor quality experiments and then they invent things -- like morphic fields -- to explain their results. Rensink says existing scientific knowledge explains the "mysteries" confounding Sheldrake.
Sixth sense?
Rensink is hardly one of science's conservatives. He is known for his research into what people often call the sixth sense and he has dubbed "mindsight." That's the intuitive feeling some people have that something is "wrong." His argues it's connected to part of the brain that unconsciously recognizes simple patterns and then notices when those patterns change. Because it's not done consciously, it leads to that "spooky feeling."
Rensink is planning experiments with illusionists who somehow trick the eye (or the brain?) into believing the impossible -- such as buildings disappearing.
"I'm interested in the nature of visual perception, attention and consciousness -- so I'm investigating the science behind magic," Rensink says, adding that he would be pleased to see more legitimate research done on New Age notions. "You go and listen to people who have anything to say, but you don't just leave it at that -- you put it to critical tests."
Beyerstein echoes Rensink's points about Sheldrake misrepresenting his research. As for why people are so quick to embrace frauds, he says many researchers have found the underlying appeal is that it provides human beings with a sense of control.
Beyerstein believes that is the major reason people are attracted to quack therapies -- instead of complicated medical language and impersonal doctors who issue orders, they're offered the charismatic healer who promises to fix everything.
'Comforting noises'
Beyerstein, who is involved in the B.C. Skeptics, which provides the public with science-based information on the paranormal, says it's also well known that people who invest money in something are more likely to believe it works. That's easier than admitting they were just fleeced of $100 -- or tens of thousands in the case of some "wellness" treatments.
As for media and schools that endorse charlatans, Beyerstein says research suggests it's likely they don't question what they're told because it reflects their own world-view. "Also, there is often a view that you don't want to rock the boat or oppose people who make comforting noises," Beyerstein says, adding that there are few things as reassuring as believing there are invisible energy bonds between you and loved ones.
"A lot of people are naïve -- that's why they are in the New Age. They're not knaves, they're just stupid," he says.
While he says that magic thinking is obviously a hazard when it comes to making decisions about healthcare, politics or business, Beyerstein also sees the potential for New Age ideas to infringe on human rights. Along with his brother Barry Beyerstein, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser University, he investigated businesses using handwriting analysis, which is magic, for hiring. They wrote a book debunking graphology, The Write Stuff.
He argues that using magic for hiring, firing and understanding others is akin to invoking other unproven beliefs such as racism and sexism for decision-making. "How is it different?" asks Beyerstein. "You're still using unproven beliefs to make judgments other people."
But Beyerstein also raises a point that other academics have brought up; they're concerned about the impact on a society over the long run of misinforming the public and diverting our attention from the facts.
Propaganda techniques
In the past, sellers of superstition might just make a few bucks off the gullible -- a time-honoured practice in the marketplace. But today's "alternative" ideas community uses propaganda techniques, including half-truths, misinformation and meaningless buzzwords, coupled with sophisticated marketing and media manipulation, to deny facts and knowledge.
The Ramtha cult members who produced the film What the Bleep Do We Know?, for example, misrepresent quantum mechanics to confuse their audience, and are typical of this new breed of charlatans using modern misinformation techniques to further their Iron Age notions.
Of course it isn't just the New Agers promoting myth and magic as a replacement for science and rational thought. The 1990s saw the growth of the Christian right, and attempts to re-introduce creationism into the schools under the moniker "Intelligent Design." A few years ago Stockwell Day, now Canada's minister of Public Safety, embarrassed himself by touting his religiously inspired belief that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth simultaneously, about 6,000 years ago -- but he still won his Penticton riding in a landslide. In the U.S., about 59 per cent of Americans believe in the Rapture, according to a Time Magazine/CNN poll in 2002.
While some people might, naively, entertain magical thinking and irrational claims as a way of being open-minded, it's becoming increasingly clear that if we continue courting this New Age, we run the risk of descending into a New (Dark) Age.
A GUIDE TO RATIONAL SELF-DEFENCE
Thanks to the internet, there's no longer any excuse for being suckered by charlatans. A number of citizens, including scientists, doctors, and philosophers, who worry about the growing prevalence of New Age misinformation, pseudoscience, and quack therapies offer resources, including tips for spotting the con and discussions on the common habits of frauds.
The Skeptic's Dictionary: The invaluable Skeptic's Dictionary run by Robert Todd Carroll, a philosophy instructor at Sacramento City College, includes clear definitions of such vague ideas as "morphic resonance." Find it here.
The Committee for Scientific Investigation into Claims of the Paranormal: CSICOP -- pronounced Psi Cop -- is an international non-profit organization of scientists, science writers, academics and others who keep a critical eye on the hucksters. It also provides articles and information for understanding why anti-science concepts like "Intelligent Design" -- the religious right's latest attempt at convincing the world that the Christian origins myth is literally true -- are absurd. Go here.
B.C. Skeptics Society: Want to know what the local practitioners of the paranormal are up to? The non-profit society reports on local groups and dubious practices as offering a practical tutorial on improving critical thinking skills. Read up here.
Quackwatch: A site dedicated to debunking quack therapies. Find it here.
Barry Beyerstein: The SFU psychology professor's site includes articles on how to spot pseudoscience and a chapter from the The Write Stuff, debunking handwriting analysis, which he wrote with brother Dale Beyerstein. Find it here.
Shannon Rupp is a contributing editor at The Tyee. Find her previous columns here. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Steve P
6 years ago
Comments on "Pitching Woo-Woo"
Great article, Shannon!
At the recommendation of a friend, I sat through What the Bleep Do We Know -- it was a painful and unintentionally hilarious experience. The esoteric nature of quantum physics is exploited by quacks to support their pet metaphysical theories.
"I would never have believed it to be true, if it were not for all the anecdotal evidence" =^)
Nat King Cono
6 years ago
I think Shannon Rupp raises some very good points and questions. However, her bias, judgement, and opinion infused throughout the piece renders the article's credibility negligable. If it had been written as a column or opp/ed piece I would be able to give it more credance, but unfortunately her determined slant to paint Rupert Sheldrake as a charlatan has reduced my ability to treat the article as a legitimate example of balanced journalism. In a sense, she has resorted to using a tactic she accuses Sheldrake of, for example, “ideas he's hawkingâ€, demonstrates an inflamatory tone. Too bad.
sebastian toombs
6 years ago
excellent story!
and nice to see 'the straight' coming through so forthrightly with the straight goods in their little interview.
Steve P
6 years ago
Nat:
What are you talking about?
This article does appear in the "Views" forum on the Tyee ...
Dee Hon
6 years ago
Hey Nat,
the header on the article clearly says "Views," meaning this is an opinion piece.
By definition, it would be impossible for Shannon to write an opinion piece without expressing her opinion.
If she tried to do so, it would not only be a bad opinion article, it would cease to be an opinion article at all.
kurt
6 years ago
Good one, Ms Rupp. This new age stuff is superstitious bunk, and it's distressing to hear that reputable institutions (UBC) are buying into it... the almighty dollar speaks?
But I'm interested in Dr. Rensink's work, in trying to explain those strange intuitions some of us get from time to time. His theory about the mind subconsciously observing changes in patterns is worth investigating. Is he published?
Nat King Cono
6 years ago
Thanks Steve P and Dee Hon for pointing out that Ms. Rupp's piece is in fact identified as an opinion. I failed to notice the Views header at the top of the page. At the same time, I still wish her opinion was a little more balanced.
anarcho
6 years ago
Universities have had long experience in peddling pseudo-science. Only not harmless stuff like what Sheldrake discusses, if it is pseudo-science, that is. Nonsense like "race science", "eugenics" , "social darwinism", and "behavioral psychology" were not invented by slope-browed booger pickers, but by academics. Every time I hear some pompous hypocrit calling something he disagrres with "pseudo-science" I remember this list...
Nat King Cono
6 years ago
Thanks Steve P and Dee Hon for pointing out that Ms. Rupp's piece is in fact identified as an opinion. I failed to notice the Views header at the top of the page. At the same time, I still wish her opinion was a little more balanced.
Shannon Rupp
6 years ago
Hi Kurt,
Ron Rensink's work got a lot of ink when it was released. Google mindsight or just his name and a lot of news articles with details on the research itself will pop up. As will comments from other scientists, some of whom wondered whether he was putting too much emphasis on ordinary absentmindedness.
Incidentally, someone mentioned "sloped-brow" implying stupid? That term comes from the long-discredited system of phrenology that was the underlying philosophy for some eugencists.
No one scientifically credible supports eugenics or phrenology, of course, but the New Agers do.
In the last few years different forms of face-reading have gained popularity among New Agers. They just keep finding business opportunities in the ideas that were cutting-edge in the era of cave paintings.
Recently, I did a piece for another publication on a local face reader who claims to "discern" character based on brow height, the thickness of the lips, the type of eyelids, the slant of the eye, etc.
He's not "judging" anyone, mind you.
Businesses are working with him to improve their internal communications by teaching employees to pay attention to the implications of big noses. He says it's 99 percent accurate.
I supposed it might be legitimate. He noticed that I have a skull much like Da Vinci's. This suggests I have the same creativity and genius and a lightening-quick mind...
He's not wrong there.
Bluenose
6 years ago
Kudos to Shannon Rupp for an unbiased and well-researched article.
Dale Beyerstein states:
I have met more than one university professor who believes that his or her "infallible" guru has "surrendered totally to the will of the Universe" and has become "a spotless mirror in which the Divine is reflected." Some of these academics even believe that chanting in Sanskrit or Urdu over a container of water will repel "all forms of evilness" from them.
And Langara College? Give me a break:
http://www.langara.bc.ca/cs/programs/HELE.html
Intellectually unethical? In my opinion, this is far, far beyond the naively misleading, to the point of willful misstatement of fact. People who peddle lies and and offer false hope under the guise of an unproven and unsubstantiated "energy healing" ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. This is, of course, assuming that they have anything other than a thoroughly delusional conscience as their guide.
I hope Shannon Rupp continues to write about these subjects. It is one thing to consult an astrologist or a palmist in the spirit of "willing suspension of disbelief" or for the sake of sheer entertainment, but it is something else entirely to claim empirical scientific status for a field which is completely bereft of it. These people are themselves the embodiment of cynicism.
anarcho
6 years ago
"Incidentally, someone mentioned "sloped-brow" implying stupid? That term comes from the long-discredited system of phrenology that was the underlying philosophy for some eugencists."
Red Herring!
Truman Green
6 years ago
This is not good, Shannon Rupp. Rupert Sheldrake was one of my intellectual mentors in the olden days. And he's definitely not a charlatan.
He's a guy with guts enough to try to devise some theories for the enigmas that confront all of us if we're conscious enough to pay attention.
Basically, all he's saying is that there seems to be some kind of "mind" in the universe that is not attached in any materialistic fashion to the chonpsian elements of our bodies.
So if you find it instructive and rewarding to believe that the brain is all there is to the mind and that one equals the othe, good for you. It merely signifies the paupacity of your imagination and the banal arangement of your neural network.
But the way you fashioned your little trashing of a very thoughtful and intersting man is really not among your best work.
More tomorrow, but this really isn't good.
As for your trashing of "intelligent design," well you're way off base there too. I happen to be as close to atheistic as one can get, but I'm intellectually honest enough to admit that, like Einstein and Hawking suspected, after all is said and done, the composition of the universe can not actually be explained by the concurrence of random events.
That is to say, there appears, on numerous levels, to be a TELEOLOGICAL presence in the world. And it is not so rare for scientists to identify themselves as believing in some version of the anthropic principle, in which the world is the way it is so that you and I can be here contemplating on the way the world came into existence.
In other words, the complexity of life certain, at least appears to be IRREDUCIBLE to random events, which, again, is all we are saying.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Morphic resonance and formative causation are wonderfully instinctive concepts, although, they may not be as reproducible as you'd like, Shannon Rupp. And they're actually not even that far "out" there, anyway. Afterall, is it really so much of a stretch to imagine that the brain which is held admittedly in an electric field can communicate with another without the use of wires? We're only basically talking "wireless" here, eh.
Twenty years ago I tried my damnest to figure out how pigeons could find their way back home over terrain above which they'd never before flown, but even studying all the known theories, I still haven't got the foggiest, except that there's some mysterious ineffable relationships between brains and destinations that we don't yet understand. And Sheldrake tried formulate a theory--so big deal, that hardly makes him a charlatan.
And I didn't appreciate your attempt to denigrate Sheldrake with your "guilt by association" technique, either.
As for "pseudoscience," well, you'd never believe how corrupt regular science has become, and how much it owes its "discoveries" to the capitalists who pay the bill and allow the grants.
Almost all the medications invented in the last twenty years are basically a pile of crap--merely windfalls for the Pharmacorp with the best phony illness story.
Truman Green
6 years ago
And, maybe tell us how gravity works without any power or fuel source or without using or expending energy, or how atom every atom in the universe tries to get close to every other atom.
Josephine
6 years ago
[EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS.
[EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. -MODERATOR.] Ah, new age - the ultimate consumer religion.
NoLeftNutter
6 years ago
TG - woo-woo.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Sheldrakes's on Fanny's show right now on Shaw. Take a look. Listen. See if he's trying to rip anybody off.
Steve P
6 years ago
Fun theories about the teleological nature of the universe are suitable for philosophy and solving the world over drinks. But it isn't the same thing as science. Trying to say it is the same thing as science is the problem here, imo. Science is about replicable process and evidence.
puppyg
6 years ago
Thirty years ago, I met a fellow doing his masters thesis on the effect of human attention on the growth of snow crystals. Looks like he failed to rock the scientific world, but at the time, I thought it a worthy investigation.
Good piece, Shannon, but your judgements here detract from the story. It doesn't take much to get loud mouths with closed minds blah-blah-blahing about their tax dollars.
The subject is fascinating.
Try explaining how a sea turtle returns to the very beach from which it was hatched after years in the open ocean.
Or how a day-old chick distinguishes the overhead passing of a hawk from that of a seagull. (The chick cringes from the former and barely responds to the latter, I have read.)
Or why, in the throes of some infatuation, we can sense the presence of the intended through brick and steel walls. (Well, it has happened to me enough to be spooked.)
I hope you'll follow up, Shannon Rupp.
Percy
6 years ago
Dear UBC Academic Discipline Committee:
I didn't steal the exam answers, I just used "morphic energy" to access them. Isn't that what the University wants me to do?
puppyg
6 years ago
Steve P, I agree.
Science demands replicable results, usually in a lab. It cannot accommodate unique events. Neither is it comfortable with repeatable phenomena that it cannot explain. (Recall how acupuncture was loudly declared a hoax by the West.)
Premonition, intuition, ghostly visitation... who's to say they're all houey?
I am grateful for Mr. Sheldrake's investigations.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Exactly, puppyg, Sheldrake tries to study these kinds of things, even using scientific methods sometimes.
Shannon's thesis is that Sheldrake is a "charlatan," a fake, and is doing "pseudo science."
How can you congratulte her for the way she wrote this?
I happen to have been disappointed when Sheldrake's work first came out, too, because it didn't seem to fit strictly into the accepted mechanistic view of physics, but as I got more into it, and began to understand all of the unanswered questions in science, (the weird, energy-less existence of gravity, for instance) I began to appreciate what he was trying to do.
Shannon basically tries to mock and sneer and suggest that all his work is worthless, and the embodiment of something she calls, "woo woo."
The truth is that he's not "new age."
His work is predominantly irreproducible, but so what. I believe that many of the phenomena with which he deals do not lend themselves to the level of reproducibility that is supposedly inherent in our best conventional science.
On the quantum level, every physicist knows that our investigation of sub-atomic particles appears to interfere with the positioning and velocity of these particles, and so all results are basically only guesses based on probabilities.
And many of the mockers of "intelligent design" are not, themselves, intelligent enough to understand that the elements of which we are made--carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, postassium, sulpher (chonps) are actually as dead as the concrete in your driveway until they are mysteriously imbued with something we know nothing about called life. (nucleotides are derived from proteins; proteins sare derived from nucleotides)
The essay by Elizabet Sahtouris entitled, "A Message to us from our Genome," easily the best short article I've ever read in my life, presents Gene Myers view. (He was the computer scientist who actually designed the Human Genome Map). "The system is extremely complex. It's like it was designed. There's a huge intelligence here. I don't see that as being unscientific. Others might, but not me."
And Sahtouris herself concludes: "It seems reasonable that our genomic system, too, is behaving intelligently as a constant hive of activity now known to edit and repair itself. If it did not know what it was doing, I believe that it would revert to chaos in short order."
Truman Green
6 years ago
And to you, Shannon, I'd recommend: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," by Thomas S. Kuhn, before you continue ridiculing and mocking things about which you understand little.
Truman Green
6 years ago
And so, Shannon, when the really good minds suspect that there's something teleological about these systems,(or that they transcend the "atomic model," they're not in cahoots with the insipid religions that slithered out of the middle east--or anywhere else--but rather, display the inevitable result of intellectual honesty, and curiosity--whether their work fits into your pedestrian perception of "science"--or not.
Right to Bear
6 years ago
Truman Green said, "As for "pseudoscience," well, you'd never believe how corrupt regular science has become, and how much it owes its "discoveries" to the capitalists who pay the bill and allow the grants".
Man, that is true. We can never under-estimate the power of the Anthropocentric, capitalistic energy guiding too much of our societies. "Psudo-sellout-science" and "professional opinions" are bought and sold every day, all day. Our direction and decisions must be from a number of sourses, not just science. We seem to underplay the existence of ethics and intuition for an example... My thoughts are that these two can be supported by science, but NOT trumped by science...
Well said TG...
Peace
RTB
Skookum1
6 years ago
"Morphic resonance" sounds an awful lot like Arthur Mesmer's "animal magnetism"; and as some actual recent scientific research somewhere has shown (which I'll have to dig up cites for, of course) there's some truth in the confidence/faith begets reality; not familiar with Sheldrake so much so will re-read the article and come back with my two shekels worth. I've walked on both sides of this universe, but on the whole speaking as a creative person/artiste I can tell that skeptics and cynics put the kibosh on the creative process BIG TIME. So I submit there's some of this at work here; not all of reality aka human experience is definable by double-blind, peer-reviewed research....
Bailey
6 years ago
All science is 'pseudoscience'. We all spend our lives trying to find ways to quantify and predict phenomena. And to understand them.
A quick toddle through the history books will demonstrate how much each iteration owes to its predecessors. Alchemy formed a bridge between sorcery and chemistry/physics, plus it gave us the rules of evidence that serve us so well in our quest to explain the nature of everything. Reproducibility and so forth.
There are lots of things we see, but can't reproduce well, and lots we can reproduce, but not explain. Remote viewing is a good thing to look up to find examples of both.
Quantum physics is entertaining a pseudoscience at the moment called string theory. One of the suggestions of that is the idea that the whole universe in all it's complexity is a sort of hologram. All form arising from interference patterns, very very small ones, at the center of all of this. It might for the first time offer a possible theoretical basis for consciousness, something that has escaped us till now. I always thought that was a major flaw in classical physics. You simply cannot just ignore things because you can't understand them. The universe might easily be designing itself, and brains might easily be the tools it uses.
The whole point is to notice everything, then seek your explanations. There's not such a teleological leap from this stuff to "morphogenic fields".
kurt
6 years ago
Selected useful definitions from Bierce's Devil's Dictionary that are relevant:
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is old by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Omen: A sign that something will happen if nothing does.
LL.D.: Letter indicating the degree Legumptionorum Doctor, one learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon this derivation by the fact the title was formerly ££.d., and conferred only upon gentlemen for their wealh. At the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the expediency of making another degree for cldergymen in place of the old D.D. — Damnator Diaboli. The new honour will be known as Sanctorum Custus and written $$c.
Skookum1
6 years ago
Cooking and yoga are New Age superstitions????
M. Charles
6 years ago
While the smug, arrogant and judgemental tone of this piece annoyed me, I am grateful to the author making me aware of Mr. Sheldrake's hypothesis on morphic resonance, which I found fascinating after visiting his website. A scientist by training myself, I am well aware that the more we know, the more we realise how little we know.
Right to Bear
6 years ago
Bailey said, "Alchemy formed a bridge between sorcery and chemistry/physics, plus it gave us the rules of evidence that serve us so well in our quest to explain the nature of everything".
Hi Bailey, I agree. Sorcery being "other" available meothods of discovery, and chemistry/physics being the scienific information.
A friend of mine said the grizzly bear sees with his eyes but confirms with his nose. Perhaps we too would attain the "best" infomation if WE see with science but confirm with our hearts (ethics, morality and so on...).
I think of science as only a tool towards a result, but insufficient to be used by itself or even in some cases at all...
Peace
RTB
RickW
6 years ago
We may know how a snowflake forms, but it is never the less a phenomenum. So why not Morphic resonance? Besides, it ain't gonna change the life of the ordinary bloke on the street.
(Unless we can all hold hands and concentrate our energies into one big bolt of lightning at the Dr. Evils of thie world......)
Bailey
6 years ago
Well, you know, I don't think that was my point, actually, Bear.
Sorcery wasn't 'other' at all. Sorcery, witchcraft, magic, that was what we called science then. It was proscribed and persecuted, so we really only get the view of the authorities about it, bit of a bad rap.
If somebody had told you how to make an accumulator and a capacitor in the year of Our Lord 876, you could have made lightning, and if anybody found out about this ability, they would have treated you quite cruelly.
The laws of physics were probably the same then as now, and the first rule of evidence is that nothing impossible ever happens. Therefore whatever does happen is in accord with the laws of the universe, whether you understand or not.
Whether you want it to be true or not.
So, suppose for example somebody notices that nurses who practice some form of touch healing have patients who do measurably better than the average. It will be insufficient to claim it's nonsense because you don't believe in that kind of stuff. That would be nothing more or less than a declaration of your ignorance.
Instead, we need to explore these anomolies, apply the rules of evidence, and accept whatever comes of it. Pseudo or science or anything else.
Right to Bear
6 years ago
Thanks Bailey for extending the meaning of your post to me. As usural, I always enjoy the warmth, intelligence, and "whole picture" view you seem to have.
So if things that happen were in accord with the Laws of the Universe, then, why would I be "treated cruel" having discovered "lightening"?
Anyway, I like what you said about applying the "rules of evidence", and acceptance of whatever comes of it. I wonder if an example of this would be the same as saying, the evidence of say, "Love", is the hunger and need for its expression in our lives. But Bailey, is this science??
Myself, I would like to see the word "Love" used more often in the scientific communities, especially in the Earth Science department. I must say though, I am seeing a shift towards this direction...
Peace brother...
RTB
Bailey
6 years ago
It's a good point, about love. All these things we say we understand, or don't understand. They're all expressed in whatever languages we're using. The words we use create and limit our understanding. The same knowledge in different languages will have different scope, direction and meaning.
They would have likely burnt you and your apparatus for witchcraft.
But this whole matter of morphogenic fields has no proper language to describe it. Everybody agrees that the field would have to be pervasive to be true, and the history of that idea is frightening to scientists. It was called 'ether',and also 'Orgone Energy' and some brilliant scientists were discredited and ruined over it. 'Reichian' is a synonym for flaky pseudoscience to this day.
Some of us say, "well, that's God you're talking about", which makes others flinch and run away. That word has too much baggage.
I like the idea of naming this theoretical field Love, and precedent exists in the naming of Quarks, but I'm afraid if you name it Love you will doom it to be unexamined and ignored by the great majority of investigators. Even ridiculed.
Not a good situation for the gathering of knowledge and understanding.
RickW
6 years ago
Bailey:
There is some speculation that the Ark of the Covenant was a device of this nature......
Bailey
6 years ago
Yes, I've read that. There's quite detailed construction instructions in a book somewhere, apparently. An Acacia wood box, covered inside and out with a conductor, with a complex lid. I have thought that if I could afford that much gold leaf it would be interesting to build one and see how it operates.
This would reinforce my point about the linguistic modifier effect of cultural factors. They made an electrical device, and called it the power of God, and used it as evidence of His will.
When we built one we called it a Leyden jar and used it as evidence of quite different ideas.
lynn
6 years ago
When we built one we called it a Leyden jar and used it as evidence of quite different ideas. Bailey
I "love" this comment.
Sometimes the naming of the thing prevents us from seeing the thing itself.
Truman Green
6 years ago
For an opinion from a scientist (Peter Duesberg) who believes that the trillion dollar (mostly from vaccines such as the new "Gardasil" which supposedly protects against cervical cancer) hypothesis that conventional viruses (eg.hepatitis B)viruses and reverse transcriptase viruses (retroviruses) cause cancer and 30 diseases known bizarrely as AIDS, is in fact a joke, (not to mention fake or "pseudo" science), read this: "Latent Viruses And Mutated Oncogenes: No Evidence Of Pathenogenicity."
http://www.viusmyth.net/aids/data/pdlatvir1.htm#A
Truman Green
6 years ago
Looks like my link doesn't work, but if interested, just google: "Latent Viruses and Mutated Oncogenes."
This article is, by the way, by the man who discovered the first oncogene (cancer gene) in l970 when every top virologist in the world was working to prove the virus-cancer hypothesis.
My personal research leads me to believe that its (virus-cancer, virus-Aids) all a huge but financially rewarding mistake, equal in history only to the "theory of evolution" in which speciation is caused by an aggregation (over time) of random events known as "natural selection" and its equally unproven hypothesis, "the survival of the fittest," easily the best known tautology of all time.
The mystery is that anyone could be so stupid as to actually believe that "natural selection" and "mutations" could cause speciation and ultimately US.
Incidentally, Aids and cancer are both caused by toxins, (aneugens, carcinogens, possibly mutagens, (but I doubt it), immunosuppresants, contaminated vaccines , NOT viruses--and especially not retroviruses or human endogenous retroviruses. (hiv, htlv 1, htlv2, and now htlv 3 and 4.
Therefore, the theory of evolution and the virus-cancer-aids hypothesis are both just more fake science.
Bailey
6 years ago
Truman Green; There's no such thing as fake science. Things are either true or not, which is to say they work or they don't. The math, if one does it, will come out somehow, and give you a clue about something, which may lead you to increased understanding of something.
Or not.
Using words like fake and stupid is unworthy of your fine ability to reason, and just points to a prejudice. I think the heat must be making you cranky.
I'm very interested in one thing you said, though. If natural selection and mutations don't
then what does? Seriously. I sense an interesting theory here. Will you share it?
Truman Green
6 years ago
Bailey, fake science occurs when the science community throws its support behind a theory of causation for which the etiology is at best purely coincidental and at worst totally insufficient.
There is lots of fake science around. Take for instance the medical industry's claim that glaucoma is caused by intraocular eye pressure. This is totally false, but its a good enough story for seniors to be filling up the waiting rooms of ophthmalogists waiting for their beta blockers to reduce intraocular pressure and so to reduce the risk of getting glaucoma. This is called treating "early glaucoma."
To study this, Bail, google glaucoma-alzheimers disease. (They have the same etiology). Take six months to study the etiology of glaucoma, as I did and come back and tell me that the glaucoma-intraocular hyposthesis is not based on fake science.
And that brings us to the most obscene case of fake science yet: the virus/Aids hypothesis.
Margaret Heckler and Robert Gallo held a press conference in l984 in which they claimed that the "probable cause" of Aids had been found--HIV, a virus that Luc Montaigne (Pasteur Institute) had sent Gallo, and which Gallo then pretended that he had discovered.
For the scientific world, since that moment, the case has been closed and anyone who has doubted that the virus was indeed responsible has been labelled a "denialist" and their views censored from the mainstream press.
This is all over the web these days so google anything related and it'll come up. Try: "Does HIV really cause Aids."
Truman Green
6 years ago
And for the biggest joke in the history of medical "science," look up "idiopathic CD4+T-lymphocytopenia."
This is supposed to be what you have if you have Aids but don't have HIV.
They just make up a new name.
Or here's another howler invented by the Aidists: "long-term non-progressors"
This is what you have when you have hiv, even for 30 years and never get sick.
They just make up a new name.
Honest, Bail, this is all just fake science.
And hey, guess what. Sometimes even scientists do studies and report FAKE SCIENCE. You're going to have to do some googling here so start with the work of researchers F. Vom Saal and W. Welshons, who did a comparison of the results obtained by government-funded studies and those done by industry-funded studies. Google: "Flaws In Industry Research on Bisphenol A"
Here's what they found: Of 130 studies done on low-dose effects of Bisphenol A up to the summer of 2005, (119 funded by government, 11 funded by industry) 92% of the studies which were funded by government found adverse effects. NONE of the studies which were funded by industry found adverse effects.
I found this report accidently, while looking for aneuploidy in meiotic mouse cells, which Vom Saal and Welshons discovered. Serendipitously, a couple of days after I found this story, I noticed the Globe and Mail was interested enough to do its own article.
Yeah, the word "stupid" is not particularly journalistic, Bail, but sometimes one finds that there's just no other choice.
Why I think believers in "natural selection" and "mutations" as the causes of speciation in living organisms are "stupid" is an extremely complicated issue and I've already hogged up too much of this thread, so unless you really want to know...
As for what really causes speciation..well here's the best answer:
NOBODY KNOWS. I was kinda betting on Sheldrake's formative causation and morphic resonance when he did his first book, but, as intuitive as his ideas are, so far they don't measure up to any reproducible paradigm for speciation.
I once did my own theory called, "variant saturation," but discarded it. Not that its not totally workable and intuitive--it describes elegantly what seems to happen--it's just not scientifically falsifiable, which, believe it or not is a prerequisite for all good scientific conclusions.
Truman Green
6 years ago
And no, Bailey, I'm not cranky due to the heat. I'm having the most fun a human being can have, I bet--and thanks to "real" science I've got two brand new air conditioning units.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Actually, though, Bailey, your claim that "there's no such thing as fake science," has really added to my database of knowledge about how ------people can actually be, and kinda lightens my load as far as doing due diligence on my claim of "stupidity" goes, eh.
Bailey
6 years ago
Well, Tru, whether it's the heat or whatever, cranky is what you are.
I think that what you are trying to say is that people lie. That's true. They do. Scientists lie sometimes. Not as often as politicians, but still disappointing.
It's an odd thing, to dedicate one's life to something and then betray it. I guess they're subject to the same temptations as everybody else, me or you even. You'd think it would ruin the whole life, though. Quite a big thing to throw away, the purpose of your whole life.
But whether they're right or wrong, mistaken or duplicitous, even stupid, what they are is there to see.
Nobody's truth is ever more exposed than when they think they're lying.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Okay, Bailey, what's your definition of "cranky?"
So far I'll have to defer to my eighty-eight-year old tenant's opinion. Just a few minutes ago she was telling me what a joy it is for me to come visit because I'm always so cheerful.
Do you really think because I believe there's a lot of faking going on...that this makes me "cranky?"
I was gonna tell you how Darwin's idea of "organs of extreme specialization," has now morphed into the idea of "irreducible complexity"--the hallmark of teleological or "intelligent" design, but you didn't ask. Oh well, here goes anyway. So, think of the human eyeball, for instance. It's composed of the iris, pupil, cornea, conjunctiva, fovea, macula, retina, lens and other things.
Darwin noticed that the eyeball couldn't have "evolved" slowly over time because subtract any one of the components and you have exactly nothing except a bunch of tissues. It's like a camera without a lens.
Stephen Jay Gould pretended that he'd solved the problem, and Richard Dawkins said it was basically a non-issue. But I guess you know all about that...right?
Okay, I'll tell you. Gould claimed that each of these components was, prior to the eyeball, a morphologically different organ on a different critter and that the supposed homological ascension is a perfectly believable solution for the problem. And people bought his books.
If you can sensibly imagine that the complexity of the world could have been attained by "chance" I envy you,
in a way, because there's an adage about something being bliss.(which I won't mention in fear of being labelled "cranky" again).
Minimum, absolutely minimum--and I can't see it either--there are "creative" algorithms involved in speciation. Some THING is saying, "Enough, already, I've had it with dinosaurs. Next"
This'll eventually happen to homo sapiens, too, eh.
And please tell me what this mean. You say: "And nobody's truth is ever more exposed as when they think they're lying." On the surface it seems to mean that you can tell when someone is lying.
I wish I could. I can't.
Are you ready for some more fake science?
There's another major reason why people accept the theory of evolution--they don't understand what it actually is. Most don't realize that all of the incredible systems in the human body--along with the overall phenomic manifestation, have got to have evolved by random (accidental) events--not just the global genome). Shucks, you don't even need biologists as brilliant as Elizabet Sahtouris to understand that this is a pile of crap.
And I'm sure this is just because of human stupidity. What else could it be?
Steve P
6 years ago
Science is our current collection of hypothesis, supported by reproducible observations, that we have not debunked yet. To call this fake science is to misunderstand what science is about. Yes, knowledge (i.e. justified true belief) is possible without scientific method, but scientific method provides a measure of certainty and accountability that we otherwise lack.
People are free to believe unsupported things, or things that have not been studied scientifically. Just don't expect others to take it seriously without further proof.
Confirm with our hearts? Puh-leeze. This kind of thinking justified the imprisonment Galileo.
Ethics and morality ought to be open to new, scientifically defensible understanding. How we use knowledge should be governed by ethics, but the desire for something to be true is NEVER proof of truth.
Steve P
6 years ago
Even though I try to reduce the influence of woo-woo in my life, I have thought more about the how Sheldrake has been supported by UBC.
I think it is appropriate for him to speak in partnership with UBC, as long as he is clear about distinguishing between scientifically supported theses and other hypotheses that have not (yet) been supported scientifically.
UBC teaches and researches many things, not all of which are sciences. UBC also offers degree programs in fine arts and humanities, which have their own traditions that are not "scientific" in the manner of the physical and social sciences. Offering Sheldrake and opportunity to lecture is consistent with the diversity of subjects offered at UBC -- as long as Sheldrake does not pretend that any untested, untestable or unreplicable hypotheses are scientific. Speaking about how his morphic fields could be tested, for e.g., would be fair game.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Steve P, you completely missed my point about "fake science." Maybe because I haven't made it well.
Here's a challenge: Do an intensive study of the human papilloma virus (hpv), from its first claim of pathogenicity by zur Hausen to its current "authentication" by Merck and Glaxo as the "cause" of cervical cancer.
Don't just skim over the literature. Study it--up to its status as a candidate for the new hpv vaccine which these companies have just successfully brought on to the market to the tune of $300 a pop, recommended for all girls and women between the ages of 9 and 26.
Do the math.
Review the clinical trials by which it is claimed that the new vaccines reduced the risk of cervical cancer by preventing hpv infection.
Get to know about hyperplasias and neoplasias.
Find out that hpv is the most common sexually transmitted disease, and about 60 percent of women get it before they reach their fifties, anyway, and that in 98% of cases, including the ones in which it results in genital warts, the human immune system simply deals with the virus, and no serious damage is done.
And when you're finished all that review the clinical trials of the new vaccines. Decide, on your own if a 2.5 year clinical trial can be evidentiary of the efficacy of a vaccine to prevent a cancer that, on the average takes from 30 to 50 years to develope.
Then, look at my Vom Saal-Welshons study, and google: "No More Fake News."
Cervical cancer is actually caused by toxins. Cigarette smoking is so far the only proven link. Google cervical cancer-cigarette smoking.
The human papilloma virus is merely "epiphenomenal," exactly like hiv is in the developement of immunosuppression. Google: "epiphenomenal."
Of course with hpv they don't even need to invent any surrogate markers like antibody positivity, cluster differentiation type 4 thymus (T)positive lymphocytes CD4's or T-cells)or viral loads determined by branch dna or polymerase chain reaction--like they do for Aids diagnosis.
They can just go with their hpv-causes cancer hypothesis to get their billions.
wiley
6 years ago
There is nowhere near as much woo-woo in Sheldrake's experimental hypotheses as exists in most organized religions. Like, there are still actually people in this world who think "God is on our side" while they cheerfully bomb those who God has "left behind" ! That's serious woo-woo.
I much prefer the approach taken at http://www.churchofreality.org. So does Sheldrake, which is why he wants to prove his hypotheses.
At the same time, anybody with intact senses knows that the world is full of a zillion subtle energies, things that are extremely hard to measure, and that we still don't understand the true nature of time and space. Get used to it folks, just because it doesn't slap you in the face like a wet fish, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The screen you are looking at is emitting radioactivity, has a subtle effect on brain chemistry, often tends to make people enter into flaming wars fully convinced they know everything there is to know about a chosen subject. Woo-woo.
Woo-woo takes so many forms, and most of it is totally accepted as mainstream reality. Somebody once invented "The Economy" as if it was a seperate living animal in constant need of feeding human blood and sweat, and can only work under centralized management that knows how to keep it breathing on life support. What a load of "free market" woo-woo!
Somebody else invented the Ego, yet nobody has yet been able to find it under a microscope. What woo-woo! It all seems to make the mad monkey world go round, and round, biting it's tail.
Steve P
6 years ago
Freud's pseudoscientific psychology inspired the Vienna school's logical positivism and Karl Popper's falsification criterion of scientific truth. It was, perhaps a useful concept, but not a truly scientific one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
Truman:
Even without doing your research challenge, I accept and wholly agree with your point about the sociology of science -- that many non-scientific variables influence (and distort) the scientific process. I agree that there is "bad science" out there performed by mercenary researchers (the pharmaceutical industry is a great example of this).
Our science and scientific institutions are far from perfect -- I'm not arguing in favour of an uncritical acceptance of all scientific research.
I still think that scientific reasoning is, however, a great defence against those who would make claims that are difficult or impossible to defend through replicable studies and good evidence.
sharelove
6 years ago
Wiley: I loved your post!! I really like what most of you have to say on this subject, especially those that have responded in the last half of the posts. Interesting that those claiming that this is all "bunk" aren't coming back to take a stab at some of the really good questions that have been asked; for which we have no answer...
love,
Pierce
touchwood
6 years ago
Oh-Boy, adventures in flakiness at the VCC Langara Campus too.
Allowing integralist woo-woo to be taught as though it has rationale legitimacy beyond our awe for the unknown provides tremendous legitimacy for demands for equal time from the union with god through armageddon-now bushist fundamentalists and the followers of Jim Jones drinking poison spiked Kool-Aid is an act of personal religious conviction.
EDITED: SEE TYEE RULES FOR COMMENTING. AVOID INNUENDO, ETC.
This article Pitching Woo-Woo by Shannon Rupp in TheTyee is terrific and provides a basis for questioning where the hell these Hollyhock looneys have been taking environmentalism. But it also makes you wonder why we have had no discussion within the environmental movement on how under the Hollyhock plan we can achieve environmental objectives if our purpose is to avoid contaminating our souls with earthly conflict and confrontation. Sort of plays into corporate hands doesn't it?
EDITED: SEE TYEE RULES OF COMMENTING
Congratulations Shannnon Rupp and to David Beers at TheTyee, because this is the beginning of an incredibly important line of inquiry about a serious social threat that has no intention of coming in through defended gates and for which we are apparently unprepared.
Touchwood\\
Alan D
6 years ago
I’m not really sure what people mean by pseudoscience. Most science is not black and white; it’s quite grey. But more importantly, to my way of thinking, some of the best science has been done by people who were willing to go outside the box and take a few risks. Donald Griffin would never have discovered echo location in bats if he hadn’t been willing to do that.
Those that cling to science with a sort of religious fervour are living in a mythological land. Our present provincial government backs a lot of what it does with the reassurance that they support “science-based decision making,†which seems to have become the neocon doublespeak for finding (buying) the science that meets your needs and doing whatever you want to do.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Well, I'll be darned. I was just looking up Hollyhock and here's Dr. Elizabet Sahtouris' photograph and an essay entitled "Global Family and Living Systems." And guess where she's been appearing: Hollyhock.
I had no idea, but it just so happens that she's one of my favourite scientists, (evolutionary biologist) and her article, which I've referred to several (twice on this thread) times on the Tyee forum entitled, "A Message To Us From Our Genome," as I said, is probably the most enlightening essay I've read in my life.
Google: "Global Family and Living Systems by Dr. Elizabet Sahtouris" and scroll down to "Hollyhock Live."
And see if her work, as Touchwood claims, "...is a serious social threat that has no intention of coming in through defended gates and for which we are apparently unprepared."
What "defended gates" Touchwood?
Shannon Rupp
6 years ago
Someone asked what "pseudoscience means?"
Most dictionaries define it as something that looks like science (to the uneducated like me, I studied social sciences and humanities) but lacks any of the methodology used to confirm something as scientific knowledge. Historians point out that pseudoscience often results from misrepresenting or misunderstanding legitimate scientific theory, such as quantum mechanics.
Someone called string theory “pseudoscience,†which is factually wrong. From what my scientifically-unsophisticated mind can gather, it’s in the field of theoretical physics, and is a hypothesis or a theory. That branch of science uses math proofs rather than physical experiments. These physicists know that something is a fact when they can apply the theory over and over again and get predictable results – that’s one of the criteria for scientific knowledge: results are predictable.
For any discussion to be meaningful, we need to distinguish between epistemology -- the study of what we can know -- and metaphysics, which is the examination things we feel. The latter leads to some great poetry, and even some ideas that science might investigate. But simply believing in something doesn’t make it knowledge – no matter how strong your intuition is.
One isn’t better than the other: they’re just different.
As Rensink points out in the piece, intuition, folk beliefs, etc. can be a good place to begin a scientific investigation.
keith_a_go_go
6 years ago
I'm skeptical about this article...
UBC is obviously much more than a science department. It seems silly to oversimplify the situation so much - as if the decision of one program director somehow represents the "collective will" or "official position" of the entire university? Same goes for the Straight - there is obviously more than one voice there. It's odd that a "contributing editor" of the Tyee would misrepresent/misunderstand that.
I'm surprised the author of this article didn't include links to those same studies.
I read the read the CSICOP articles that challenge Sheldrake's conclusions, and neither of them prove this. They take swipes at Sheldrake, yes, but they don't prove the opposite is true.
I'm not saying I agree with Sheldrake, but I'm not seeing the studies that "discredit" him. This whole article would be a lot stronger if those were included.
Without including sources, how is the author any different from those she attacks?
Skepticism (or at least, censorship/fear under the banner of skepticism) can lead to its own Dark Age too, I think. Do you ever notice that the hard-core skeptics often appear a bit crack-potish too? There's a certain hubris there, I think, and a fear of having their beliefs challenged.
What's wrong with "entertaining" beliefs that you don't fully understand, or that are not scientifically proven? It doesn't mean you have to accept them.
What kind of world would we live in if new/different ways of thinking were totally censored by our social institutions, like the author of this article seems to ask for?
Eek... i'm outta here... if you need me, I'll be at the ecovillage, eating an organic carrot, reading Yeats, having tantric sex, and meditating on the nature of life and love and the universe.
Latarnik
6 years ago
New Age was always with us. Egiptian High Priests, Shamans in America and many cult leaders were always taking advantage of sick and naive. Smart people should warn them about a danger, but everybody should have a right to seek their own way to hell. Suckers are born every minute and it is up to the people to decide whether they want to give their money to the legitimate physician, to the quack or a prostitute. In fact if a prostitute can cure somebody's pain in a back or elsewhere, so that person could return to work and be happy, medicare should pay for it. That's what they do in Germany. Sex starved elderly patients are wheelchaired to the state owned brothels. In British Columbia many so called rehabiliation enerprises, torture their patients to the point that they quit treatment, just playing to the hands of ICBC or Workers Comp, who cut their benefits for noncompliance with a rehabilitation regime. Let's measure the effectiveness of a cure by the ability to get people feel better, whether they receive real medication or placebo with a smile.
Shannon Rupp
6 years ago
Hey Touchwood,
I don't know what you're talking with those references to "loonies" influencing the environmental movement. Which loonies? There are so many to choose from.
Perhaps we could talk directly?
Please e-mail me --
Thanks!
Shannon
Truman Green
6 years ago
Shannon, I'm not being sarcastic, honest, but if you really think metaphysics is "the study of how we feel," then that would tend to explain your article. So thanks for clearing that up.
See what I mean? I really wanted to know why you'd write something like this. I merely asked the question and I got the answer. Now if that's not formative causation, eh. I mean, I just FORMED the question in my mind: Why would Shannon write something like this? And it CAUSED you to give me the answer. Therefore: formative causation, eh. And I "feel" (metaphysics)like I KNOW you now, so the answer was derived by epistemology, wouldn't you say?
Not.
Bailey
6 years ago
OK, then. "Cranky"---The tendency to treat other people with disrespect because they differ from you.
Really, my friend, that WAS awfully sarcastic. Ms Rupp deserves better from us.
But while I'm here, Ms Rupp; I called string theory pseudo because it's kind of untested. Standard scientific procedure is to formulate a theory, make a prediction about what will happen somewhere if the theory is valid, do the experiment twice and see what happens. See if the result matches the theory.
String theory is not as yet susceptable to experimental verification. People are still just fine tuning the math. It looks good on paper, but nobody can figure a way to test it that anybody can try.
If anybody ever does, though, that will be an exciting day, because this is a very interesting theory.
I pointed out above the similarities between 'morphic fields' and the theoretical 'ether' proposed in the last century. That was also a promising idea, at the time. Nobody ever disproved it.
It's just that nobody could ever find any proof that it exists either. Careers were spoiled, science turned away, but...it's only pseudo because it escaped us. Maybe it was wrong, partially right, misconceived, or politically incorrect. But definately pseudo.
Truman Green
6 years ago
So "cranky" means "treating people with disrespect because they differ from you."
Jeez, Bailey, you must have gotten this definition from the same dictionary Shannon used to get her definition of metaphysics--a "study of how we feel," apparently.
Someone who treats others with disrespect because they're different is a bigot, maybe a racist, but cranky means irritable, having a bad disposition, petulant, testy--you know stuff like that.
Bailey
6 years ago
Truman, like so many of us do, I made my definition up myself.
shmendrick
6 years ago
I know this is in the views section but mercy!
What dogmatic smeary claptrap!
It seems as if the author and some of the commentors would think quantum mechanics as junk science too, all those probabilities (rather than this dualistic is and isn't 'truth') and ideas about multiple infinite parallel universes etc etc just sounds too crazy! Einstein wasn't having it, and neither should you!
Seriously, I don't get why western science can ignore important ideas like chi, energy fields and the like...They can watch as a needle gets stuck in your foot and stimulates a very specific region of the brain corresponding to what the TCM folks say it does, but then vehemanly deny the accepted mode of operation (chi moving through meridians in the body). Tantric sex was mentioned above... another idea that relies pretty heavily on energy moving about and between bodies...(read some mantak chia for a taoist primer on this subject)
Man, too often I hear these people trying so hard to disprove ideas such as sheldrake's as if they are insulted that people would even think about them. Is there some section of science congealing into a new religion or what?
Bailey
6 years ago
Oh. Kay. Then. One more try, then farewell.
Each and every stab at science, at understanding the world as it is, that sweet humanity has made was made in it's own cultural and linguistic context.
The next one invariably supplants it by redefining terms, refocussing emphasis, reworking the paradigm, and calling it names. Yet each one was the standard of its age, the product of the best minds.
The best we could do at the time, with the world we had to work with.
Yet we all sit here smugly thinking that WE, we sublime and puissant in our unsurpassed excellence, we are the only ones who were ever right.
Hooey. In a hundred years, or a thousand, whoever is looking backwards will feel about us precisely the way we feel about those who came before us.
And they will be so judged by the thinkers from next thousand years too.
All science is pseudoscience, seen from the right perspective. It may be right. It may be wrong, but it will certainly change.
Aimless
6 years ago
As a former engineer, I have a basic grasp of science, especially in its applied form. And I find it to be an unsatisfying tool for explaining the world at large. Science indisputably has its uses, but by its nature it deals with repeatable phenomena -- things that act the same every time. My experience of life is that it is in the main NOT repeatable, in the scientific sense. The variables are legion and cannot be controlled -- something akin to the saying, "you can never step in the same river twice."
I see Sheldrake as trying to bridge the gap between gross mechanical repeatability and the more fluid place in which lives are lived, and complicated processes like ecosystems play out. Further, I see this as a necessary evolution for science, which is still operating on the mechanistic paradigm that fuelled the industrial revolution, and is clearly not serving humanity well in the present day. The very prevalence of "new-age" alternatives in medicine, religion, and science is an illustration that many people feel this way.
Sheldrake may be right or wrong -- time and further investigation will tell. The important thing is that he is reaching out and testing some pretty rigid boundaries -- ones that need to be tested.