From: bathurst@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Bruce Bathurst)
Subject: Scientific Verification (Was: re: Spiritual Guides and more)
Summary: Let's keep science out of this.
Originator: news@nimaster
Keywords: science, religion
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 16:21:31 GMT

bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu wrote:

Your questions, however, are inappropriately intellectual in a
group that relies on experience and feeling.  The confusion
exists because of their use of scientific vocabulary and
extensive metaphysics.  (I guess one can call it that.)

toma@hyperion.gsfc.nasa.gov responds:

|I strongly disagree with this.  Up until now, science has not
|admitted that 'experience and feeling' is a valid way to get
|information. That is beginning to change, and this will
|accelerate, I believe.  Questions like those above are the way we
|find out things--not by closing our minds and saying things like
|'I can't prove it in the lab, so it can't be science' (and by
|inference has little value).  It is the very definition of
|science and the scientific method that needs to change. In the
|future, intellect *and* intuition ('feeling') will be more
|balanced, in science as well as other facets of life experience-
|-and not unbalanced toward the intellectual and 'rational' as it
|is now.

Your definition of science is inappropriately reverent for a
group that relies on experience and feeling.

Science is no more than a fascinating intellectual game played
with the stuff of nature.  It does not deal with emotive or
spiritual experiences, or with Truth.  Confusion exists because
scientific vocabulary contains the word 'truth'.

'Truth' in science changes regularly.  When many predictions of a
big theory are viewed and replicated in the laboratory, that
theory is accepted as a scientific truth or canon, termed a
paradigm.  A scientific statement is true if it can be shown to
be logically equivalent to a prediction of a paradigm.  The game
of science is to replicate an observation in the laboratory that
is true if and only if a paradigm is false.  Yesterday's truth is
now false.

Rather than grieve and gnash their teeth, Scientists celebrate
the failure of one of their canons with a glass of Champagne.
Then their race is on to find and prove a different paradigm
consistent with the new observation.

The Religion of Science

Many scientists, in need of something firm to grasp onto, make
science a personal religion.  This reverence has nothing to do
with science: science is not firm, nor does it attempt to
describe reality, nor are its rules acid tests for the validity
of personal experiences, transcendental beliefs, or Truth.

toma@hyperion:

|In the future, intellect *and* intuition ('feeling') will be
|more balanced, in science as well as other facets of life
|experience--and not unbalanced toward the intellectual and
|'rational' as it is now.

Very little of my effort as a theoretical scientist is
intellectual. I have never solved a problem logically or even
systematically.  I study the problem until I "feel" the time is
ripe for ideas, then fall asleep.  [OK, cut the laughter.]

As I doze, half-asleep, I imagine what some of the "prettiest"
solutions, in my asthetic judgement, might be, and follow their
implications as one follows paths in a maze until, after hundreds
of such daydreams and having traced hundreds of cul-de-sacs, I
suddenly reach an exit and an entirely new view of the problem as
its solution bursts in view.

None of this process reaches the pages of scientific journals,
nor do the emotions--noble or selfish--that drive scientists to
work long hours, alone.

toma@hyperion:

|It is the very definition of science and the scientific method
|that needs to change.

Your view of science as a only a religion is understandable, for
the Religion of Science has a priesthood and a lay following, and
offers itself as an alternative to orthodox religions.  As a
religion, it suffers exactly from the limitations you describe:
its subject matter is neither emotive, nor ethical, nor asthetic,
nor transcendental, nor spiritual.  It offers a very shallow
picture of reality.  It does a better job as the game it is.

|Whatever you think of my opinions or anyone else's, you have no
|right to call discussions like the above 'inappropriate' for
|this newsgroup.

"[In my opinion] your flame is inappropriately high for cooking
this sauce" is not supposed to be read "Get out of the kitchen!"

In my opinion, demands of scientific verification are
inappropriately intellectual in a group discussing out-of-body
experiences with emotive verification.  All such demands do is
misrepresent science.

|Questions like those above are the way we find out things--not
|by closing our minds and saying things like 'I can't prove it in
|the lab, so it can't be science' (and by inference has little
|value).

Hey, you have no right to tell me not to ..um.. close my mind!
There, it's closed.  If it has never been supported by the NSF,
it can't be true.  Just ask any Department Financial Administrator.

My personal opinion is that battles between ecclesiastics of
Science and of Religion do not open minds, but close them.  Such
battles alienate believers; and give onlookers the impression
that science is simply an alternative system of belief.  I give
you an example of the damage: When I tried to explain to my
cousin that 'depression' is a disease that can now be cured--not
just three years of coincidental bad days--she said, "Oh, you're
quoting the Scientists.  I choose not to believe in Science".

Bruce
-- 
Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
bathurst@phoenix.princeton.edu bathurst@pucc.bitnet !princeton!phoenix!bathurst
Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body