From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: Firewalk
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:13:43 GMT

In article <12613@inews.intel.com> pharvey@mipos3.intel.com (Paul Harvey) writes:
>In article <1992Jul30.170107.21017@burrhus.harvard.edu> 
>canders@isr.harvard.edu (Carl E. Anderson) writes:
>
>>	I figure if something works, then there is a scientific
>>explanation. Perhaps current science can't explain it - after all, what
>>current science can do would be considered magic in the middle ages, or
>>even a hundred years ago or so - but sufficientally advanced science could
>>explain any actual phenomenon.  And I see nothing wrong with that.
>
>I think the thing to keep in mind is that science should never serve to deny
>the experience of life. This is something we do too much of today. We say
>things are either true or false, science or myth. Science is a tool to
>increase the understanding of life, not to deny the individual experience of
>life. 

And just how does science do that?  The word science means many things
to many people; to ME it means using your head and not just looking at
things and letting the world steamroller over your five senses.  To
other people, it sometimes means sitting in a little room doing stuff
that looks kind of like math with the windows shut.  To  others, it
means a bunch of geeks in white coats torturing Mother Nature.

It's just a damned body of knowledge, people -- verifiable by people
REGARDLESS of creed.  When you can demonstrate to me just how "science"
manages to deaden "individual experience," then I'll listen.  Until
then, I think your confusing "science" with the Baconian, right-wing
missile-builders that you saw on last night's _Outer Limits._ 

>The individual experience is always magical, whether there is a
>scientific explanation or not. I can ride a bicycle and that is magic
>independent of the scientific explanation, of which by the way there is none.

Oh, really?  NO explanation?  Welcome to the 20th century.  There
certainly is one, and if you bothered to read about the subject you run
down with such alacrity, you'd know.  What journal did you read this
little tidbit in?

Here's a little list of things that there IS a "scientific explanation"
for:

1. curve balls (Bernoulli's principle)
2. firewalking (the Ledenfrost(sp) effect)
3. radioactive decay (quantum mechanics)
4. quartz crystals' working in electronics (piezoelectricity)
5. some aspects of superconductivity (Cooper electron pairs)
6. why there are more crimes committed during a full moon (there's
   more LIGHT outside!)

Other things that depend on these:

1. airplanes (Bernoulli again)
2. why you can test to see if an iron is hot by licking your finger
   and touching it (Ledenfrost again)
3. lasers, which I think we all know there IS a "scientific explanation"
   for (QM again, which has so damned many applications that I literally
   don't have room to list them)
4. this computer I'm using right now (piezoelectricity)

And there are more.  Please refrain from pontificating on the things
that "have no scientific explanation" unless you know what you're
talking about. 

>Someone says, "I just went to Paris and I am reborn, for once I am alive". And 
>someone says in response, "Oh, we DID Paris five years ago, I'm sure it's 
>still the same". That is a denial of the individual experience. That is what 
>we tend to do with science. 

(Who is this mysterious "we"?) 

BULLSHIT.  How the fuck are saying something crude and squelching and 
the drive to understand why things happen the way they do and become
in a small part a participant in this world even SLIGHTLY related?
Science is the study of how nature does what it does; the near-orgasmic
sense of participation and understanding that you get when you
understand something like that is nothing short of mind-blowing.  It is
PART of my "individual experience," and part of all those who practice
it.  Does its impartiality frighten you?  Well, this IS the same
newsgroup that spent the last couple of weeks trying to hammer our what
"injury to another person" consisted of; how is this any less denigrating
to someone's "individual experience?"  When WE do it, it's called
"expanding our spirituality."  When the math club dweebs do it, it's
called "denial of individual experience."

>That is not good. Or so it seems to me. She blinded
>me with science, a victim of technology. 

Pray tell, what does technology have to do with trying to understand why
nature does what it does?  Science is Galileo timing a swinging lamp
with his heartbeat, Newton understanding the unity of the Moon's
revolving around the Earth and the force that keeps our feet glued on
the ground "occasion'd by the fall of an apple."  Science is more than
your CD player or the popular Dr. Frankenstein figure.  Science is
Albert Einstein's idle wondering of what the world would look like if
you could ride a light wave like a surfer.  Science is Jocelyn Bell's
utter amazement at finding a signal periodic in ranges down to
microseconds coming at her from outer space.  Science is asking, "Gee, I
wonder what would happen if . . . "  Science is doing more than just
saying, "Oh won't you just look at the wonder of the universe," with all
the softheaded interest in the actual goings-on of any math-phobe.  You
are pontificating with no experience, looking for some word to point
your finger at and blame everything on.

Science does NOTHING harmful.  It is a simple body of knowledge.
Perhaps you think that those who first investigated the combustion of
alkane hydrocarbons are the demons responsible for pollution and smog.
Let me let you in on a little secret -- WE are, each and every one of
us, with our insatiable desire for personal transportation.  The people
who drive home solo on LA freeways, choking the surrounding mountains,
are far more responsible for smog and air pollution than the people who
first built a horseless carriage, or those who first studied alkane
combustion.  And they are us. 

We are the comsumers who pushed technology too far.  WE are responsible,
not only the scientists.  You are looking for some scapegoat to blame,
and since too many Pagan are Luddites already, you choose a nice safe
one -- innocent science.

>A rose by any other name still smells
>as sweet. This is true, even today.

And understanding WHY it smells like it does makes it sour, I suppose.

The tireless study of the predictable guidelines that nature follows
in its course is still one of the sweetest things that can occupy a
human mind; it's been that way for years.  You love to act amazed when
you see photographs of Stonehenge -- what do you think it was?  An
observatory -- a SCIENTIFIC observatory built by people who noticed that
the universe worked according to predictable rules.  The sun was
furthest overheard when it was in this constellation, the moon always
had to move so much father before it found it's way back to the
constellation it was in a month ago, the seasons always changed
according to predictable laws, the river flooded in some cases so
predictably that you could set your watch by it.

YOU THINK THIS AIN'T SCIENCE?


Eratostanes was the first person who measured the size of a planet from
his armchair -- in pre-Socratic Greece.  Just because he worshipped
a couple of what WE call "Pagan" gods, does that mean he wasn't
practicing the hated scapegoat science?  He found a reference in a book
in the library at Alexandria that said that a well in Syene cast no
shadow on a certain day.  He waited for that day, and saw that things
did indeed cast shadows in Alexandria.  Now, why would that be?  THe
only explanation he could think of was that the Earth's surface was not
flat but round.  He guessed it was a sphere, and hired someone to pace
out the distance from Alexandria to Syene; high-school calculus gave him
the answer from there.  

I guess Eratostanes was a promoter of hated science, then.  Many of us
celebrate the turning of the seasons; do you use ephemeris charts or
anything like that?  How do you think they are made -- and published --
for the next twenty years?  How do you think people can tell you exactly
when summer arrives?  You are eating the fruits of science even as you
run down technology, a totally different thing, and if you had studied
science even a little instead of just quoting anti-intellectual
platitudes, you would understand what I say implicitly -- SCIENCE IS NOT
TECHNOLOGY.  TECHNOLOGY IS NOT NECESSARILY EVIL. 

I will continue to participate in the wonders of this universe.  I will
continue to question.  I will continue to wonder WHY things happens and
not just lay back lazily and say, "Oh, isn't that cool?  Look at the
wonders of the universe *yawn*."  I have a mind that asks why.  I will
attempt in every waking moment of my life to answer its ceaseless
questioning.

Blessings,
Janis