Talk:Biophoton/Archive 1

message: AFAIK the described effect is the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. It is not specifically "bio" and should better be explained on its own page, if someone is willing to do the work. See  --Pjacobi 01:50, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)
* ok, so essentially this makes the coherence theory testable using a correlation interferometer, no? -- 69.195.36.86 02:36, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  comments, 2005 

message: Dear user "Cypa", the present article fundamentally contradicts facts and reason. As long as this is the case, we have to keep the "disputed" tag. BioMed 23:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Really?  Thanks Cypa, let me try to clarify.  And BTW, do statements like these (biomed) require any justification?  What do you think Pjacobi?  Which facts does this person refer to, and whose reason?  I guess we are to imagine that since Biomed is incapable of providing details that this makes the claim obvious?  By this logic, should we then not remove all entries relating to Hunduism, since, well, by this reasoning (which is mostly absent), these must all contradict both fact and reason?  Apparently "Non-scientific" connections is too vague?  Why is this page so hard to understand?  Photons are emitted from biological cells.  Fact!  This phenomena has interested many people.  Fact!  These interested people are worthy of reference in an encyclopedia article about the subject (which follows by inference).  Just because you don't like that people in these fields find these things interesting, really doesn't have anything to do with either fact or reason, does it?  In fact, if an absense of reason is present, it seems present in the so-called logic presented by those who arbitrarily refuse to accept the reality that these people are interested in the topic of bioluminescence.  Now, I am ready to respond to the statement, "fundamentally contradicts facts and reason," if someone could provide some, "any," fact or reason to justify it.  And as far as foundations go, do you mean foundations of chemistry, foundations of cellular and or molecular biology, foundations of physics, foundations of logic and mathematics, foundations of what?  Since you seem to think of yourself as a scientist, hopefully you can narrow down your criticism into a statement that makes some modicum of sense?  Perhaps that's what you meant Cypa?  
Let me try to address your problems Robin, assuming I can "guess" what you mean.  In answer to, "how do organise themselves, do we have a biophotonic field."  The answer is no.  We know, as a fact, that we have an utterly garden variety  bosonic field associated to all light sources.  
In answer to "do they exist for their own sake or could they be emmisions from something else?"  I do not know what "exist for their own sake" would entail, but they exist by virtue of God if you like (or Chaos if you prefer).  That is, photons are emitted from cells sometimes due to unknown processes, period.  They may be asscociated to cell processes, they may be random in nature, they may be something more exotic.  no one knows for sure, though some scientists (referenced in the article) have some theories.
In answer to, "does this mean there is something in the body that can direct and organise energy."  Uhm.  Well, many things in the body organize energy.  For example, cell mediated active transport organizes energy to transport nutrients and so-forth over the plasma membrane.  If you meant, does the existence of photons being emitted from biological cells imply that the body organizes energy, then I guess the answer is maybe.  But then, nobody really understands the source of these things.  But in general, the biochemistry of life is an organization of energy which is entropically disfavoured and is independent of the phenomena of emission.  Now,  as has been "suggested" by people in non-scientific fields, if chi energy and so-forth exists in a more evanescent form in and around the body, then maybe it could have something to do with these emissions; but though that has been claimed, it remains a hypothesis from the realm of metaphysics at the moment.  
Is that helpful?
*All parts of the article that are now in combined "italic and bold" typing contradict either facts, or reason, or both. These parts need to be rewritten. BioMed 14:43, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Facts and reason 

message: Dear user 66.141.40.63,
first a technical matter. Please put 4 "~" signs below your contributions on this discussion page, thus generating a time signature and showing all readers the end of your text.
As to the "disputed" tag, it will be necessary for a while. It is also in your interest, because it shows the readers that the article is still under construction. As it is now, not many readers will stay with it longer than a minute. I work in science, and I know how science people think and work.
Now to the first few items, one by one.
1) "A typical magnitude of the effect is 100 photons in the visible range at a photon per second (at 1 cm² of probe surface)." One per second, or 100 per second?
2) "black body radiation emitted by black bodies" impossible English!
3) "define a biophoton, in an elementary sense, as the quanta of light" Because "biophoton" is in singular, also "quantum" must be in singular. (Such things are not a matter of beauty, but a matter of logical transparence. Science people drop out, if they see your English.)
4) "from biological systems away from thermal equilibrium" Please look up "thermal equilibrium" in a dictionary (online). It makes no sense here at all.
5) "by perturbing chemical concentrations" Perturbation does not "organize equilibrium states".
6) "define the biophoton as the phenomena of light emission" Because "biophoton" is in singular, also "phenomenon" must be in singular.
7) "then many have very naturally extended this logic to define the biophoton as the phenomena of light emission that is a product of the complex living system from which they come, and is thus caused due to the underlying order of these processes." Not "many", but some. More importently, they did not define anything. They made a hypothesis about something. And by no means "very naturally" !! (This sentence definitely is a switch-off.)
8) "there remain sceptics to the scientific evidence" Either "there remains scepticism about", or (less preferable) "there remain sceptics concerning".
This is only a start. There is much more further down in the article. I would suggest you do all this in small daily quanta, preferably in collaboration with somebody else at your university. BioMed 15:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Necessary revisions - just a start (June 2005) 

message: Look, talking about things that nobody can see remains philosophy - no matter what other Greek word you may add.
Your suggestion "possibly are emitted due to the systematic kinetics of biological systems away from thermal equilibrium that could be a reflection of a particular order of matter in the biosphere," could not work, for a simple reason. According to the rules of the English language your phrase "away from thermal equilibrium" defines SOME (but not all) "biological systems" in your sentence. You then have to say WHICH "biological systems" are "away from thermal equilibrium" and WHICH are not.
As to the sentences "According to this model there is no need to adopt a mysterious hypothesis, like the mitogenetic radiation hypothesis. But, of course, it cannot exclude it." This does not claim the end of science. It simply - and in plain English - states that our observations DO NOT demand a further hypothesis in this field. If there is nothing that needs to be explained, there is no need for a hypothesis. If I observe that the rain drops fall randomly on my roof, there is no need to make a hypothesis on a possible order behind the randomness. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. BioMed 22:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science and Philosophy 

message: The metaphysics section contains the line "From the point of view of metaphysics, a science-wide metanoia may be desirable in order to transcend these biases." It's not clear to me what this means. What exactly needs to be done to all sciences, and which metaphysicists have proposed it? If no citation can be found, it should be removed from the article, since it doesn't currently provide any information. Factitious 08:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia documents pseudoscientific beliefs the same as it documents everything else. Because of the connections between the early work on this phenomenon and the current pseudoscientific ideas, it does make sense to document both in the same article. The descriptions must satisfy WP:NPOV, of course. The comment at the end probably should be rewritten to use a more understandable word than metanoia, but it's not unreasonable to end the article with a paragraph that says what the scientists and the new-agers think of each others' usage of this term.--Srleffler 16:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes but it states everything from pseudo-scientists' perspective, saying, basically "Nihilists don't take this and that seriously" and such, which already goes without saying. --Zareste 00:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Metanoia