Posted on 12/06/2003 9:14:26 AM PST by John W
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:03:32 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA is relying on Russian-made thrusters to steer the international space station following a new malfunction with the U.S. motion-control system, officials said Friday.
Flight controllers detected spikes in current and vibration in one of the station's three operating gyroscopes on November 8. Last week, when the gyroscopes were used again to shift the position of the orbiting outpost, all three worked.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
And yet as many times as I've heard this, I still don't believe it. Probably I never will believe it, as long as I live.
What I do believe is that human consciousness has an indispensible role to play in the universe, at both the macro- (e.g., personal and social) and microlevels (e.g., the Schroedinger wave function) of reality.
Of course, I ultimately have to take that on faith: The insight is not susceptible to scientific proof. (Or more strictly speaking, a falsification test.)
Faith -- what one fundamentally believes -- really does make a huge difference in the way one thinks about the world, and the ways one acts in it. To a degree that perhaps few imagine, the world of reality is shaped and made accessible to us by acts of human thinking, great and small.
Of course Bob Cratchet shall have the day off. And may God bless us, each and every one. Merry Christmas, RW!
This can be taken to Art Bell levels, although when people do it raises the hairs on the back of my neck. For example, they had a large 'pray for the capture of Saddam' a couple weeks ago, and voila! Another example, a guest suggested that we, the 6 billion of us, caused the recent sunspot flare-up. I tend to take the approach that our mental powers do not extend beyond our fingertips. But, as we may have discussed in passing, there might well be a link between us on a higher level. We might, indeed be doing some kind of necessary work and not know about it. Or it might be that we are, as Frere Teilhard suggests, be the growing tip of the evolutionary tree and our job is to evolve the noetic sphere.
He did, did he? Transcendental existentialists. Yeah, it works.
Sorry I just had to quote you entire, RW: I take issue with every sentence. In a perfectly friendly way, of course.
In the first place, all the Art Bell phenomenon tells us is we must use good judgment, discrimination in evaluating statements being raised in the public domain. That doesn't mean that I dismiss straight out of hand the possibility that Art Bell might actually have something useful to say. (Personally I can't vouch for him; As far as I know, we don't get his show here in Massachusetts, so I am unfamiliar with his ideas.)
Second, I know that "prayer thing" might sound really spooky to you. But there are people -- the ones doing the praying, certainly -- who do not find anything particularly remarkable about the Saddam-capture denouement, given the "inputs." Do you want to write these folks off as ispo facto deranged??? Crazy??? If so, who or what made you the judge of such things?
Third, for all we know, all 6 billion of us might just have caused the recent, ongoing, and not-seen-in-a-millenium-at-least level of solar activity. Do you know the reason why the Sun would "go off" like this? If you don't, then don't start out by "ruling things out."
The fourth relates to the third: You said that "our mental powers do not extend beyond our fingertips." Quantum nonlocality and the putative field nature of the universe renders this observation rather suspect. The jury's still out; but their eventual verdict may surprise.
As for Frere Teilhard and his universal teleological project tending to the Omega Point: Wolfhart Pannenberg -- in Toward a Theology of Nature -- puts our good Jesuit father on the footing of "cutting-edge" field theory -- and much improves the original undertaking. IMHO. Check it out!
Lots to do, my friend; so little time.
You are deprived if you don't get Coast. Great entertainment, especially for nightwatchmen and crosscountry truckers.
BB, my ever-elusive bonbon ... If I may offer one of my always-humble opinions, I suggest that we most definitely do start out by ""ruling things out." By that, I mean that when framing a scientific hypothesis, what's done is to rule in as potential causes those phenomena that may have some comprehensible relationship to the issue before us. This would, of necessity, rule out such "potential causes" as the spinning of Hindu prayer-wheels, the ghost-dances of the Sioux, and the latest video about Paris Hilton.
Lots to do, my friend; so little time.
Yes. That's why we shouldn't waste too much of our precious time on Art Bell's hokum.
How are you on the psychic friends network?
But there are people -- the ones doing the praying, certainly -- who do not find anything particularly remarkable about the Saddam-capture denouement, given the "inputs." Do you want to write these folks off as ispo facto deranged??? Crazy??? If so, who or what made you the judge of such things?
Did they start praying in April, and these things have a six-month delay? Or did it just get particularly intense recently? And given it's been two years and a bit, when can we expect them to deliver on Osama? Or is his mojo stronger?
Do you know the reason why the Sun would "go off" like this? If you don't, then don't start out by "ruling things out."
Some possisble explanations
We have to discriminate between all the possible crazy-ass explanations for the phenomena we observe. Not all of them are equally plausible. RWP's prediction; we're looking at another breakdown of the solar cycle, similar to that which caused the little ice age. Buy some sweaters, and be thankful for global warming.
The fourth relates to the third: You said that "our mental powers do not extend beyond our fingertips." Quantum nonlocality and the putative field nature of the universe renders this observation rather suspect.
Not really. Quantum wavefunctions go off a long way in a vacuum. In the real world, they bump into the wavefunctions of other stuff. It's actually a bit of a problem in quantum chemistry; it's called the solid-state effect.
If, for instance, it is believed that collective conscious behavior in nature is facilitated through some thus unidentified or unmeasured field, then it would seem possible (to me) to predict and then measure indirect effects on known fields to falsify or affirm the various theories.
Of course, were this possible and the results affirmative then it might provide some clues for the much more complex and willful consciousness of humans.
Just some musings…
The thing about Art Bell is that he has acquired quite a reputation for bizarre conspiracy theories – UFOs, black helicopters, mind control, etc. At this point he could say that water is wet and a great many people would disbelieve it simply because he was the one who said so. The flip side is he could say most anything to his fans and they would defend it.
The bottom line is that he is a talk show host and thus I doubt that he would ever be the origin for an actual scientific theory. However, a scientist who promotes a theory on his program – no matter how well grounded it might be – will lose much of his prospective audience just by being there.
This is kind of like of the problem with new age mystics hijacking serious science and ancient texts. I can just imagine some new age mystics learning of a scientific theory that works well with their faith and thus they adopt it and promote it and link to the originating scientist as if he were a disciple of the cause (which may or may not be the case.)
When this happens, it makes our research much more difficult because the far majority of the “hits” we get on the subject are not by serious scientists. And when we go to all the effort to find and retrieve the baby from the bathwater and deign to mention it here, we are hit with an avalanche of ridicule by association. That baby was in bathwater! Totally unacceptable! Jeepers…
A number of eyebrow-raising subjects are being put to serious scientific experiment and observation – things like near death experiences, remote healing, power of prayer, etc. Ditto for the reach of mental powers or spooky communications. This is not a bizarre idea. We see collective conscious behavior in nature (bees, ants, fish, etc.) and yet it is ridiculed the moment any connection can be made to a mystic. Ditto for biophotonics. Ditto for zero point fields.
But despite all the knee-slapping, I predict that scientists (at least in Japan, China, India and Europe) will continue to pursue these subjects and serious consumers (like you and I) will continue to follow them.
But your examples were so much more imaginative.
We start by formulating a clear, well-defined hypothesis. Only then do we have any proper basis for selecting evidence by which the original premise may be tested (falsified). Some potential evidence that seems "crazy" to us may actually be relevant to this process. It takes great discernment -- or maybe just a certain detachment or objectivity -- to keep from "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" in the selection of relevant evidence. It's a tricky problem to avoid stacking the deck in favor of a preferred (consciously or unconsciously) experimental outcome by selecting only that evidence which would tend to produce the result we're looking for. But before evidence is ruled out, we need to at least ask why we are ruling it out: If the answer is "I don't like it," that is not a scientific attitude at all.
Just my two cents worth, Patrick. Thanks for writing!
However, for some, it is more comforting not to look deeply; IMHO, one should not look if he is afraid of how he might react to what he might see:
But despite all the knee-slapping, I predict that scientists (at least in Japan, China, India and Europe) will continue to pursue these subjects and serious consumers (like you and I) will continue to follow them.
We certainly will, Alamo-Girl! Certainly these matters are being actively studied now, and by some first-rate thinkers from around the world – particularly as you note Eastern Europe, China, India – though not notably by American thinkers.
In particular, the conjecture of the field nature of consciousness has been actively studied, and continues in development. The work of Evan Harris Walker, (The Physics of Consciousness) for example, is notable in this regard. Unfortunately for Walker, establishment science stiffed him whenever it didn’t undermine him. Refereed, peer-review journals rejected him, in so many words, because “he wasn’t doing science the way we think science ought to be done.”
I just have to say IMHO that is a very dangerous attitude as well as an unjust one.
Especially in light of earlier theoretical work in consciousness conducted by Karl Popper and John C. Eccles (see The Self and Its Brain, 1977). The main interest here is the evolution of mind. Popper rejected the physicalist/materialist view of mind or consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the electrochemical activity of the physical brain. He also rejected the view that, in the evolutionary process, mind arises first, and then evolves language. His striking conjecture is that language – or more broadly what he calls World 3 – the world of the contents of human thought plus the “products of the human mind” -- is the source, not the product of mind. Mind and self emerge from a sociological environment: “We are not born as selves; … but we have to learn to be selves.” This is evolution continued under the aspect of the human individual.
But what is the status of language or World 3 in this context? Wolfhart Pannenberg (in Toward a Theology of Nature, 1993) draws what seems to me an eminently reasonable conclusion:
“If the human mind arises first through language, then it is certainly conceivable that some feedback of the human mind on the development and use of language may occur, but language as such cannot simply be described any longer as a product of the mind. Otherwise, the emergence of the mind would be explained by a factor that itself takes its origin from mind. If the human mind first emerges through language, then in the origin of language there must be something prior to mind, but nevertheless also different from physical reality, since the distinction of the mind from physical reality is derived from it. The field, wherein the formation of language occurs, may be called a spiritual field. This does not seem inappropriate, because the terms “spiritual” and “spirit” should not be restricted to the religious life. There is a long-standing usage of the term “spirit” in relation to intellectual activities.”
Of course that’s easy for Pannenberg to say: He is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Marburg. That is, he is a German theologian, and I suspect a Platonist to boot. In the German language, our English word “science” translates as Wissenschaft. Its meaning is very closely related to the Greek episteme, the totality of human knowledge.
But our American concept “science” is so much narrower than what is denoted by Wissenschaft.
For Wissenschaft embraces two main subdivisions: Naturwissenschaften (i.e., the natural sciences) and Geisteswissenschaften (i.e., the humanities: philosophy, literature, history, the arts, the “social sciences,” etc.). Thus the more accurate German translation of the English “science” is not Wissenschaft, but Naturwissenschaft. For us Americans, all the “Geist stuff” gets left out. (Geist is the German word for “spirit.”)
So while German or other thinkers within the cultural orbit of German science do not have any difficulty in understanding a consciousness field as a “spiritual” matter, this concept is extraordinarily off-putting to your average American scientist, and he will resist the idea with every fiber of his being.
As an upshot of such a cultural attitude (or prejudice -- in the literal sense of “pre-judgment”), American science seemingly becomes more and more narrowly isolated and confined to “specialties,” while the Europeans and Asians are able to generalize more global (potentially hugely liberating) concepts whose premises can be scientifically elaborated and experimentally tested by means of an integrative science approach.
In effect, this seems to have been Einstein’s approach. Probably the same could be said for Sir Isaac Newton. To my way of thinking, this is the way one must go on the road to truly great scientific breakthroughs.
Certainly we know that when posts on the work of Professor Raman and Attila Grandpierre – two theoretical researchers into the field nature of “collective” consciousness -- went up here last summer, the hue and cry that followed was ear-splitting. But in retrospect, it was all heat and no light….
IMHO American science runs the risk of increasing impoverishment, malnourishment, for lack of the pursuit of truly liberating ideas. Science elsewhere does not seem to be falling into this rut.
Just my two cents worth FWIW.
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