14-09-2003 17:18									#1
	"the modern scientific worldview is inherently flawed" Increase the size of your Attachments

The book (see link) is a significant contribution to the debate on the future of science. It contains essays by scientists and philosophers from a wide range of disciplines who all share the belief that science urgently needs to reexamine its implicit assumptions about the nature of reality, since these have led to important areas of human experience -- especially consciousness-related phenomena -- being neglected or denied.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/home...dp5/con-sci.htm

Downward causation? http://www.swcp.com/~hswift/swc/Spring96/9601gosw.htm

	14-09-2003 18:51									#2
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Science is a self-correcting discipline. If it was inherently flawed, it wouldn't work. It corrects itself and delights in being wrong as often as it is right. Just as the incomplete Newtonian world view was modified by Einstein, so incomplete procedures in science will be modified by ones that explain the world better.

That said, the article screams New-Age gobbledygook to me. Here's a gem of a passage:

quote: The new biology, he says, needs to recognize that organisms are 'self-organizing wholes', generated by 'dynamic principles', and intimately connected with their environment. The parts of an organism are ordered by a developmental field or morphogenetic field, which he describes as the 'dynamic spatio-temporal organization' of an organism and which he understands in standard physical and chemical terms. Like Sperry's 'mentalism', Goodwin's 'holistic science of qualities' is still essentially materialistic.

Generally speaking, the more big words you have in quotes, the closer to Star Trek you get. No "morphogenetic field of dynamic spacio-temporal organisation" told one part of my developing fetus to become a head and the other legs. That's done by Hox genes which don't rely on obscure fields but on protein and cell interaction.

Hey, in this part the New Age gets into full swing:

quote: A more concrete framework for understanding mind-matter interaction, reincarnation, paranormal phenomena, and the purposeful nature of evolution is provided by the ancient wisdom, which teaches that the physical world is only one octave of an infinite spectrum of consciousness-substance, and is interpenetrated by innumerable other worlds, some denser and some more ethereal than our own, which are imperceptible to our physical senses. And just as the physical world is organized and coordinated by inner worlds -- astral, mental, and spiritual -- so the physical body is animated and organized by inner energy-fields or souls. In this view, 'self-organization' mainly operates from within outwards, and 'holistic' or 'emergent' properties arise from the fact that the more complex an organism's outer structure, the greater its ability to receive and express influences ('information') from the inner levels of its constitution.

Ie, can't be arsed to really look into modern science or ancient religious beliefs so I'll just steal fancy concepts from both and dance around burning incense and ringing a little bell. La la la la la, do do dodo do.

	14-09-2003 19:00									#3
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yeah, but where's the connection to minorities?

	14-09-2003 19:14									#4
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quote: Originally posted by Park Avenue ...science urgently needs to reexamine its implicit assumptions about the nature of reality, since these have led to important areas of human experience -- especially consciousness-related phenomena -- being neglected or denied.

The above is certainly an understatement. We are told that everything is materialistic or that we should wait for a miracle to prove that everything is based on natural law if the evidence does not support that view. It is true that science seems to eventually correct itself but look at the trouble Galileo had when he tried to upset a powerful influence and ideology in science with new evidence.

	14-09-2003 19:16									#5
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quote: Originally posted by Starchild Generally speaking, the more big words you have in quotes, the closer to Star Trek you get.

Sig stuff, I´m just too lazy too add it

	14-09-2003 19:19									#6
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quote: Originally posted by Lincoln ...look at the trouble Galileo had when he tried to upset a powerful influence and ideology in science with new evidence.

The influence was the Roman Catholic Church, and the ideology was Christianity.

Neither has anything to do with science.

	14-09-2003 19:24									#7
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FWIW, the publisher, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has been classified as a new religion movement by some scholars.

	14-09-2003 19:30									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger The influence was the Roman Catholic Church, and the ideology was Christianity. Neither has anything to do with science.

The point of course is that ideology has no place in science. The facts should lead where they will. Materialism is the prevailing ideology in science today and the facts are made to fit in with that ideology just like they were in Galileo's day.

	14-09-2003 19:35									#9
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quote: yeah, but where's the connection to minorities?

	14-09-2003 19:37									#10
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Some of the ideas presented in the link seem a little way out, but I do agree that our present description of quantum mechanics is incomplete. Indeed, I believe that we will never understand QM until we have a framework which incorporates the observer into the system.

	14-09-2003 20:01									#11
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A scientific theory has to be founded on data. A scientific theory of the interaction between mind and matter has to take account of all data on the interaction between mind and matter which, like it or not, includes various forms of psychokinesis and the observer principle in quantum mechanics (one can argue that these don't really exist, but one would have to ignore reams of studies in order to twist data to agree with preconceived prejudices, which is generally a no-no in science).
It is unfortunate that as soon as a "taboo" subject like the "paranormal" (and one has to remember that everything, including the rising and setting of the sun, was considered paranormal before we discovered there were perfectly normal scientific theories to explain it) is brought in, the entire field is dismissed as "New Age" and anything proven by it or theorized by it is completely ignored. In my opinion, that makes about as much sense as dismissing everything relating to electromagnetism just because Alex Chiu has stupid theories about Immortality Magnets.

On the other hand, certain parts of this are, indeed, stupid.

	15-09-2003 00:19									#12
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Self-organizing whores!?!?!

	15-09-2003 00:22									#13
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There's an interesting article in the new Discover magazine how the laws of gravity are flawed.

For years people have been assuming dark matter to make the calculations work. But many are starting to believe that dark matter doesn't exist and the laws of gravity vary slightly depending on where you are in the universe.

all that is saying is science works. It may take a few times to get it right, but it eventually works.

	15-09-2003 00:39									#14
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Dissident: That is a really barmy idea, because you throw away frame invariance (ie. that physics laws are the same in all reference frames). Since frame invariance has worked to well as to even make predictions which are the (proven) basis of modern physics, you would be throwing almost everything away.

Physics won't work without frame invariance.

Dark matter isn't such a daft idea. In fact supersymmetry more or less insists that it's there. If we find supersymmetry when the next big collider turns on (the Large Hadron Collider in 2007) then we have dark matter (the lightest supersymmetric particle).

	15-09-2003 00:44									#15
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well the variance has to do with the acceleration of some galaxies compared to others. I can't explain it fully here. I'd have to look it up to avoid explaining it wrong.

	15-09-2003 00:56									#16
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Yes, this is the problem that some really distant galaxies are accelerating away from us, which is at odds with the big bang (they should be accelerating towards us). Throwing away frame invariance is sort of like throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

If it comes to a choice, it would be better to throw away the big bang (but it won't go that far).

For a reveiw, see http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305457

	15-09-2003 01:33									#17
	throw away the big bang Increase the size of your Attachments

I have no problem with throwing away the big bang.

	15-09-2003 03:19									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Giant_Squid It is unfortunate that as soon as a "taboo" subject like the "paranormal" (and one has to remember that everything, including the rising and setting of the sun, was considered paranormal before we discovered there were perfectly normal scientific theories to explain it) is brought in, the entire field is dismissed as "New Age" and anything proven by it or theorized by it is completely ignored. In my opinion, that makes about as much sense as dismissing everything relating to electromagnetism just because Alex Chiu has stupid theories about Immortality Magnets.

Well, one of the reasons why people dismiss the paranormal is the complete lack of evidence for it. The Rhine Institute at Duke University used to fund (for quite a while - 4 decades at least) a center for the studies of the paranormal and got... nowhere. Oh, they coined a few words but after decades the amount of replicable evidence they gathered was nil. Iirc, Duke disbanded (or cut off funding) for the Rhine Institute, though the institute is still out there.

	15-09-2003 06:43									#19
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I disagree that no evidence has been collected. Evidence has been found, and found en masse, but has generally been rationalized away or ignored. At the risk of just throwing links at you

http://teresi.us/html/writing/psi.html
http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/psy1.html
http://exn.ca/starwars/parapsychology.cfm
http://www.noveltynet.org/content/p...s/0397/pk03.htm

Are the data convincing? Depends who you're trying to convince

	15-09-2003 09:21									#20
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The problem with any of this parapsych evidence is their experiments were not done in the same strict conditions as, say, biology. Then there is the small problem of the so called psychics cheating during these experiments.