I was reading a book about Chinese innovation, and it struck me that “Fung Siu” may have some merit. Could it be that very sound ways to design and decorate a house came about through superstition? I was wondering if anyone has compared people who live in a fung-sui compliant house, vs. one with all the wrong features (according to the ancient chinese art)? Is anyone aware of such a study? What were the results?
This obviously isn’t a scientific test, but Penn and Teller had a Bullshit episode about it. As I recall, their major problem was that they couldn’t get the Feng Shui “experts” to even agree on furniture placement. They had a few people who told them mutually contradictory things. Obviously, they’re entertainers, so I’m sure they kept talking to people until they got two wildly different opinions, but it does illustrate a major problem with the philosophy.
So, the first barrier to this test will be whether Feng Shui can be objectively defined.
As a general rule, anything whose explanation heavily relies on vague mentionings of “energy” or “power” in inanimate objects is generally 100% BS (right alongisde products claiming to rid “toxins”). Based on the utter lack of satisfiable explanations and general randomness in Fung Shui’s concepts, I rank its effectiveness right up there with magnetic bracelets and dowsing rods.
Yes, but science isn’t about general rules like this. Despite the foundations of feng-shui being un-scientific, you can still test hypotheses about feng-shui in a scientific manner.
Out of curiosity, I briefly searched scholarly articles about feng-shui. I came up with a lot of articles by people named Feng and Shui, but unsurprisingly very little in the way of what the OP is looking for. There was one, sort-of-relevant article I did find:
Hedonic Prices and House Numbers: The Influence of Feng Shui. The hypothesis tested was that houses with auspicious addresses would likely sell for more in areas where there are high concentrations of Chinese immigrants. Of course, there is nothing magical about this. However, since prosperity is one of the objective of feng-shui, it does show that there can be an effect if enough people believe in it. It is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy grounded in psychology but there is something there, although it might not be what believers claim is there.
Here is another paper that reaches similar conclusions.
“Engergy,” “tranquillity,” etc., cannot be quantified and tested comparatively.
Which leaves anecdotal evidence, and regrettably there you run into psychosomatic effects- like taunting alien hunters with a maglite in fog banks, they see what they want to believe.
I’ve thought there could be something in the most fundamental and oldest forms of Feng Shui, which was involved with aligned homes with “natural lines of energy” detected with . . .a lodestone. We’re sensitive to magnetic and electric phenomena, so there may be a feel-good element to being “aligned” with the Earth’s rather potent magnetic field, but disentangling such a phenomena from Feng Shui, or even showing a connection, is effectively impossible.
I think that there might be something in it myself,not from the mystical aspect but from light,space,ventilation,elimination of clutter etc.whereby the people living in the house feel comfortable and at ease.
Has anyone here read the essay “The Artificial God” by Douglas Adams, collected in the book “The Salmon of Doubt”? To grossly paraphrase the passage where he touches on Feng Shui, he says that while all of the talk of ‘flow of energy’ and ‘healing zones’ is a load of bollocks on the scale of astrology, there is a really strong good aspect to Feng Shui.
At least someone is on the side of the people who have to live and work in the space in terms of making it pleasant, with natural light, ventilation, areas to move from one space to another and areas to settle. Feng Shui at least gives the occupants an untrumpable ace when it comes to dealing with an architect. You can argue with an asshole architect until you’re blue in the face and that purple pointy spire is still going to be there in the kitchen plans. But tell him it’s destroying the Feng Shui of your house, and there’s no amount of Corbusier, Gropius or Miles Van Der Rohe that can top that one.
Indeed, bumloaf or not, you would be foolish indeed if you tried to close a business deal with a believer in a room with bad Feng Shui.
This is an elegantly constructed superstition that is doing some good, that will leave an awful vacuum when it is finally and totaly debunked and that for the present, may well be best left alone until we can figure out how to take what works from it without using its underlying basis in woo-woo.
One of the expensive Feng Shui consultants in the Bullshit! episode recommended putting a large piece of furniture in the way of a fire exit. Get yourself an interior decorator.
Also, IANA physicist or a physiologist, but I am pretty sure that 1) the Earth’s magnetic field is not especially potent and 2) humans are not particularly sensitive to magnetic and electrical fields.
FWIW,
Rob
This is kind of like saying there’s ‘something to’ homeopathic medicine, and citing as evidence of this the fact that selling distilled water for $20 gives you a pretty good profit margin.
All the cites above mean is that there are suckers in the world, and you can make a little extra money if you pander to them.
Feng Shui is complete bullshit. And saying that at least it causes you to think about interior decoration and usability misses the point that Feng Shui has nothing to do with usability, and in fact, often makes houses less usable because people organize furniture according to where the best ‘energy’ is, rather than say where the best viewing angles for the TV are.
When we bought our house, our neighbors visited and commented on the wonderful Feng Shui of our design. We have a curved staircase to the second floor, and the opening to the stairwell is at a 90 degree angle to the front door. Apparently, this prevents ‘energy’ from ‘escaping’ when our door is opened and closed. Stairwells that end facing the door are apparently poor Feng Shui.
Now, you could argue that there may be a root of truth in this, in that houses where the only access to the top floor is from the stairwell might conserve a little more heat if you don’t get cold drafts blowing up the stairwell every time you open the front door. But in our case, the top floor is completely open to the bottom, and the stairwell is completely open as well (you can look down to the bottom floor from other railing). So the ‘Feng Shui’ goodness of the stairwell is complete nonsense.
OK, so all the business about flow of chi is nonsense. But that does not imply that there’s nothing to Feng Shui. Suppose someone were to tell you that they think a room looks prettier when the stairwell doesn’t face directly towards the door. Would you say that that was an idiotic view to hold? Of course not. Now suppose that some enterprising architect asked a lot of people their preferences, and found that many people don’t like the aesthetic effect of a stairway facing directly towards the door. Such an architect would be very well advised to design houses with stairways at an angle to the door, not because of any mystical significance, but because that’s the way people like it. A person might even compile a list, or a whole book, of tips like this, which enhance the aesthetics of a living space, and it would be not at all unreasonable to consult such a book when designing a space. And if such a book happened to give mystical explanations for why those arrangements were better, it wouldn’t change the truth (or lack thereof) of the suggestions.
I’m not saying that feng shui is such a situation, and I’m not saying that it’s not. I don’t know enough about the subject to say one way or another. But it should be judged on its merits, not on its mystical justifications.
Exactly what i thought; for example, the chinese developed a very sophisticated pocelain manufacturing industry, and turned out high quality dishes, cups, plates, etc.-all without developing the sciences of chemistry, physics, metallurgy, etc. They did it by patient experimentation. Could the same be true for feng sui? that new McDonalds restaurant 9decorated with feng sui priciples)-it seems to be doing well.
some aspects of it make sense. the how to place a house part is sensible.
i think the cleansing aspect is helpful. if you bought a house and then found out a horrible incident occured in it, you would probably feel easier in it after some sort of cleansing/blessing.
clearing clutter and how to honour the things that are in your house is good.
whether you child has a white metal lamp instead of scooby doo lamp, maybe not much difference.
i am a bit amused by the theory that bad energy or evil flows only in a straight line, so giving it a bit of an obstacle course will confuse it. when you think about it… it worked for evil vs good in speakeasys during prohibition. not a straight away in the club, so when “good” (police) would raid they would get slowed down in all the turns, and “evil” would be able to drink another day. just turn it around for the bad energy vs. good energy in your own speakeasy.
I am, and you’re wrong on both counts.
Probably too terse.
Physicist.
Still too terse.
Me too…
50 uT is “not especially potent” in my book. Compare this with the 0.5 to 3 T typical in a MRI.
While I am willing to be convinced that humans might be “particularly sensitive to Electric fields”, having little data in the area; I would like to know why you believe that humans are “* particularly sensitive to Magnetic fields*”.
Quoting from my staff report, cited above:
Well certainly. But that doesn’t mean that Feng Shui means anything. No doubt that many practiconers and the “ancient masters” had some idea of what is pleasing to the human eye.
Or as Dex said it better “Although feng shui is shrouded in mysticism, the practice generally reflects sound principles of interior design. Does that mean you need to accept the whole business about octagons and energy flows and so on? Of course not. But to the extent that feng shui offers a lens for examining the way in which you organize your environment, it can be a useful tool.”
There may be a telling point in another “Eastern Science/Art”- Acupuncture. Double-blind studies have shown that the needles can do something for pain. But studies have also shown that the whole thing about “Qi” and meridians and energy flow has no measurable effect. In other words, the needles do something. The mysticsm behind the needles does not.
From the article:
I have always heard feng shui pronounced fung shway which is the pronunciation in the American Heritage Dictionary and Oxford. Is shoy how it is pronounced in Chinese?
Assuming “shui” is a pinyin Romanization, then it is definitely pronounced similar to “shway,” in Mandarin at least. But all sorts of East-Asian words end up in English spelled with out-of-date or ad hoc Romanization systems, and I don’t feel like looking up the actual Chinese at the moment.