It is somewhat controversial, from a philosophical perspective, as to just what science is. From Popper to Kuhn and all the others, there’s a lot of opinion about it. But to me, nothing beats the rigor of falsification. Tests are fine, but being unable to pin down the underlying cause is a severe disadvantage in making predictions. It is one thing to test that gravity works, but it is quite another to have Newton’s and Einstein’s equations. With those, we can predict and then test our predictions. The heart of science, to me, is testing predictions that take risks (i.e., are subject to falsification). But I gave medicine some leeway in my original post. I know that it has a tremendous number of variables to consider, and some of them are things like human will. Medicine and economics face similar obstacles.
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I’m not familiar with the details. What prompted him to think something secreted by mold might be worth testing or that there was anything of value to harness?
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My point being that in looking at the history of scientific discovery we realize that there is a lot left to discover. It is irrational to assume that because we have no means of measureing it yet it must not exist. It seems more rational to me to think there are other unseen forces yet to discover.
Indulge me while I attempt to put this in non religous terms.
There is an energy field that connects and sustains all created matter.
Mankind has a unique oppotunity for interaction with this energy because of intelligence and the abilty to choose.
Some have to varying degrees of success. Others, while enjoying some of the benifits of this field, remain skeptical of its existance.
The nature of this field and our connection to it is such that our thoughts, emotions, choices and even intent, causes a flux in the energy field which effects us and those around us. Love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, and some others cause a positive energy flux. They are in tune with the nature of our common connection. Hatred, selfishness, and their companions cause a negative energy flux. These fluxes occur every moment whether we are aware of them or not.
Science remains unable to prove or disprove this energy field.
Would you say it was in our best interest to try and discover if this energy field exists or should we wait for this energy field to try and convince us in a way we find acceptable?
True, but when discussing the benifits of medical science, vs. the benefits of religion, application is relevant.
Aha!
Well, no doubt there is, but the big fields are getting kind of occupied. We know what is inside the atom, and what is inside the components of the atom, though we aren’t down to the ultimate level yet. Radio waves are an extension of light - once we understood that light had a frequency (or the colors do) we could ask what the other frequencies represented.
So, if you think there are unseen forces, you need to find a hole where they go. If you could prove any sort of psychic powers, then there would be a nice force to find, but there appears to be no such thing. So you need to come up with some theory that predicts this unseen force, or some observation that implies some force is causing something. Without either of these, no one is going to listen.
Sorry. How is matter connected, besides with nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetic forces? Why does matter have to be sustained? We understand very well why atoms and molecules can stay together, and we can break them apart at will. Why do emotions have to be connected to any energy flux? We can chemically induce them, and there is no known effect of them, except on matter.
There is nothing to prove or disprove, so science, rightly, ignores it. Does this energy field have intelligence? There is no evidence of anything without matter having intelligence.
So, we need: evidence the field exists, evidence it has an effect on anything, and something unexplained that the field could explain. Without that, the field is no more real than the fairy I could claim makes snowflakes.
I’ve got a great imagination, and I could come up with a dozen cool hypotheses and forces and powers before breakfast. But anything I come up needs to be testable, and without that I got nothin’.
I believe that theory is why we are having this discussion. While there is no universal consensus , some individuals are listening.
This kind of conclusion is exactly what I was talking about before.
We have no way to measure, verify, or disprove, so… it doesn’t exist.
Hasn’t the history of science shown this attitude to be misguided?
There’s another familar attitude here. We admitedly don’t know everything, but we obviously know almost everything. Uh huh! Betcha intellectuals and scientist 1000 years ago thought the same thing.
If your hypotheses was correct, then you wouldn’t have nothing. Even though it might remain untestable by current technology for centuries.
You could argue that Da Vinci’s sketches of flying machines were nothing or useless at the time because the technology wasn’t available to make it happen, but the idea “maybe thats possible” was nessecary and as it turns out, correct.
The thing about this energy field is that it is testable by each individual.
Individuals have been experienceing it for centuries without the means to verify it to the masses. Because it is unverifyable and untestable, you are free to conclude “it doesn’t exist” or “if it exists it doesn’t matter”
If it does exist in a manner similar to my hypotheses, then it does matter.
{ha! no pun intended}
There was a time medical science had no knowledge of bacteria and germs.
What was the motivation led to discovery?
In the Evidence of God thread on the third page there’s an interesting link to a page about spiritual healing includeing many testimonies of doctors and patients.
I wondered as I read it if the medical industry would have any financial reasons to endorse or dismiss these accounts.
Cosmosdan, he isn’t saying that it doesn’t exist. Science can’t even tell whether something exists. Ontological claims are not falsifiable. He’s just saying that a nonmaterial or nonphysical entity is outside the scope of science.
Some of today’s best-selling drugs really do illustrate the depth of understanding that scientists have of biochemical processes, allied with an ability to design and synthesise small molecules that can perform a precise role in the overwhelmingly complex apparatus of a human body.
Here is a list of the best selling drugs of 2003
The current #1 blockbuster, Lipitor, lowers cholesterol. It is an excellent example of a drug that has been successfully designed to inhibit a single enzyme, which it does with great selectivity and potency. When it has done its job, it is subject to rapid metabolic clearance without any serious side-effects. You can find other stellar examples of scientists getting to grips with disease in areas like high blood-pressure, stomach ulcers, pain and infection.
The point of my post, however, is to say that **liberal **is not far off the mark in his assessment of medical research when one comes to consider mental health. We really are taking the tiniest of baby steps in our understanding of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia etc. Scientists can tell us exactly what prozac and zyprexa do in the brain, which protein target they bind to, how they are metabolised etc, but they have only the most tenuous understanding of why they produce the effects that they do. The question “How does prozac work?” or even “Does prozac work?” is a great scientific debate.
The progress of science is inexorable, though. It is safe to predict that the next fifty years will revolutionise our understanding of brain chemistry, in addition to clarifying how and when to look to pharamceutical intervention as a solution to mental illness.
I don’t doubt that. Of course, that’s no guarantee that the politically weak will benefit from it. Today, science can feed the whole world, but millions starve. Politics will always trump science… and religion.
You’re right, my mistake. I misunderstood the “nothing to prove or disprove.”
He meant since we can’t prove or disprove it then lets not spend time on it.
Coming from science as a whole that makes sense.
I still maintain that the individual search for a connection to this “field of energy.”
does yeild results and is worthwhile.
That’s a statement I agree with 100%
Well, Lib hit the nail on the head in fewer words than I would have used.
If you wanted science to work on it, you’d have to convince someone that the chance of finding out about this energy is high enough to submit a grant proposal. If you wanted to submit a grant proposal, here is what you would have to do:
Forget about the worthwhile, and concentrate on the yield results part. Now, you can’t be saying there is no way to measure this force, since you claim that some people detect it. Not being measurable with instruments is fine - many fields measure with statistics, not recorders.
Your proposal will have to state what you expect to find, in this case, what you expect the people in contact with the force or spirit will report, and how this can be distinuished from a random set of people. You will have to make the experiment double blind, so as not to contaminate the data by letting the subjects know what to expect. You will need a control population, of those who have never felt this force, to be able to distinguish your results from chance. You will have to, in advance, state what results you will find significant. All of this will be reviewed by the funding agency, and comments by experts suggesting changes to the experiment will be done. It would pay you to take courses on the design of experiments and on statistics to avoid the normal mistakes people make.
And, in something like this, you’d have to do some preliminary experiments to show that there is some indication of an effect. Sorry to say, you almost have to do the research to get NSF grants these days, which fund the next research you want to do. They give out grants for new faculty to prime the pump. I am happy to say I review some every so often, but never have to apply for any.
That is a very brief summary of what you would have to do. Science is not saying there is nothing there, science is saying “show me.” Go for it.,
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I concede that there is no way that I am presently aware of to measure this force in a way that would gain wide scientific acceptance.
The issue of results can be considered for the individual.
There were lots of incorrect theories about illness and disease.
The desire to understand and overcome them drove mankind on to new discoveries.
Individuals having faith in their connection to this energy despite skepticism isn’t so different.
If I may offer a falsifiable hypothesis:
In cosmodan’s world, paragraphs don’t exist.
lol, Like science they exist but not in widely recognized terms.
But science does exist in widely recognized terms, as do standards of writing in English to make one’s point clearly and without fatiguing the reader. The scientific approach requires a hypothesis and a useful test whose results will strongly support or stongly deny the hypothesis. This test must be do-able in a wide variety of places by a wide variety of persons (i.e. it doesn’t count if the only one capable of doing the test “right” is you). Your notion of as-yet-unproven energy fields may serve as a hypothesis, but until you come up with a test that could be performed by you, by me, by some schmoe in Bangalore, etc. the hypothesis has no scientific validity.
As for paragraphs, standards for use in written English are widely recognized and style guides are numerous. You can ignore these standards if you wish to write poetry or fiction, but in presenting something you claim to be factual, your writings will be more coherent and understandable to an audience if you follow the “widely recognized” protocols of organizing your thoughts into paragraphs. Writing in “point form” (where a series of related facts are presented as single sentences) can serve a purpose, but only after your basic premise has been clearly introduced.
As a minor side note, this observation of yours:
…demonstrates a fairly major flaw in your understanding of science and how it works. Would it be fair to say that in the last 1000 years, progress has been made and we now understand and can apply the laws of physics in ways 11th-century intellectuals could not have imagined? What non-sceintific progress can be demonstrated? Pharaoh’s wizards and wise men could turn sticks into snakes (Exodus 7:11-12) as far back as ~1300 BCE, but strangely they didn’t pursue this interesting phenomena and were conquered in turn by the Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, and Macedonians. Surely they could have applied some of their magic to fend off the invaders. If the secrets of turning sticks into snakes was well-established, it seems to me they could gradually discover how to turn rocks into horses and eventually be able to create instant armies capable of fending off any attacker.
Similarly, you claim existence of energy fields. Whether or not scientists believe in them, surely energy field proponents can give a demonstration of something. If one want to prove the existence of spiritual healing, for example, how difficult would it be for a few hundred proponents to move into a small city and set up a free clinic? If their hypothesis has any validity, within a few years health care costs in that city should drop dramatically and then rise again in the years after the healing proponents leave. This would be far more compelling evidence than indvidual testimonials.
Cosmosdan
Please take a few moments to read this:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html
Karl Popper was a philosopher of science who crystalized the essence of exactly what is and is not a science. Feel free to read it over and over. I have. The understanding you gain from it will benefit you for the rest of your life.
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I concede that point. Scientific validity is not the same as results or worth.
Liberal posted a web page of testimonies of people healed by faith. It does not provide scientific validity but for those individuals who were not be healed by modern medicine, there is certainly worth. I think it also indicates a good reason to continue studying the matter.
I get it. I’m new to SDMB and still learning the accepted format. I noticed your paragraphs weren’t indented. Do they still qualify as paragraphs?
Agreed. I’ve learned a lot here and appreciate the input. Do we agree that the fact that a fileld of energy cannot be proved or disproved at this point means it may exist?
Interesting. The problem I see is that spiritual healing requires faith on the part of those being healed as well. In some cases there is no healer except the person healed and the spirit. That would complicate your proposal.You miss the point. It’s not about the SDMB, it’s about “widely recognized” standards of written English. Non-indented paragraphs are widely recognized, and therefore easily interpreted as paragraphs. (In fact, indentation of paragraphs is quite rare in some venues.)
Simply put, it’s obvious to very nearly everyone reading this post that this is the first sentence of a new paragraph. That’s all Brian Ekers was saying.