TED : Graham Hancock And Rupert Sheldrake "A Fresh take"

[pembroke]

it's like a pseudoscientific filibuster

knell missed the thread / point.

Besides, is pseudoscientific even a scientific word?

If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science' and 'unscientific' from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us".

"The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one's opponents in media sound-bites"

Tbh, it kinda seems to me like you're someone who hates science, perhaps because you weren't overly confident with it in school. You should come to terms with your problems, not shoot them down.

[d-T-r]

it's like a pseudoscientific filibuster

knell missed the thread / point.

Besides, is pseudoscientific even a scientific word?

If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science' and 'unscientific' from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us".

"The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one's opponents in media sound-bites"

Tbh, it kinda seems to me like you're someone who hates science, perhaps because you weren't overly confident with it in school. You should come to terms with your problems, not shoot them down.

Tbh it kinda seems to me like you're someone who is quick to make assumptions ,perhaps because .....never mind.

[pembroke]

Valid point. Like I said, it seems that way based on some of the posts you've made in this thread, and few others in the past.

The question is though, amirite?

[d-T-r]

Valid point. Like I said, it seems that way based on some of the posts you've made in this thread, and few others in the past.

The question is though, amirite?

To clarify for you, i love science and have nothing wrong with it. (feel better? ) But, it seems to have been an emerging trend over the last how ever many years, for people's definition and impression of science to be very blurry. Is Science Politics, Economics ? If not, is science massively influenced and shaped by these things? What implications would that have on the scope of available scientific investigation ?

Like previously covered, Science as a method is great. Nothing wrong with that. It's when it moves beyond that in to scientisim is when we have to start questioning things. That leads to the Policing of ,and conservation of preconceived belief structures and also the censorship /ridicule of any ideas that require we take another look at fundamentals and the ideas that may seem like unlikely, but could and often do have validity behind them. Not all ideas will have merit behind them, but our predjucis are exposed when we gun down an idea way before it has been allowed it's time to prove it's weight

This isn't just "my" thoughts or opinions too. If you check out the comments on the links , you'll see that many others are voicing their opinions on the Science-police and the areas scientific understanding is yet to clarify full explanations of. (even people that did extra great at science in school )

http://www.ted.com/conversations/17189/ ... heldr.html

[d-T-r]

tl:dr but reccomended.



The New Scientific Revolution

Before 2012 slips away it’s worth remembering that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s hugely influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was itself revolutionary, and has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Almost every time you hear the word ‘paradigm’, Kuhn’s book is in the background.

Kuhn made it clear that science is not simply devoted to the rational pursuit of truth, but is subject to human foibles, ambitions, emotions, and peer-group pressures. A paradigm is a theory of reality, a model of the way in which research can be done, and a consensus within a professional group. At any given time anomalies that do not fit into the paradigm are rejected or ignored, and ‘normal science’ goes on within the agreed framework. But at times of scientific revolution, ‘one conceptual world view is replaced by another’; the framework itself is enlarged to include anomalies that were previously unexplained. Some well-known examples of major paradigm shifts are the Copernican revolution in astronomy, the Darwinian theory of evolution, and the relativity and quantum revolutions in twentieth century physics.

Are further paradigm shifts likely? If science is to develop further, they are inevitable. And as old certainties break down all around us in the economic, financial and political worlds, in science the long-established materialist paradigm is in crisis.

In physics, there has been a major shift away from the observable towards towards the virtual. Since the beginning of this century, matter and energy as we know them have been demoted to 4 percent of the universe. The rest consists of hypothetical dark matter and dark energy. The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure. Meanwhile, the observable physical realm is floating on a vast ocean of energy called the zero-point energy field or the quantum vacuum field, from which virtual particles emerge and disappear, mediating all electromagnetic forces. Your eyes are reading these lines through seething virtual photons as your retinas absorb light, and as nerve impulses move up the optic nerve and patterns of electrical activity arise in your brain, all mediated by corresponding patterns of activity within the vacuum field within and around you.

Even the mass of an obviously physical object like a rock arises from virtual particles in hypothetical fields. In the Standard Model of particle physics, all mass is ultimately explained in terms of the invisible Higgs field, which has a constant strength everywhere. The Higgs boson is supposed to create a cloud of virtual particles in the Higgs field around it, and these virtual particles interact with other quantum particles, giving them mass.

Contemporary theoretical physics is dominated by superstring and M theories, with 10 and 11 dimensions respectively. These theories are untested and currently untestable. Meanwhile, many cosmologists have adopted the multiverse theory, which asserts that there are trillions of universes besides our own. These are interesting speculations, but they are not old-paradigm materialist science. Reality has dissolved into the physics of the virtual.

In consciousness studies, materialism is being challenged by a new version of animism or ‘panpsychism’, according to which all self-organizing material systems, like electrons, have a mental as well as a physical aspect. In his recent book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that a shift to panpsychism is necessary for any viable philosophy of nature that does not need to invoke God.

Meanwhile, in biology, despite the confident claim in the late twentieth century that genes and molecular biology would soon explain the nature of life, no one yet knows how plants and animals develop from fertilized eggs. And following the technical triumph of the Human Genome Project, first announced by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in June 2000, there were big surprises. There are far fewer human genes than anticipated, a mere 23,000 instead of 100,000. Sea urchins have about 26,000 and rice plants 38,000. Attempts to predict characteristics such as height have shown that genes account for only about 5 percent of the variation from person to person, instead of the 80 percent expected. Unbounded confidence has given way to the ‘missing heritability problem’. Investors in genomics and biotechnology have lost many billions of dollars. A recent report by the Harvard Business School on the biotechnology industry revealed that “only a tiny fraction of companies had ever made a profit” and showed how promises of breakthroughs have failed over and over again.

Materialist science seemed simple and straightforward. But old-style material reality has now dissolved into multi-dimensional virtual physics; increasing numbers of philosophers and neuroscientists are moving towards panpsychism; and biologists are having to think about ‘systems’ and ‘emergent properties’ that cannot be reduced to the molecular level.

Kuhn’s insights, and the subsequent developments in science studies, are not merely of historical relevance, looking at revolutions in the past. Hopefully we can learn from them today. We are in the midst of a new revolution.

- Rupert Sheldrake

http://sciencesetfree.tumblr.com/

[Shum]

So what is this thread about?

seriously, what is this thread about?

[pembroke]

D,
More random people posting shit on the Internet doesn't make your point any more valid tbh.
Science in and of itself is a study of natural phenomena, apply that as you wish to your questions.

[d-T-r]

D,
More random people posting shit on the Internet doesn't make your point any more valid tbh.
Science in and of itself is a study of natural phenomena, apply that as you wish to your questions.

it depends what you think/interpret my point to be tbh?

They may be 'random' but i'm sure you and many others may find some of them more credible than me. it's not just random people on the internet. Random and 'established' people in the scientific community too.

Science in and of itself is indeed a study of natural phenomena, but sometimes the goal posts get moved relating to which phenomena are to be properly examined/funded etc Of course this is for good reason in most cases, but at what point does the inner-politics of the scientific community start to effect the outcome and the actual Models of scientific inquiry? Is there room for any kind of bias in science, be it within the preconceived or existing models of understanding or in the pursuit of more scientific knoweldge?

Again, science as a method is fine, but an honest look at what encompasses our shared ideas and definitions of science is always gonna be beneficial in expanding beyond the "metaphysical flat land" of the current paradigm. This isn't a new thing either. As the world changes and grows, so must our understanding of Science from a philosophical point of view. Neither one negates the other despite what we hear from those that claim one is more supreme than the other. They both have a lot more to learn from each other. That's a small portion of my main real point I guess.

I believe there to be phenomena that cannot yet be explained or measured bycurrent scientific methods, yet are still valid. Transrational states.We act as if we have figured out the fundamentals and are now just waiting for science to fill in the gaps but i think it's the other way around and this will gradually make more sense to us as our collective knowledge and level of conciousness increases.

Thankfully, the planet is not getting dumber

[Mason]

So what is this thread about?

seriously, what is this thread about?

[d-T-r]

So what is this thread about?

seriously, what is this thread about?

[pembroke]

It doesn't matter what your point is (for the record I still don't know because I still don't know what this thread is about). A fundamental part of any assertion is credibility of the sources used to validate it. An open discussion board on the Internet isn't a particularly credible source under any circumstances haha

[d-T-r]

It doesn't matter what your point is (for the record I still don't know because I still don't know what this thread is about). A fundamental part of any assertion is credibility of the sources used to validate it.

Read it again if you get the time. Just raising awareness about a very current matter within the scientific + philosophical paradigm. I agree though, you do need credible sources and evidence to substantiate any claim or theory made.

An open discussion board on the Internet isn't a particularly credible source under any circumstances haha

i guess it all depends on those taking place in the open discussion too and if they are credible themselves with credible sources behind their work.

(Que Sheldrake again who uses conventional scientific methods to test unconventional claims )