Friday, October 17, 2008

Science and "The Will to Believe"

Have been reading about the resistance to belief on the part of scientists -- an editorial written by Arthur Hastings, Director of the William James Center for Consciousness Studies at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. He discusses a near-death experience (NDE) case in which a patient being operated on had her eyes taped, ears plugged, her brain drained of blood and her body temperature lowered to 58 degrees. She was hooked up to an external heart and lung machine and her brain showed no electrical activity and it was unresponsive to sound. Yet after the operation she claimed to have been outside of her body and described special surgical instruments that were used, conversations she had overheard, and events that occurred during surgery (that were confirmed as true). She also described things corresponding with other NDEs such as a life review, meeting non-physical beings, and moving to an otherwordly place. Yet when scholars were asked to comment on the case, they would not.

Hastings speculates that even in the face of reasonable evidence to support a possible idea, without absolute proof those in the science community are resistant to belief. Reasonable evidence is not simply someone saying they experienced something, but data that indicate a good reason to conclude something, and yet there seems to be a determination not to believe.

Why?

The scientific community is built on credibility and acceptance. If researchers deviate from the paradigms that have been absorbed as truths, they risk loss of credibility, sometimes for life. Examples of that in other fields of science -- medicine and physics, for example -- indicate that scientists who have contributed theories based on findings that go against prevailing ideas and paradigms have been ostracized and unsupported in further research.

But Hastings says NO EMPIRICAL CONCLUSIONS CAN BE ABSOLUTELY PROVED, and every scientific conclusion is believed on less than complete logical proof. The ironic part of trying to establish the paradigm of the existence or possibility of a non-physical world is that in order for it to be accepted, it has to be explained by the use of the physical because the rationale is often "something that is not physical simply is not real because "real" means "physical." So how do you show the existence of a non-physical realm within those methods?

Measurement. Matching an experience that does not fit within the accepted paradigm by use of a well-accepted part of the paradigm. Lucid dreaming was not taken seriously until electroencephalography was used to confirm the consciousness state of lucid dreaming.

In late September an announcement of a study on out-of-body experiences (OBEs) that will be done was made by researchers in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

It makes me wonder if the use of measurement equipment in modern day ghost hunting (electromagnetic field detectors, thermal imagers, and digital voice recorders, as well as new tools that translate digital voice recordings immediately --those that are not picked up by the human ear), will constitute or are constituting now scientific evidence of the possibility of non-physical beings or activity or even communication with a non-physical world. One writer noted that there is no "proof" (or should we say evidence) that spirits emit high electromagnetic fields so we cannot say that unexplained high EMF levels are evidence of spirit activity. What I believe Ghost Hunters personnel usually say is that "the theory is that..." high EMF readings that are not attributable to anything physical may mean there is spiritual activity.

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