Chapter 14: Antiscience

Please use this thread to talk about Chapter 14: Antiscience.

His chapter header was really outrageous and not worthy of Sagan. I mean, we could all pick out psychobabble and mumbo jumbo to pour scorn on so called New Age Beliefs.

Yes, some scientists of all nationalities have been very brave in speaking out against the establishment and putting their careers in jeopardy. Not least those spiritualists of the 1920's:-

The days are past, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle maintains, when the considered opinions of such men as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Lodge, Barrett, Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantine, W. T. Stead, Judge Edmonds, Vice-Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon Wilberforce and a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed as negligible. The time has come when "further proof is superfluous and the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny." If, "to take one of a thousand examples," the only evidence for unknown intelligent forces lay in the experiments of Dr. Crawford recorded in Light, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does not see how it could be shaken. He continues:

"We should now be at the close of the stage of investigation and beginning the period of religious construction.

If you want to read more:

http://www.sshf.com/encyclopedia/index. ... iritualism

Sagan's advocation of natural medicine was interesting too. How did the ancients discover the efficacy of Quinine and Aspirin etc...He says they must have tried every tree and plant....but I contend that they may not have.

His mention of scientists working for nasty regimes as in Natzi Germany - only emphasizes my point that Science is truth and reason but grace and compassion belong to another discipline. It isn't just scientists who are not all sweetness and light. We should all think about what we do for a living. Some people make/create instruments of torture - well, somebody must do it. If we all insisted that our method of earning a living must be ethical, it would surely be a better world.

Talking of antiscience - which is the title of this chapter - I must tell you that I have frequent posts on my Facebook page from IFLS and I am often thrilled by the items showing recent scientific discoveries, or archeological riddles and I used to often share the posts with my Facebook friends who are all over the world. Some of them are quite devout - one a Christian in India and his young son and one a Muslim in Finland with whom I play Scrabble. To my horror one day recently I discovered that IFLS stands for 'I Fucking Love Science'. I wish they would change their name, because I can't bring myself to share their stuff now.

I'm not reading the book, Penelope (how are you, by the way?). What I see is dislike of certain findings of science, and belief in things that science hasn't supported, but I don't know of anyone who is antiscience in some broad sense. Almost anyone who thinks about what science has made possible would acknowledge that they "like" it. So is Sagan claiming there is rampant antiscience being a bit hyperbolic?

Sagan opens up the chapter by explaining the necessary mathematical foundations needed to understand (or attempt an understanding) of the counter intuitive nature of quantum mechanics.
But our understanding of counter intuitive aspects of quantum mechanics enables the ability to make impressive predictions - which any good theory does. Its strength is based on the power of its ability to predict (my words).

If gravitational waves (as predicted by Einsteinian theory) continue to avoid detection, what are the implications for the foundation of the theory its based on?
Or do we keep searching forever in the belief that we will discover them?
Or would a new paradigm be necessary?

Maybe Landroid might say we should search the entire cosmos forever just like we are willing to search it for alien intelligence that might be attempting contact with us?
Why? Because someone in some lab predicted aliens are trying to contact humans.

Landroid?

ant wrote:Because someone in some lab predicted aliens are trying to contact humans.

Is that how it works?

DWill wrote:
I'm not reading the book, Penelope (how are you, by the way?).

I am very well thankyou DWill. Have moved 300 yards up the road into a more modern house - It's bliss. Are you well, and how is Saffron? Do you remember a couple of years ago when we celebrated cyber Burns Night? We've just had Burns Night this year and we celebrated with my son......but no bagpipes. Boooh - Still,I was thinking about you and Saffron.

Penelope wrote:

DWill wrote:
I'm not reading the book, Penelope (how are you, by the way?).

I am very well thankyou DWill. Have moved 300 yards up the road into a more modern house - It's bliss. Are you well, and how is Saffron? Do you remember a couple of years ago when we celebrated cyber Burns Night? We've just had Burns Night this year and we celebrated with my son......but no bagpipes. Boooh - Still,I was thinking about you and Saffron.

Did you have haggis, though? Well at least you still get to claim Burns as a UK poet. Saffron is fine and I'll tell her you asked. I always find powerful the lines in the Wordsworth poem that recall Burns as a poor farmer just barely making a living, with the huge talent he had:

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

After the time of these English Romantics, I begin to have trouble understanding poetry.

I'm glad you're enjoying your upgrade. After a while, keeping an old place in repair isn't Romantic!

Interbane wrote:

ant wrote:Because someone in some lab predicted aliens are trying to contact humans.

Is that how it works?

what's the basis for a quasi prediction that intelligent alien civilization would or should attempt contact in a binary format?

Mind you that its just a question. Sagan, so far doesn't talk much about the scientific justification for SETI. Nor have I yet to read his deep thoughts on SETI.
That's why I want to read Paul Davies book.

Remember - Im all for SETI. But i also am willing to think more about the question of demarcation.
I'm not going to simply shake my head up and down whenever The Prophet of Scientism speaketh.

dWill

Did you have haggis, though?

Oh yes, we had haggis, bashed neeps and tatties. When I opened the haggis I poured in a dram of malt whiskey before serving it. It was delicious.

Do you know the work of John Clare - He was the son of a Farm Labourer, with real humble origins:

All nature has a feeling

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal is its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

ant wrote:

Interbane wrote:

ant wrote:Because someone in some lab predicted aliens are trying to contact humans.

Is that how it works?

what's the basis for a quasi prediction that intelligent alien civilization would or should attempt contact in a binary format?

Mind you that its just a question. Sagan, so far doesn't talk much about the scientific justification for SETI. Nor have I yet to read his deep thoughts on SETI.
That's why I want to read Paul Davies book.

Remember - Im all for SETI. But i also am willing to think more about the question of demarcation.
I'm not going to simply shake my head up and down whenever The Prophet of Scientism speaketh.

Do you need "scientific justification" to look for something that might exist? It sounds like you’re criticizing Sagan for the crime of intellectual curiosity. A curiosity which, by the way, he was always willing to put to the test.

The SETI project is based on the simple proposition that there might be intelligent life and that that life might be emitting some kind of signal that we can detect with a radio telescope. Has Sagan or anyone else ever claimed it was more than that? What extraordinary claims have ever been made with respect to SETI? I’m really curious because I really don’t understand the nature of your protest.

Observation is how we explore the world. There are many human activities that happen to overlap with science. If you have problems with the lines of demarcation, the problem probably lies with your lines of demarcation.