From: "Jan Maslow" (jmaslow@jps.net)
To: scienceandspirit@sriaurobindocenter-la.com
Subject: science and yoga
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 08:31:28 -0400
Reply-To: postaum2005@sriaurobindocenter-la.com

Hi Folks:

I'm
still trying to get some time to write about phenomenological research
and lucid dreaming. Meanwhile, this letter below from Louis Gidney just
appeared on the Journal of Consciousness Studies egroup. The latest
issue of JCS is about Rupert Sheldrake's theory that people can tell if
someone behind them is staring at them by means of a non-physical field
which encompasses both people. There's been conversations on the JCS
group for awhile of folks who are either passionately pro or con. I
thought Gidney's comments, especially toward the end about the nature
of science, might stir some interest among the Post-AUM'ers.

Here's his letter:

The Concept of a Field

I
think it is worth reflecting on: (A) what we mean in general by the
existence of "fields" and how we come to know about them; and (B) what
it is that leads us to accept or reject new observations (whether or no
they be deemed 'paranormal'); and (C) how we tend to deal with them.
(Even in mathematics; cf, Lakatos, "Proofs and Refutations").

You
can get some idea of the field of a magnet by placing a sheet of
cardboard on the magnet and sprinkling it with iron dust, or you can
explore the immediate vicinity of a magnet using a small magnetic
compass as a 'probe'; and so on. If you take two strong bar magnets,
one in each hand and try to push their like poles together, you get a
rather vivid, tangible sense that between your hands, resisting your
efforts, there is some invisible object that feels a bit like a toy
balloon but more 'slippery' -- mysterious indeed.

It is worth
keeping in mind that the mysterious essence of this is still not
understood. Rather what we have learnt is not /what/ it is but rather
we have learnt enough about the relationships between magnetic,
electrical and optical effects to be able to design and make formerly
undreamt of kinds of equipment most of which, in an the middle ages,
would have been regarded as witchcraft (even a simple voltaic pile). We
seem to have lost genuine curiosity and a sense of wonder.

Also
worth recalling is that Descartes dismissed all action at a distance as
"occult" believing that only the transmission of effects by direct
contact was "rational". The Cartesians criticised Newton's gravitation
as a lapse into Aristotelianism.

Returning to the comments of my
second paragraph. Note: if one used (say) pollen grains instead of iron
dust, the first experiment would fail to reveal the magnetic field, but
that that would not refute the phenomenon. This simple fact should
teach us that it is important not to use inappropriate 'probes' to
explore a 'field'.

Furthermore, it would be a mistake of the
greatest magnitude (and a sure blockage to discovering anything
radically new) to assume that we already know broadly how the world
works, and consequently that we can know what processes are impossible;
and to go on from there to believing we can know some new observation
/must/ necessarily be explicable in terms of the world model we already
espouse (and that if not it is impossible).

So it comes about
that when there is talk of plants or animals having fields, the
immediate impulse is to assume that they must be electromagnetic and to
test this with the corresponding equipment. There is nothing basically
wrong with checking this out (much has been learnt in this way). But it
is possible that these are the wrong 'probes'. I believe the more
'fundamental' and open approach should be as follows.

If I claim
that the tomato plants on my window sill have life-fields, what I
(should) mean by that is that certain effects can be observed to take
place in their immediate vicinity which do not take place elsewhere,
and secondly that some concept of a field renders these effects
intelligible. For instance they repel house flies (yes of course it can
be explained chemically). Grass grows less well under trees (and yes,
that can be explained by lack of light, etc). Some of the behaviour of
animals (and people) in the vicinity of others can be attributed to
pheromones. Nevertheless it is of great practical utility to know that
you will get better results if you plant a plum tree near a pear tree -
even if some 'theory' justifying it might be quite crazy. Similarly it
can be just as useful (if quite inexplicable) that seeds sown at
certain phases of the moon or planets, flourish better; that milk maids
don't catch smallpox; or that people who work with horses have strong
teeth. None of these examples would be considered 'paranormal' nowadays.

I
suggest (and I am not the first) that what we mean by a field is some
concept that summarises and integrates various effects that can be
observed to occur in the vicinity of some entity, but which do not
happen in circumstances unconnected with that entity.

Most trees
appear to grow 'intelligently' by which I mean that their branches grow
in directions which avoid other branches. I have only noticed one
exception to this. The Thua tree, besides having 'main branches' (of
pear shaped cross-section) also has straight spiky branches of round
section which project from the main branches, in quite 'unintelligent'
directions that interfere with each other. Intuitively you get the
impression that you are looking at 'two trees in one'; perhaps one
parasitic upon the other in some deep sense.

My main suggestion
is that there is nothing wrong with the idea of a field which manifests
itself as a collection of effects in the vicinity of a thing, even when
all the effects are of a purely biological character. In that case the
'evidence' for the existence of said field is simply that these
biological effects occur and can be understood better taken together
when regarded as a field --just as in the case of magnets certain
effects are detectable by appropriate 'probes' (iron dust rather than
pollen grains, etc). Ie, _as_a_point_of_method_ it should not be felt,
that such a field must be detectable by any other equipment whatever
(electrical for instance) to be 'real'. The biological effects within
the field are themselves the evidence for its reality. Just as
non-reaction of inappropriate 'probes' in the vicinity of magnets is
not evidence against magnetic fields.

And this is no more or
less erroneous or mysterious than the history of electromagnetism.
Merely a parallel phenomenon with its own rules, that should not be
expected to need further explanation, but rather should prompt our
curiosity to go ahead and discover more effects and their
interrelationships. Rather than make a career of controversy. What
freedom! And its all there just waiting to be discovered.

In
this connexion I would like to put in a plug for the work of Lawrence
Edwards' on leaf buds described in his book "The Vortex of Life" and
who died last year at the age of 92 after 30 years of daily
observations. He did not much concern himself with the orthodoxy. A
modest man, he just went ahead with his observations knowing that what
he observed was fact. I have no doubt that he will one day be
recognised as another Galileo. The 'spirit of the age' is not yet quite
ready for this kind of thing. Trying to align such things with the
current orthodoxy is likely to slow down the rate of discovery.

This
has more or less happened with what I prefer to call the
Pons-Fleischmann 'effect' (often referred to with strong emotion of one
kind or another as 'cold fusion'). I am not sure that P&F did claim
they had performed cold fusion rather than conjecture it as a possible
explanation of the observed effect. If they did make this claim they
should have known better. Whatever the case it was tested on that
assumption and absence of neutrons or whatever, indicated that nuclear
fusion was probably not occurring. One is reminded of Peirre Curie's
lump of radium; always warmer than its surroundings and able to melt
its own weight of ice every hour. It was not a chemical effect. The
P&F effect seems not to be a nuclear reaction. But it must be
something. So to my mind, the negative result is even more exciting,
because it suggests something entirely new may have been observed. This
illustrates the danger of theorising too soon.

If you compare
Gilbert's "De Magnete" (always a sobering read) with Faraday's
notebooks, one thing that stands out is not so much what Gilbert
discovered after a lifetime of painstaking observations and
experiments, but rather what he failed to notice. Although he was aware
that lodestone and magnetised needles had two unlike 'poles', he failed
to notice that there were two kinds of electric charge. And while he
had an intuition that magnetism was in some way related to light (which
as it happens was correct) he failed to find it by trying to magnetise
a needle by 'stroking' it with focussed sunlight.

'Its a funny
old world' - and it is foolish to have preconceptions or rules if you
want to make radically new discoveries. Skeptics are right in trying to
expose real fraud, but err if by adopting a kind of dogmatic
fundamentalism, they nip new discoveries in the bud at a stage when
they are still incompletely understood. And those who have stumbled
upon something radical are unwise to generalise too far too soon -
notwithstanding that to speculate (even wildly) about alternate
understandings is an important part of discovery.

Sometimes past
science (the 19th c. 'aether' for example) is not so much wrong, as
irrelevant when a new focus takes hold with its own questions and new
rules. One thing we can be certain of is that there is still more that
is unknown than we have already learnt --and many perspectives that we
can't even dream of at present.

I once knew a much travelled
coptic monk, somewhat an initiate, who noticed a 'magician' in a bazarr
in India apparently snapping sweets out of thin air and handing them to
children. Convinced that this was impossible unless evil, he resolved
to discover how the deception was performed. After a visit to the home
of this conjuror he felt he had debunked him. "I was right", he told
me, "He did not do it by magic. He had elementals working for him!".

regards,
Louis Gidney.
Message - 21/22