Author: Psybertron

Henry Stapp’s words quoted by Brian Josephson, were one of the first occasions I was turned on to considering that (eastern) mysticism might have something real to add to science. Both serious physicists, the latter a Nobel prizewinner, both interestingly, present at the 2003 Science of Consciousness event in Tucson. At the time (noted in 2005 paper) it was a real “does not compute” (*) moment for me, that set the tone for a whole decade of open-minded gathering of unlikely sources here on psybertron.

Quantum non-locality & collapse effects were very fashionable, not least with Stuart Hameroff director of the Tucson Centre for Consciousness studies and co-founder of the event, and co-founder with Roger Penrose of the tubules and quantum coherence “Orch-OR” theories of mind. At that point I seem to have left Stapp behind – I found the Penrose-Hameroff stuff too literal, too “physical” a model of the possibility suggested. (For those of us who hold a monism underlying both physical and mental, we need to be careful not to preference one over the other.)

Anyway, long story short, at last month’s Tucson event Sue Blackmore ended up in a debate with Deepak Chopra in the War of the Worldviews. Comments on Sue’s blogs including Ten Zen and the Guardian “Comment is Free” (it never is) almost universally panned Chopra as a charlatan, a con man, a “snake oil salesman” for his mystical agenda – inflamed by his wealth-making activities. One particular commenter on Ten Zen, amidst a string of incoherent rants against Sue – against accepted scientific views – mentioned Stapp. So I looked him up. He has a new 2011 edition of his recent 2007 “Mindful Universe – Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer”.

We have a recurring problem, a Catch-22 I’ve called it before. It’s a language and communication problem. If you have a problem with science, it’s very hard to talk about it without being scientific, and using the common sense science language of subjects and objects – of course if it’s not scientific, your talking pseudoscience. Mysticism is not “paranormal”, it’s just not necessarily science as we know it. All talk becomes mumbo-jumbo. Catch-22.

When I linked to Carlo Rovelli here, it was because we have a scientist who seems to have spotted where the fault lies. With a metaphysics underlying science, that is invisible to science as we know it; as engrained in our common folk-science psyches.

(*) Ironic that I should use this “compute” expression, because I’ve since formed the view that the underlying monism is probably information – significance difference and dynamic processing of relations. Ooh look – quantum computing.

[Post Note : Also ironic that after posting that, I find Stapp correspondence suggesting Rovelli was going in the wrong direction.
www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Rovelli.doc
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/RovelliRel.txt ]

Due to work-related installs and reconfigurations of our server, I lost visibility of all my normal WordPress and other static content for a few days. But after a reset it looks like everything is up and back to normal. No damage done.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Here a great example – the “Miami Bath-Salts Zombie Cannibal” case.

Spookily, Tom Kreider’s current “This is the Worst” project has an image linked to the case too. Gruesome.

http://www.edge.org/conversation/a-philosophy-of-physics

Science is “narrow minded” if it rejects metaphysical philosophy; in fact it is narrow minded if it fails to recognise that is already operating with dependency on existing engrained metaphysics, taken for granted – without scientific basis, naturally. One reason science is much less certain than some of its very predictable, useful, empirically-supported theories. The uncertainties are in the metaphysical foundations.

A return to science as natural philosophy, rather than the science (since 1930’s physics) of technological application.

BHA has a current campaign “against” Rudolf Steiner schools and Anthroposophy, same as it campaigns against religious faith schools. I’ve noted Steiner and Anthroposophy many times before, but I’ve not come across Steiner as an active education movement until recently, but …

Steiner education is based on an esoteric/occultist movement called Anthroposophy, founded by Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy, or spiritual science, is centred on beliefs in karma, reincarnation and advancing children’s connection to the spirit world.

Steiner schools will always argue that they do not teach Anthroposophy, and in a narrow sense this is true as it is not a term that pupils will ever come across. However, the beliefs of Anthroposophy form the core of the teacher training courses and are the pedagogical motivation for everything that is taught in Steiner schools.

Sure, Steiner and Anthroposophy are mystical – they’ve been in my whacky list for some time. You wouldn’t want to teach Anthroposophy to any immature mind, but anyone teaching (in any school) would do well to understand Anthroposophy rather than simply dismiss it.

[…] SWSF schools do not teach children to read and write before the age of 6/7, or use computers before 13, […] because anthroposophists believe that to do so damages this connection by quashing this naivety and playfulness. In reality, all it does is damage children’s education.’

Everything ? All ?

Clearly trying to couch mysticism as “science” is mad, bad and dangerous, and it’s another symptom of scientism, that even non-scientific things somehow need to be made scientific (or branded scientific) to have value knowledge-wise. Conversely the scientistic zealots believing science is the one true knowledge, not only rightly dismiss pseudoscience, but wrongly dismiss any knowledge that is not scientific, full stop.

Education is not a science. Education is not all about science. Some education benefits from wise pedagogy. It is not possible to learn scientifically (empirically) in one lifetime all that is useful that humans have come to know – that’s a reductionist fallacy and a waste of valuable learning time. And yes, discouraging reading (computer aided or otherwise) is equally mad, bad and dangerous, but stating the obvious misses the real point, that quantity of unqualified input is no substitute for quality – there is such a thing as too much information communication – quality control has its value.

What is important is balance – a balance between trust and authority on the one side and empirical discovery on the other. The balance may be difficult and problematic, but either extreme is lunacy.

The problem with the BHA is that we know what it’s against, but not what it’s for. If scientism is all they believe humanism is then they’re a waste of time. Was Philip Pullman just an anomaly?

All science and no mysticism makes Jack a dull boy.