The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

The following excerpts are from Thomas Kuhn’s famous book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn’s view of science was that science had nothing to do with truth, and that paradigms and worldviews determine what scientists constitute science over all.

“To the extent that… two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what is a solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms. In the partially circular arguments that regularly result, each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent… [N]o paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: Which problems is it more significant to have solved?

Like the issue of competing standards, that question of values can be answered only in terms of criteria that lie outside the normal science altogether, and it is that recourse to external criteria that most obviously makes paradigm debates revolutionary…

    The history of astronomy provides many other examples of paradigm-induced changes in scientific perception, some of them even less equivocal. Can it be conceivably be of an accident, for example, that Western astronomers first saw change in the previously immutable heavens during the half-century after Copernicus’ new paradigm was first proposed? The Chinese, whose cosmological beliefs did not preclude celestial change, had recorded the appearance of many new stars in the heavens at a much earlier date. Also, even without the aid of a telescope, the Chinese had systematically recorded the appearance of sunspots centuries before these were seen by Galileo and his contemporaries…

What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a reinterpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable. [For example:] A pendulum is not a falling stone, nor is oxygen dephlogisticated air. Consequently, the date that scientists collect from these diverse objects are, as we shall shortly see, themselves different…

Operations and measurements are paradigm determined. Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. Instead, it selects those relevant to the juxtaposition of a paradigm with the immediate experience that that paradigm has partially determined. As a result, scientists with different paradigms engage in different concrete laboratory manipulations…

Does a field make progress because it is a science, or is it a science because it makes progress?

Doubts about progress [often] rise in the sciences. Through the pre-paradigm period when there is a multiplicity of competing schools, evidence of progress, except within schools, is very hard to find… During periods of revolution when the fundamental tenets of a field are once more at issue, doubts are repeatedly expressed about the very possibility of continued progress if one or another of the opposed paradigm is adopted…

Often a new paradigm emerges, at least in embryo, before a crisis has developed far or been explicitly recognized…A scientific community is an immensely efficient instrument for solving the problems or puzzles that its paradigms define… [but we must ask] What must nature, including man, be like in order that science be possible at all? Why should scientific communities be able to reach a firm consensus unattainable in other fields? Why should consensus endure across one paradigm change after another? And why should paradigm change invariably produce an instrument more perfect in any sense than those known before?…

Any conception of nature compatible with the growth of science by proof is compatible with the evolutionary view of science developed here. Since this view is also compatible with close observation of the scientific life, there are strong arguments for employing  it in attempts to solve the host of problems that still remain.”

Francis Bacon: Father of Science and Proponent of Psi

Francis Bacon, born in 16th century London, would come to be known as one of the greatest minds to ever walk the earth. Folks would call him the father of empiricism, and credit him with helping to create the scientific method. He is one of the great philosophers whose efforts helped shape the modern world. Many of Bacon’s ideas were hundreds of years ahead of his time.

In his life he held many titles: Barrister, Author, and eventually become Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon would also become knighted by the English monarchy, and write “The New Atlantis”.

What is little known is that in one of his famous works “Sylva Sylvarum“, he supposed that thoughts could be ‘bond together’ (via telepathy). Bacon would also propose that mental intention could effect objects, and that those effects could be studied in a statistical manner to verify their reality. The objects that he would recommend that could be studied were cards and dice; meaning he was one of the first scientific philosophers to value random physical systems in Psi research.

 

Scientists and Their Red Herring’s

From January 2008 item in the UK’s The Daily Mail:

In 1995, the US Congress asked two independent scientists to assess whether the $20 million that the government had spent on psychic research had produced anything of value. And the conclusions proved to be somewhat unexpected.

Professor Jessica Utts, a statistician from the University of California, discovered that remote viewers were correct 34 per cent of the time, a figure way beyond what chance guessing would allow.

She says: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, you have to conclude that certain psychic phenomena, such as remote viewing, have been well established.

“The results are not due to chance or flaws in the experiments.”

Of course, this doesn’t wash with sceptical scientists.

Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, refuses to believe in remote viewing.

He says: “I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

“If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.

“But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you’d probably want a lot more evidence.

“Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence.”

[Emphasis added]

What Professor Wiseman has just admitted in his own words is that, “by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven”. It literally passes the rigorous tests all other fields of science go through.

However, I have the suspicion that he doesn’t want to believe in it. So rather than accepting facts as facts, he’s arguing that we should move the goal-post; setting a standard that wouldn’t apply to any other scientific branch. Thereby creating a double-standard. If it sounds unjust, thats because it is.

He does this by throwing out a red-herring. By making a comparison to UFO’s, he can make remote viewing seem ridiculous to the public eye, all the while protecting his own paradigm.

Because we’d need a lot more evidence for a UFO than we would for a red car, right?

Wrong.

Indeed, if I was a skeptic, and someone told me there was a red car in my drive way, I might say: “I don’t know, is there a red car in my drive way? Why should I believe you? Lets go find out!” Then we would go and look and see if its there. That’s a skeptical attitude: not taking peoples word for granted and finding out yourself.

The same process for verifying the existence of a red car is the same you would use to verify the existence of a UFO. A UFO is by definition an ‘Unidentified Flying Object’. If you had analyzed it with the same standards you did a red car, you would have an Identified that flying object. Boom. Its no longer a mystery.

Remote Viewing is not a UFO. We’ve put remote viewing in the lab, and verified that its real with the same methods we verify other phenomena. This psychologist admits this, and by that merit, its a scientifically verifiable reality. No longer “paranormal”- but demonstrably normal and repeatable. Meaning you don’t have to take his or anyone’s word on it.

Sadly, this psychologist is not immune to confirmation bias, logical fallacies, or propaganda (ironic, I know). He has a narrow view of materialism that doesn’t account for Psi, and wants to keep it that way. But at this point, his attitude is no longer scientific, its dogmatic. If you wanted to jest, perhaps you could say he has fundamentalist attitudes about reality that science can’t change his mind about.

Stalin’s Secret Psychic Research Programs

Several Scientists in pre-revolutionary Russia studied parapsychology. In 1922, a commission composed of psychologists, medical hypnotists, physiologists, and physicists worked on parapsychology at the Institute of Brain research in Petrograd. Work flourished in the 1930’s with major publications in the year 1934, 1936, and 1937. After 1937, experiments in parapsychology were publicly forbidden during Stalin’s time, and their the rationale behind this was that studies in parapsychology were an attempt to undermine communist-materialism. Privately, though, Stalin continued the government research of parapsychology- and with much success.

In April of 1960, Dr. L.L. Vasilev spoke on the nature of these experiments while addressing a group of top Soviet scientists:

“We carried out extensive and until now completely unreported investigations under the Stalin regime… Soviet scientists conducted great many successful telepathy tests over a quarter of a century ago. It’s urgent that we throw of our prejudices. We must again plunge into the exploration of this vital field.”

In 1960, L.L. Vasilev, head of the Department of Physiology of Leningrad University and a corresponding member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, was given funds to establish well-equipped laboratories at the university for the study of telepathy. In 1963 the Kremlin gave top priority to the study of parapsychology, establishing as many as twenty or more centers for the study of this phenomena, with a budget ranging from 12 million rubles (13 million dollars), and as reportedly has as 21 million dollars.

Visiting Soviet psi labs in 1967, Doctor Ryzl says that he was told by a Soviet, “When Suitable means of propaganda are cleverly used, it is possible to mold any man’s conscience so that in the end he may misuse his abilities while remaining convinced that he is serving an honest purpose.” Ryzl continues, “The USSR has the means to keep the results of such research secret from the rest of the world and, as practical applications of these results become possible, there is no doubt that the Soviet Union will do so.” What will ESP be used for? “To make money, and as a weapon,” Ryzl states flatly.

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More details about Dr. Vasilev, and Russian research into ESP can be found in the unclassified document “Controlled Offensive Behavior” and “Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain“.

The Strange Case of Emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg was a renowned metallurgist and mystic in the mid eighteenth-century. Among his many scientific accomplishments, Swedenborg displayed an astonishingly modern understanding of brain functioning.

Two hundred years before the neurosciences became a scientific discipline, Swedenborg correctly described sensation, movement, and cognition as functions of the cerebral cortex, the function of the corpus callosum, the motor cortex, the neural pathways of each sense organ to the cortex, the functions of the frontal lobe and the corpus striatum, circulation of the cerebral fluid, and interactions of the pituitary gland between the brain and blood.

On the afternoon of June 19, 1759, he arrived in Goteborg, Sweden. At a dinner party that evening, he suddenly announced to his friends that he was having a vision of Stockholm burning, about 300 miles away. Later that evening he told them that the fire stopped three doors from his home.

The next day, the mayor of Goteborg, who heard about Swedenbog’s surprising pronouncement, discussed it with him. The following day, a message from Stockholm arrived and confirmed that Swedenborg’s vison was correct.

David Bohm on Intelligence

The following quotes are excerpts taken from “Wholeness and the Implicate Order“, written by physicist David Bohm. Emphasis mine.

“It is at least implicitly understood, everyone accepts the notion that intelligence is not conditioned (and indeed one cannot consistently do otherwise). Consider the example of an attempt to assert that all mans actions are conditional and mechanical… Either it is said that man is basically a product of his hereditary constitution, or else that he is determined entirely by environmental factors.

One could ask of the man who believed in hereditary determination whether his own statement asserting his belief was nothing but the product of his heredity… One may ask of the man who believes in environmental determinism whether the assertion of such a belief is nothing but the spouting off of words which he was conditioned by his environment…

Indeed it is necessarily implied, in any statement, that the speaker is capable of talking from intelligent perception, which is in turn capable of a truth that is not merely the result of a mechanism based on meaning or skilled acquired in the past…

The actual operation of intelligence is thus beyond the possibility of being determined or conditioned by factors that can be included in any knowable law. So, we see that the ground of intelligence must be in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the ground of all definable forms of matter. Intelligence is thus not deductible or explainable on any branch of knowledge (e.g. physics or biology). Its origin is deeper and more inward than any knowable order of definable forms of matter through which we would hope to comprehend intelligence.

What, then, is the relationship of intelligence to thought? Briefly, one can say that when thought functions on its own, it is mechanical and not intelligent, because it imposes its own generally irrelevant and unsuitable order drawn from memory. Thought is, however, capable of responding, not only from memory but also to the unconditioned perception of intelligence that can see, in each case, whether or not a particular line of thought is relevant and fitting.

One may perhaps usefully consider here the image of a radio receiver. When the output of the receiver ‘feeds back’ into the input, the receiver operates on its own, to produce mainly irrelevant and meaningless noise, but when it is sensitive to the signal on the radio wave, its own order of inner movement of electric currents (transformed into sound waves) is parallel to the order in the signal and thus the receiver serves to bring a meaningful order originating beyond the level of its own structure into movements on the level of its own structure. One might then suggest that in intelligent perception, the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universe…“

Tumors That Melt Like Snowballs on a Hot Stove

The following is an excerpt from the book “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot:

Understanding the role such factors play in a placebo’s effectiveness is important, for it shows how our ability to control the body holographic is molded by our beliefs. Our minds have the power to get rid of warts, to clear our bronchial tubes, and to mimic the painkilling ability of morphine, but because we are unaware that we possess the power, we must be fooled into using it. This might almost be comic if were not for the tragedies that often result from our ignorance of our own power.

No incident better illustrates this than a now famous case reported by psychologies Bruno Klopfer. Klopfer was treating a man named Wright who had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted, and Wright appeared to have little time left. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drained out of his chest every day.

But Wright did not want to die. He had heard about an exciting new drug called Krebiozen, and he begged his doctor to let him try it. At first his doctor refused because the drug was only being tried on people with a life expectancy of at least three months. But Wright was so unrelenting in his entreaties, his doctor finally gave in. he Gave Wright an injection of Krebiozen on Friday, but in his heart of hearts he did not expect Wright to last the weekend. Then the doctor went home.

To his surprise, on the following Monday he found Wright out of bend and walking around. Klopfer reported that his tumors had “melted like snowballs on a hot stove” and were half their original size. This was far more rapid decrease in size than even half the strongest X-ray treatments could have accomplished. Ten days after Wright’s first Krebiozen treatment, he left the hospital and was, as far as his doctors could tell, cancer free. When he had entered the hospital he had needed an oxygen mask to breathe, but when he left he was well enough to fly his own plane at 12,000 feet with no discomfort.

Wright remained well for about two months, but then articles began to appear asserting that Krebiozen actually had no effect on cancer of the lymph nodes. Wright, who was rigidly logical and scientific in his thinking, became very depressed, suffered a relapse, and was readmitted to the hospital. This time his physician decided to try an experiment. He told Wright that Krebiozen was every bit as effective as it had seemed, but that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping. He explained, however, that he had a new highly concentrated version of the drug and could treat Wright with this. Of course the physician did not have a new version of the drug and intended to inject Wright with plain water. To create the proper atmosphere he even went through an elaborate procedure before injecting Wright with the placebo.

Again the results were dramatic. Tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and Wright was quickly back on his feet and feeling great. He remained symptom-free for another two months, but then the American Medical Association announced that a nationwide study of Krebiozen had found the drug worthless in treatment of cancer. His cancer blossomed anew and he died two days later.

Wrights story is tragic, but it contains a powerful message: When we are fortunate enough to bypass our disbelief and tap the healing forces within us, we can cause tumors to melt away overnight.

In the case of Krebiozen only one person was involved, but there are similar cases involving many more people. take a chemotherapeutic agent called cis-platinum. When cis-platinum first became available it, too, was touted as a wonder drug, and 75 percent of people who received it benefited from the treatment. But after the initial wave of excitement and the use of cis-platinum became more routine, its rate of effectiveness dropped to about 25 to 30 percent. Apparently most of the benefit obtained from cis-platinum was due to the placebo effect.

 

Critics and Cholera

The following is an excerpt from the book “The Biology of Belief,” by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD.

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Buried in exceptional cases are the roots of a more powerful understanding of the nature of life – “more powerful” because the principles behind these exceptions trump established “truths.” The fact is that harnessing the power of your mind can be more effective than the drugs you have been programmed to believe you need. The research I discussed in the last chapter found that energy is a more efficient means of affecting matter than chemicals.

Unfortunately, scientists most often deny rather than embrace exceptions. My favorite of example of scientific denial of the reality of mind-body interactions relates to an article that appeared in Science about nineteenth-century German physician, Robert Koch, who along with Pasteur founded the Germ Theory. The Germ Theory holds that bacteria and viruses are the primary cause of disease. A modified version of that theory is widely accepted now, but in Koch’s day it was more controversial. One of Koch’s critics was so convinced that Germ theory was wrong that he brazenly wolfed down a glass of water laced with vibrio cholera, the bacterium Koch believed caused cholera. To everyone’s astonishment, the man was completely unaffected by the virulent pathogen. The Science article published in 2000 describing the incident stated: “For unexplained reasons he remained symptom free, but nevertheless incorrect.”

The man survived and Science, reflecting the unanimity of opinion of Germ Theory, had the audacity to say his criticism was incorrect? If it is claimed that this bacterium is the cause of cholera, and the man demonstrates that he is unaffected by germs… how can he be “incorrect”?  Instead of trying to figure out how the man avoided the dreaded disease, scientists blithely dismiss this and other embarrassing “messy” exceptions that spoil their theories. Remember the “dogma” that genes control biology? Here is another example in which scientists, bent on establishing the validity of their truth, ignore pesky exceptions. The problem is that there cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that the theory is not fully correct.

The World of Rocket Science and Witchcraft

 

There is more to the practice of Paganism and the development of science and technology than a lot of historians would not go into detail about. The occult means “that which is hidden,” so it doesn’t get talked about much unless you bring up cults or the paranormal.

This changes when you get to important historical figures like Jack Parsons. Parsons was an inventor and engineer who pioneered in rocket engineering and propulsion. He attended several universities, including Stanford, but never attained any degrees. He invented the first rocket jet, and pioneered in both liquid and solid fuel rockets. He was a founder of organizations like JPL and Aerojet Engineering Corporation. At one point in his life, Parsons was also involved with Marxism, and was being investigated by the FBI under the suspicion of espionage. After his death, he was later recognized as one of the most important figure in the US space program, and they have since named a crater on the moon after him.

Parsons was apart of the new Thelemic cult called the ‘OTO’, that Aleister Crowley invented. He converted after reading a few of Crowleys books and had eventually met Crowley and knew him on a personal level. Parson’s involvement in magic took up a huge chunk of his life, one of his biographers noting that

[Parsons] treated magic and rocketry as different sides of the same coin: both had been disparaged, both derided as impossible, but because of this both presented themselves as challenges to be conquered. Rocketry postulated that we should no longer see ourselves as creatures chained to the earth but as beings capable of exploring the universe.

Similarly, magic suggested there were unseen metaphysical worlds that existed and could be explored with the right knowledge. Both rocketry and magic were rebellions against the very limits of human existence; in striving for one challenge he could not help but strive for the other.” – Pendle, George (2005). Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

America’s first rocket-assisted aircraft, developed by Parsons.

In the mid 1940’s, Parsons befriend L Ron Hubbard (before he founded Scientology), and the two performed magical rituals together that they called the “Babalon Working“. Later, after their ‘working’ was done, L. Ron Hubbard would defraud Parsons out of his life savings.

Parsons wrote several books, with such cuddly titles like  “the Book of Babalon” and “The Book of the Antichrist.” The aim of his famous ‘Babalon Working’ was to, in no unclear language, summon the whore of Babalon to the earth mentioned in the Book of Revelations, to aid in bringing the end of all things to come. He believed he succeeded and said;

Its manifestations may be noted in the destruction of old institutions and ideas, the discovery and liberation of new energies, and the trend towards power governments, war, homosexuality, infantilism, and schizophrenia.

This force is completely blind, depending upon the men and women in whom it manifests and who guide it. Obviously, its guidance now tends towards catastrophe.

Parson was seriously involved in dark magical ceremonial rites. The obituary of his local newspaper described him as “handsome 37-year-old rocket scientist,” and was “a man who led a double existence [as] a down-to-earth explosives expert who dabbled in intellectual necromancy.” What he wrote down about what he did may be too dark for the average person to read, because its its gruesome, shocking, and very weird.

At one point at the end of his life, he saw himself as the Anti-Christ. His wife, an artist, created a portrait of him as the angel of death. Later in life, because of accusations of espionage, he no longer got to work in the rocketeering field. He died in an accidental explosion in dealing with certain chemicals at his house, working on a project for a film set. Few have speculated that this may have also been either an attempted suicide or assassination.

Parsons standing over a used Rocket-Assisted Take Off cannister

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As a personal anecdote to go with this story; Back in the day when I had a desktop completely dedicated to a Voluntary/Grid computing program called BOINC, developed by Berkeley -which used mass computation for crunching scientific data- I once spoke to a man over the internet who said that he worked at CERN. He relayed to me that he used to be a reader of Crowley and a Thelemic practitioner (for those who may not know, is a modern practice of paganism). While he was very staunch about his previous involvement with the occult, he relayed to me that he quit everything that had to do with it and focused primarily at CERN, because, and I quote: “physics is the new magic”.

I have not been able to confirm that any of that is true- If he really was a physicist working at CERN and if he did in fact practice occultism. The other options are that he was insane or just a troll- possibly all of the above. I have absolutely no bias either way- But I am sure that would make a great plot in a book somewhere.

David Bohm: The Holographic Universe

David Bohm was one of the most well respected scientists of the 20th century. He attended at the California institute of technology and UC Berkely. His Doctorate advisor was Robert Oppenheimer. Bohm was also a protege of Einstein’s, working as his assistant at Princeton University. He was one of the forerunners and pioneers of quantum theory in the mid-twentieth century.

In the early 1940’s, the US government was using much of UC Berkely’s physics research in the Manhattan Project- which would produce the worlds first atomic bomb. Oppenheimer had invited Bohm to a top secret lab called Los Amos, which helped designed the bomb, but Bohm was denied security clearance on the grounds that he had communist ties. Despite this, much of his own research was used in the development of the first atomic bomb during the Manhattan project. After the government had used Bohm’s research, they barred him from the products of his own work because of his lack of security clearance.

Helping develop the first atomic bomb was not the only major mark in his career. Bohm had made several contributions to the field of physics and the developments of new physical theories about the universe. One of those theories was that the universe itself was a hologram- which he called “the implicate and explicate order”. The implicate order was a deeper form of reality that was outside time and space, or ‘before’ it.

The implicate order to Bohm, in layman’s terms, is all the basic rules of reality that actually exist on a single plain. All events that we know of are tied to this plain of reality, but we cannot perceive how because it is hidden- or implicit. 

Bohm believed that the most basic elements of matter in the implicate order were mental, or at least mind-like. That matter was not inert and unconscious but carried with it meaning, or teleology.

“Every action starts from an intention in the implicate order. The imagination is already the creation of the form, it already has the intention and the germs of all the movements needed to carry it out. And it affects the body and so on, so that as creation takes place in a way from subtler levels of the implicate order, it goes through them until it manifests in the explicate.” – David Bohm

The explicate order was the every day world we experience in time and space. The every day objects we see and interact with, and the events that happened. All the things we know are coming ‘out of’ the implicate order as a projection or a hologram. A hologram is a flat surface with information contained in it, that can project itself as a larger image. Some people have theorized that Bohm’s theory of the Implicate order is related to Jung’s theory of synchronicity.

Bohm theorized that the implicate and explicate order interacted with each other as a greater whole- that things that appeared separate in real life were actually connected at a deeper part of reality- in the implicate order. Bohm believed that things could be manifest in reality through the mind, via the brain, which to him was a holographic machine.

This connection physicists were learning about through quantum physics.  Physicists have recently published papers that seem to confirm parts of Bohm’s theory that the universe is a hologram.

If this is the case, it changes a lot for how we think of the world. Many people think of the world as composed of separate objects that have nothing to do with each other unless they collide with one another. Bohm’s theory of the universe posits that at some level, all things are interconnected and related to one another. Many people have posited that this theory of the universe has also serve as a framework for religion and spirituality.

Extra Reading

A Holographic View of Reality by David S. Walonick, Ph.D.

Interview with Bohm

The Holographic Universe by Technewsworld

Is the Universe a Hologram? by EurekAlert!

The Universe Might Be a Giant Hologram by Huffingtonpost