Ah, your old elephant groper has been "outed." Recently an esteemed reader
and commenter of mine called me out for talking about the "vague and woowoo"
idea of a what I described as an "existent spiritual dimension." Actually, and I
think the tons of posts I've written along these lines over the years will bear
this out: it isn't so much the existence of a spiritual dimension I've grappled
with as it is the proper interpretation of it.
But it was that characterization of what I wrote as "woo woo" that caught
my attention. I've used it before myself but determined after thinking about
that comment that I would never again aim it directly at another human being as
long as I live.
When used by skeptics, woo-woo is a derogatory and dismissive
term used to refer to beliefs one considers nonsense or to a person who holds
such beliefs.
Okay, let me 'fess up right here and say that I am attracted to fringe
ideas and "maverick" science. My cheeks didn't blush when I typed that
statement. If it weren't for those brave folks willing to think outside the box,
progress couldn't be made.
As I understand the matter, there are facts and there are interpretations
of facts. In other words, I believe in the scientific method. But I discern a
difference between science and philosophy of science. A delightful little book I
have in my library, The Experts Speak, is a fun and enlightening read,
and from which I take the following quote, dated from 1782, as an example:
[I]t is entirely impossible for man to rise into the air and
float there. For this you would need wings of tremendous dimensions and they
would have to be moved at three feet per second. Only a fool would expect such a
thing to be realized.
Certainly he was using scientific reasoning, but he was wrong about that
thing.
The Skeptic's Dictionary's article I quoted from above also says this
concerning woo woo:
Woo-woo (or just plain woo) refers to ideas considered irrational
or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces
or powers.
I love the reference to "occult forces or powers." We can't think of that
word today without thinking about magic, or magick. Although when your doctor
uses it he properly uses it the way it was derived from the Latin, as something
that is hidden or concealed. I think of the way the moon exerts an invisible
power (gravity) over the tides as occult, but I don't think of it as magic. Of
course, that invisible power was once contested.
This desk I'm working at and the chair my butt rests comfortably in seem
solid enough to me. For centuries it was held to be a truism that the atom was
the smallest particle of matter and from the combination of these tiny particles
solid objects like my desk and chair are made.
Came the physicists with their occult ideas of subatomic particles and the
notion that atoms, and thus my desk and chair, are mostly empty space, and that
while at the macroscopic level where I live these things are indeed solid, at
the microscopic level it is another matter (no pun intended).
Now if you want to talk about woo from a scientific perspective,
check out some of the mental ramblings of the theoretical physicists, for
example, the following passage from Arthur Stanley Eddington, one of the great
physicists of the twentieth century:
The external world of physics has thus become a world of
shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we
have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps
we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have
used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot
survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the
scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations
in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the
determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics
we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of
my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow
paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes
the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of
electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the
warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow.
Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise
which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a
world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and
evil.
When I read that I cannot help but think of that ancient woo-master,
who still happens to be respected as a great thinker among philosophers today,
Plato and his allegory of
The Cave.
In fact the more I go back in time and dig into some of the concepts the
great thinkers down through history have held and debated, the more I'm reminded
of those words of Qoheleth, "there is nothing new under the sun."
I'm not suggesting there haven't bad and wrong ideas along the way, but I'm
suggesting that a whole lot of what was once considered irrational, occult - in
the sense of being concealed or invisible (at that time) - and improbable or
impossible, was later validated or proved to be perhaps incomplete theories
rather than wrong ones. Is it inconceivable that if we could come back in, say,
a thousand years and take a look around, some of what is now considered
woo might be validated or at least more fully understood and
accepted?
As someone who considers himself a freethinker, I don't see how I can do
less than keep an open mind. I love science and I love logic. But I think of
those things as tools and not as ends in themselves. The bottom line for me when
it comes to so-called woo woo is from now on going to be this: better
to be engaging than dismissive.
So maybe I am ass-slapping or howling-at-the-moon crazy. Or maybe I'm
finally settling in with the idea that any worldview we build is going to have
as a foundation basic assumptions that are not indisputable. Else I should
change the name of this blog from Groping The Elephant to Explaining The
Elephant.
