Open eyes, minds, necessary in science
May I Have A Word?
By Sarah Taylor
March 24, 2004
ISU offers a multitude of options when it comes to choosing a path of study. Whether one aspires to be a pilot, an actor, a marketing executive or a gym teacher, your trade can be learned here. However, one option not found described between the pages of the course catalog is that of paranormal studies.
WAIT! Though I detect the turning of pages, I implore the reader to continue. I'm not petitioning the university to establish a crop circles major or a telekinesis minor. I am, however, using such subjects to illustrate a larger point: that science doesn't advance as efficiently as it could when assumptions are substituted for unbiased investigation, or when minds are unjustifiably closed.
To start, a review of some examples from the past.
First of all and perhaps most relevant to this particular continent - Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. He ignored the prevailing flat-Earth consensus, and as a result you are reading the Indiana Statesman instead of, say, the Luxembourgian Statesman.
Nicolaus Copernicus is another now-immortalized visionary. The Aristotelian view of the universe was the accepted celestial dogma of his time, and it held that the Earth was the stationary center of universe and that the other bodies revolved around it. Copernicus, though, postulated a universe in which the Earth and the other planets revolved around the fixed point of the Sun. Such ideas were revolutionary in the face of centuries of adherence to a geocentric model; an adherence based more on the reputation of Aristotle and the approval of the church than on sound astronomical observation and calculation.
As a friend brought to my attention, the somewhat forgotten "father of electricity", Nikola Tesla, was another who put forth considerations ignored by the reigning "establishment." Electrical engineer and physicist Robert Lomas writes, "Tesla's idea that gravity is a field effect is now taken more seriously than Einstein took it ... The attack he made on Einstein's work was considered outrageous by the scientific establishment of the time, and only now do we have enough understanding of gravity to realize that he was right."
And, to turn to the field of archaeology, there is the example of Heinrich Schliemann. The German grocer-turned-archaeologist dreamt of locating the ancient city of Troy, then widely believed to be only mythical. Schliemann, however, successfully discovered and excavated the allegedly non-existent city in the latter half of the 19th century.
The above examples yield a point as true today as it was in times past: we don't know all there is to know. Despite repeated dismantling, the opposite assertion, at least in certain contexts, still thrives today. It's a precept that becomes truly unacceptable when it acts as a roadblock to achieving a fuller understanding of the universe that surrounds us.
I began this column by mentioning "unexplained" phenomena because I believe some of these occurrences remain unexplained in part due to the prolonged scorn of the scientific community. This scorn has persisted despite that community's obvious dedication to discovery in other avenues. Admittedly, many crop circles are hoaxed and perhaps many a spoon has been bent as a result of sideshow magic instead of mental effort. However, what of that one case in ten which resists all attempts at conventional explanation? We cannot discern the inner workings of such examples if those best equipped to investigate them write off strange occurrences merely on the grounds of their strangeness.
And it must be added that, though many may well turn out to be so, the true explanations need not necessarily be out of this world. In recent years, a "Poltergeist Machine," consisting of various contraptions emitting electromagnetic radiation, has been able to duplicate many of the effects of the poltergeist phenomenon. These effects had previously been attributed to disembodied spirits, the inner turmoil of disturbed youth, and various other rather ethereal causes.
Quantum theory, a now-accepted tenet of modern physics, is bizarre. According to the late Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, "It is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics." And we still don't completely grasp it; the behavior of microparticles has astounding implications for our conception of macroreality. Yet we continue to try to further our understanding. Scientists haven't abandoned the matter due to preconceived notions regarding its impossibility or its oddness or anything else, and society hasn't labeled those promoting further study of the topic as members of a "fringe" element unworthy of serious attention.
So, as the above example illustrates, both science and society have the ability to be unbiasedly open-minded in the face of enigmas. However, that ability has been allowed to atrophy in regard to certain observed phenomena, phenomena just as worthy of a close look as more accepted subjects of study. Universally speaking, this is simply not a useful attitude, whether the issue in question is global warming or UFOs.
Skepticism is justified; replacing careful research and impartial investigation with presupposition and ridicule is not.
