Okay, they don't always get their statistics straight, but they're more than willing to take another look at something they've previously believed was settled, and that makes all the difference.
Queue:
Mythbusters,
pictures,
science
Via Mind Hacks, I came across an article discussing how long it takes to form a habit. In part, it depends on the type of activity, but overall the results are fairly consistent. There's a fairly rapid increase of habitualness at the beginning which then levels off, and the average time to level off is 66 days. After that, the habit is as set as it is ever going to be.
This interests me partly because my practice has now become such an ingrained habit that it would not occur to me not to do it ... unless there were some physical constraint preventing it. I started with the relatively arbitrary figure of 36 days. It's significant in Chinese thought, and, to be honest, I'm not sure why. I know that traditionally the Chinese listed 6 major organs and 6 something else, and multiplying those results in 36, but I have no idea what, exactly it's supposed to mean. I also know that Cheng Man Ch'ing consistently arrived at 36 moves when counting the moves in the form, but that his labeling was not necessarily consistent beyond the figure 36. It was a number, that's all. A very minor habit might be established after only 36 days. I don't think my practice was.
My other benchmark has been 108 days, and that's well into the level part of the habituation curve. I'm not sure it was completely established then, either, but it had come closer. There were still times when I would actively resent that I couldn't just go to bed, that I still had to do the practice. Now when that happens, I'm mainly irritated with myself for not getting it done sooner, not with the practice itself.
As a point of interest, there's a traditional Chinese idea (at least, Don tells me it's traditional and Chinese) of "the practice of 100 days." In essence, you try something out for 100 days and see what you think of it at that point. If it's something you're capable of establishing as a habit, that will most likely be enough according to the research at the link. If by the end of 100 days, it hasn't become a habit, it's likely that it never will. This isn't the rationale given in the traditional idea, but I think maybe there's a connection.
And now I'll stop rambling.
I've just started reading Duhem for Philosophy of Science, and came across a rather beautiful quote (which, strangely, does not seem to be in any quote databases):
Men who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries but they also make very poor observations. They necessarily observe with a preconceived idea and, when they have begun an experiment, they want to see in its results only a confirmation of their theory. Thus they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they go counter to their goal.
Queue:
Duhem,
philosophy,
science
Via Effect Measure, I came across a piece entitled, "My God Problem." It's an interesting read, and highlights some disparities in public discourse. Compare the two bolded sentences, expressing sentiments from the same person.
Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University's "Ask an Astronomer" Web site. To the query, "Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?" the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, "modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions." He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of "God intervening every time a measurement occurs" before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn't—and shouldn't—"have anything to do with scientific reasoning."
How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. "No, astronomers do not believe in astrology," snarls Dave Kornreich. "It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary." Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science "one does not need a reason not to believe in something." Skepticism is "the default position" and "one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence."
Queue:
deviltry,
links,
philosophy,
science
Our next reading for Philosophy of Science comes from Imre Lakatos. This reading made a lot more sense to me than any of Kuhn's stuff. As it turns out, Kuhn argues strenuously that his theory of science is not a stepstone to post-modernism, but most people who look at it think it makes even less sense taken that way.
This article compares Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan (whom we haven't read yet). Wikipedia has a decent summary of Lakatos's ideas:
The scientists involved in a programme will attempt to shield the theoretical core from falsification attempts behind a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. Whereas Popper was generally regarded as disparaging such measures as 'ad hoc', Lakatos wanted to show that adjusting and developing a protective belt is not necessarily a bad thing for a research programme. Instead of asking whether a hypothesis is true or false, Lakatos wanted us to ask whether one research programme is better than another, so that there is a rational basis for preferring it. He showed that in some cases one research programme can be described as progressive while its rivals are degenerating. A progressive research programme is marked by its growth, along with the discovery of stunning novel facts, development of new experimental techniques, more precise predictions, etc. A degenerating research program is marked by lack of growth, or growth of the protective belt that does not lead to novel facts.
Queue:
Lakatos,
philosophy,
science
I asked Dr. Wahl about Kuhn at the end of class today. Essentially, he thinks that there is a body of assumptions that contribute to the decision about how to test a hypothesis, and some of those assumptions are ones that no one would ever think of questioning.
On a certain level, he's correct. In the normal course of things, such assumptions exist. However, every time they are used, that is a test. If a consistent difficulty is noticed by many researchers, in many different labs, the assumptions will eventually be looked at. Examples that come to mind immediately are the orbit of Mercury and Newtonian gravity's failure to explain it and Conservation of Mass (which does not hold when mass changes to energy or at speeds near c). Yes, assumptions were made and held onto tenaciously, but, in the end, those assumptions were overturned.
So I profess myself still unimpressed with Kuhn.
ADDENDUM: I'll probably have more to say after class next Wednesday, but I finally got some idea of why Popper might need some criticism from Dr. Wahl yesterday. The problem is that Popper leans on falsification to the exclusion of all else. In his view the goal of any test done by any scientist should be to falsify the theory. He wants to downplay any role of confirmation/corroboration. In other words, if the test goes as the theory predicts, Popper would see it as a failure.
So possibly what Kuhn is getting at is that the first reaction of a scientist who gets a result that does not accord with the prevailing theory is not to discard the theory, but, rather, to see what else might have gone wrong. But he still writes as though the theory itself is sacrosanct, which just isn't the case. It's held as true until some discrepancy becomes noticeable, and then it's either adapted or replaced. The process may be slow and painful, and full of argument, but if there is a genuine discrepancy, it will eventually be examined, and, more eventually, fixed in some fashion.
One sidenote. We discussed the case of Mercury in class, and Wahl pointed out that the response of 19th century scientists was not to abandon Newtonian gravitation, which, if they operated according to strict Popperian principles, they should have. After several failed attempts to solve the problem, it was largely ignored, until Einstein's theory of General Relativity turned out to give the correct solution. The problem with simply throwing out Newtonian gravitation was that it worked in most situations. The one discrepancy revealed its limitations, but it had so much corroborating evidence from other sources that no one was going to just give up on it. In other words, falsification is not the whole story, but it's an important part of the story.
Queue:
Kuhn,
philosophy,
science
I haven't found the entire article online yet, but much of it is available through a Google Books preview. Skimming through the preview, it looks like we only have the first part in our book anyway. The article is called, "Logic of Discovery, or Psychology of Research?" It argues that Popper's view of science, while it has its place, is not how science is actually practiced on a day-to-day basis.
I haven't read enough of Popper or Kuhn to be sure that Kuhn isn't demolishing a straw-man, or even just dissembling about the meaning of "falsification" and "test." Kuhn argues that science is more about "puzzle solving" than it is about "problem solving." His main point seems to be that in the normal run of things scientists simply assume the currently accepted theory and work within it. At least in this excerpt, I get the feeling he's missing a crucial point.
Yes, in any run-of-the-mill lab, a groundwork of theory is assumed. The puzzle-solving involves figuring out how that theory applies to whatever work the lab does, whether the work is growing cells, or running current through vases, or whatever. But Kuhn seems to miss that the run-of-the-mill work will be a test of the deduced application. If it turns out to predict different results than those observed, there are three possible culprits: (1) Bad data; (2) Bad interpretation; (3) Bad theory. In the majority of cases, the first two are the most likely. Assuming that instrumentation problems can be sorted out, and enough trials are run to make chance systematic errors extremely unlikely, (1) can be dealt with. The next level to check is (2). How can the interpretation be modified to fit what has been observed? All of this fits in the realm of Kuhn's "puzzle-solving", but fits equally well with Popper's "falsification." Level (3) will only be engaged after levels (1) and (2) have been exhausted, but it takes more than one research group to really effect a change on level (3). Multiple groups have to have similar problems before anyone credible will seriously consider mucking with level (3).
My biggest issue with Kuhn so far is that I don't see how you can possibly have "puzzle-solving" without of necessity having "falsification." How do you know when the puzzle is solved, otherwise? Part of the puzzle solving is figuring out what the accepted theory says should happen in a situation, and that automatically creates a way to falsify the interpretation. I will grant that it takes a lot of broken puzzles before an accepted theory is itself called into question, but that's almost the point. If all it took was one "problem," then every time a machine malfunctioned we'd have a paradigm shift.
Some of Kuhn's examples also make me question his reasoning. He writes that "many theories, for example the Ptolemaic, were replaced before they had in fact been tested." Now, the Ptolemaic theory kept having to add in more and more epicycles to account for the observed astronomical data, and that, to me, would be a sort of test. The more data came in, the more the Ptolemaic system had to be modified. It was never sufficient as it was to explain every aberration. Also, the ad hoc adding of epicycles smacks of Popper's "irrefutability," since, given any conflicting data, more epicycles could be tacked on to "explain" it.
I'll be curious to find out in class if there's more to Kuhn in stuff that we didn't read. It's possible, and maybe likely, that we got the simplest version of his ideas, and that they don't really make sense until they're fleshed out a bit more.
Further reading on Wikipedia:
Kuhn
Popper
Queue:
Kuhn,
philosophy,
Popper,
science
The second reading for Philosophy of Science this semester is Science: Conjectures and Refutations. It's a beautiful thing. Now, there are some problems with defining 'scientific' solely in terms of falsifiability, but it is certainly an important feature to note in any theory. I particularly liked that what brought Popper to use that as a criterion was that two competing psychological theories (those of Freud and Adler) were sufficiently vague as to be able to explain any conceivable set of behaviors. He had at first been impressed with their seemingly endless lists of confirmations...until he noticed that there seemed to be no behavior that could be taken as falsifying either one. The link above is to the full article, but I just thought I'd post his summary list. Closely related: Confirmation Bias. I've bolded a few of the parts that I find most significant.
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Queue:
philosophy,
Popper,
science
Over at Not Exactly Rocket Science, there's a discussion of a study on how well people do at moving in a straight line. Answer: very well if they have obvious visual cues to follow (the sun, the moon, a trail, some mega landmark), and very badly otherwise.
I was curious about this one because I became lost once in a forest with no trail to follow, and I realized I'd gone in a circle when I came across something I recognized (I think it was a large, distinctive, rock). I managed to reorient myself and get back to the group once I started paying very close attention to the landmarks around me. Thankfully, I hadn't wandered that far from the group anyway. Interestingly, it was cloudy that day, so I couldn't use the sun as a directional guide.
Here's the thing, though: there are usable landmarks in a forest. Yes, they're not ones most of us are used to paying attention to, but they are there. So now I wonder if (a) forest tribes would do better at this, since they're used to recognizing those landmarks; (b) people who spend a lot of time in forests would do better, for similar reasons; (c) people could be trained to use those landmarks. An empty field or a trackless desert? There I'm not sure that training or familiarity would make much difference, but it might, and it would be worth investigating.
Also, how can I get in on a study that drops you in the Saharan desert and instructs you to walk a straight line?!? That would be fun!
I made it through all the odd problems (i.e. the ones with answers in the back) from Chapter 1 of my first physics book today. I'll probably slow down in later chapters, but this one was mainly vector notation and unit stuff, which just came right back to me even though I haven't done it for several years. It's strange how easy and obvious it all seems to me now, though I remember struggling with vectors at the time. It's also rather nice to have numbers to plug in. Yes, higher level physics, like higher level math, tends to run on straight formulas and symbols, but it's so refreshing to have numbers right now. I'll get to the more abstract stuff soon enough.
The funny thing is that I'm going through the textbook with the same attitude as I do when I get ready to teach a new class, or an old class with a new book. If I can maintain that feeling through the rest of the chapters, I'll be doing well. If I feel like I could potentially teach each and every chapter, I will be happy. That will tell me that I know the material. Now onto Chapter 2, the kinematics equations! I remember helping out some of my classmates in that first physics class, and so so many questions could be answered simply by looking at the kinematics equations and figuring out which one(s) applied. ^/^
What does it say about me that I found my biggest empty notebook and am hoping that I can completely fill it with work on physics problems? Seriously, I am totally enjoying this.
At least with science, adaptive knowledge is self-consistent within the context of evolution and science. Tautological and limited? Perhaps, but it is at least an internally consistent truth system. Within the system, adaptive knowledge will tend to be closer to the truth than non-adaptive knowledge.
Philosophical naturalists assume, of course, that there actually is an absolute noumenon or truth, and that science is the path to it - which IMO, is difficult, if not impossible, to defend.
They also assume that our knowledge is always becoming progressively more accurate, approaching the noumenon in a linear or asymptotic way - but there is no way of knowing that. We could simply be approaching a local maxima in our tiny local truth system, without realizing that greater and possibly unrelated maximas exist elsewhere in what we call reality.~Tom S. (seventh comment here)
Queue:
links,
philosophy,
quotes,
rambling,
science
I've often encountered the claim that "there is no time" or "time is an illusion." Taken at face value, I could find no sensible meaning in those statements. I think I finally figured out what at least some of these claims mean, and it was sparked by an offhand comment from Pelletti, about "change." When they deny time, they're not denying that things change, but they hold that separate from time. However, something is required for things to change, and it makes no sense to me to call that anything other than time. That's where my confusion came in. What they're denying is the view of time as a genuine fourth dimension. That may not be clear either, so I'll try to clarify.
Think about a reel of film. Each frame represents one moment of the film. If we stacked these frames on top of each other, we'd get a representation of the film plus its time element as a dimension. Now, we've got three spatial dimensions (that we perceive, at least), and it's harder to picture stacking "cubes" to add in time as a fourth dimension, but the idea is the same. What this implies is, just like the film, there is a physical record of changes through time, and that record exists regardless of what the current "present moment" is. There's a stack of previous frames "behind" us that, if we knew how, we could access and sort through. This, I think, is what scientists who deny time are actually denying.
Instead, they see what I would call time (and they might call change) as something more like ripples in a pond. The ripples rise and fade away and rise and fade away, but leave no permanent record of their presence. There is only a dynamic process, and not anything like a physical dimension of time. Now, even if this view is correct (and I currently don't feel I'm in a position to have a useful opinion on that), it would still be useful to treat time as a dimension. We know the rates with which certain things change, and within the same inertial frame of reference, we can use those to establish the "time coordinates" in that frame. At 0 seconds, a drop of water falls into the puddle. At 1 second, a series of concentric ripples can be seen across the pool. Etc. Just as if we recorded the scene with a camera, we could treat the waves and the relative time at which they occur as a four-dimensional object.
From an everyday standpoint, there doesn't seem to be a way to tell whether time is an actual dimension or merely a process of change. What I wonder, though, is whether treating it as only a process of change is consistent in various relativistic and quantum applications. I remember in A Brief History of Time, Hawking espoused the idea that in a black hole, an outside observer would see time stop as an unfortunate victim plunged towards the event horizon, but that the unfortunate individual would not see that at all; things would continue to change for him but in a time dimension perpendicular to the outside one. I'm not seeing a way to reconcile that with the "dynamic change" model of time. If from the outside we see all change stop, but on the inside change is still occurring, we have a physical presence for one of the prior moments of the falling individual, so that moment continues to exist for us, even as the person within the event horizon moves past it in his time. Maybe there's a way to reconcile dynamic change with this, or maybe Hawking was wrong, or... who knows.
From a purely philosophical standpoint, I variously find the "dynamic change" model liberating and depressing, depending on my mood. It's not a model I care for at all when I'm feeling a bit depressed, as it would mean that all of the people/places/things from my past have actually and completely ceased to exist, rather than continuing to exist in a time that I no longer have access to. However, in a better mood, it's liberating to think that each moment is completely new and fresh with no physical past weighing it down. Neither viewpoint is a useful argument for or against the position, but I find it amusing how completely opposite my own reactions are.
Queue:
philosophy,
rambling,
science,
time
This will be old news for readers of Pharyngula, but the ICR can't even find competent lawyers to work for them, let alone competent scientists. What do you want to bet the lawyer was hired based on ideology alone?
Just pointing out this post at Neurologica. I got into a debate on this very theme a few weeks back at philosophy club. The short version is that science itself does not have a solely rational basis. As Hume noted, scientific inference requires assuming some form of uniformity in nature, generally phrased as "the future will resemble the past."
I need to read Novella's post again more closely, but I'm not sure that he's found a way out of the assumption. Yes, science is a method, but it seems to me that the very method requires the assumption that "the future will resemble the past." Otherwise, what purpose would testing anything serve? What worked on Tuesday might not work on Wednesday (or we might skip over Wednesday and wind up at Friday). Yes, the method is "self-correcting," but there would be nothing to "correct" without some form of uniformity.
As science has produced reliable results in the past, and continues to do so today, it may seem that we could make a probability argument, that all of those "hits" are so unlikely to be due to chance that we can reject that hypothesis. For the present. But as soon as we try to extend that into the future, we run into the uniformity problem again. An a priori assumption is required, and I still don't see a genuinely grounded basis for that assumption. Perhaps I'll find that there is one next fall, when I take Philosophy of Science, but for the moment I'm unconvinced.
Now, I don't think this invalidates science in any way, shape or form. I just think that it needs to be recognized and acknowledged. We do have evidence of uniformity throughout most of the past, so it seems probable that uniformity will continue for some time into the future. It's just not guaranteed. To my mind, the most important thing people should understand about science is that no theory, no hypothesis, no conclusion is ever held as sacrosanct. New evidence always has a chance of dislodging it. It seems somehow appropriate that if the uniformity principle were ever broken, science would likely be overturned in its turn.
Anyway, the post at Neurologica is certainly worth reading. And perhaps someone can tell me what I've missed in Novella's argument...
Vaguely related aside: I haven't encountered anyone trying to use Hume to argue for anything "New Age" in opposition to science, but there's an immediate problem if they do. "New Age" methodology also has a history, and also presumes that if something worked in the past, it will work in the future (so long as you believe in it in just the right way, and do it in the 14th arcminute of the third full moon of the 1000th year since.........). So such an argument is just as damaging to their own methodology, whatever it may be. Even invoking randomness, a la Tarot Cards or Yi Jing, presumes that the same random results point to the same "advice."
My best guess is that someone using this in that manner would be arguing for something on the order of revelation or intuition. Hmmm, no, still doesn't work. Why do they trust revelation? Because it's been correct in the past! (FYI: Hume is my favorite modern philosopher to read. Very Dickensian in his writing style.)
Queue:
Hume,
links,
philosophy,
science
Some argue that science is amoral, and that no inherent ethical conclusions can be drawn from scientific findings. There is, however, one precept that we scientists all take as holy from the time we begin as graduate students: “Tell the truth.” There is no greater sin in science than falsifying data or conclusions. Scientists are asked to let the world speak for itself, to observe without bias or preconceived ideas. In the ideal, scientists are asked to witness the world in its own great pathways of beauty, without the filter of prior desires or demands.
I ran across an interesting optics problem at Cognitive Daily yesterday. The claim is that "your reflection occupies the same proportion of the mirror as you walk away." This is easily demonstrated to be false. The clearest, most obvious demonstration (also posted in a comment at the link) is to use a dry erase marker to trace the image of your hand as it sits directly on a mirror; at this point, the image on the surface of the mirror will be identical in size to the hand itself. Now, walk back several feet and try to line the hand's new reflection up with the outline of it. The image on the surface of the mirror will not be the same size, and, hence, does not occupy the same proportion of the mirror.
I'm not sure, but I suspect the confusion is between two uses of the word "image." In optics, the "image" is not the "image" as it is on the surface of the mirror. It is the image as it appears, and it is a virtual image located behind the mirror. In an ordinary, flat mirror, this virtual image is the same size as the object being reflected, just as if I had an identical twin and was looking at her through a window, and we were the same distance from the mirror. So the size of the virtual image does not change for a fixed object. However, the apparent size of the image as seen on the surface of the mirror will change, just as my twin would appear smaller if we both moved farther away from the hypothetical window. To say that the image always occupies the same proportion of the mirror is as nonsensical as saying that, if my identical twin and I keep moving further and further from the window, I will see my twin's image occupying the exact same proportion of the window. That can only happen if my twin does not move. As soon as she moves back from the window, her image in the window becomes smaller.
Another way to see that this is pure nonsense is to take a mirror that is much smaller than you are, say one the size of a picture frame. Place it close to your body; all you can see in it is the portion of your body closest to the mirror. Now, lean it against something and walk backwards from it. Eventually, you'll be able to see your whole body in it. So the proportion of body:mirror goes from a value larger than 1, where the body's image will not fit in the mirror, to a value less than 1.
I also found a NY Times article discussing this, and it may just be that it was reported badly. There's a link to the primary article at Cognitive Daily, but, alas, I don't have a subscription.
I've always been fascinated with the idea of dark energy and/or matter, and I find it rather depressing that it may be nothing more than an artifact of data-processing and/or the happenstance position of our galaxy within the universe. Then again, it may actually exist. The plus-side to it not existing is that, based on current data, eventually the universe will expand to the point of either ripping itself apart or of such a low mass/energy density that the whole thing is effectively a vacuum.
I just stumbled across an article discussing the possibilities, and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest. (H/T Three Quarks Daily)
AM CLARIFICATION: That last sentence is rather muddled now that I'm more awake. Current models of the universe that include dark energy have found that the rate of expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Thus if the dark energy model is correct, one likely "final outcome" for the universe is that it continues expanding forever, eventually breaking apart all structures held together by gravity, like stars and galaxies, until all matter is spread so thinly that for all intents and purposes, the entire universe is nothing but vacuum. Another potential outcome is that there is some limit to space-time expansion, and after it expands to a certain expanse, it will simply rip apart if it tries to expand more. No one's really sure what happens when space-time rips itself apart, but it probably wouldn't be pleasant for any life-forms left in the universe. But if the current models are wrong, and what we're seeing is just a local phenomena or a happenstance result of averaging data, then those outcomes become less likely.
I was just playing around some more with the implicit association research site, and got one that gave information about a group of people and one particular member of the group. There were two implicit association tests: one for the individual and one for the group. Watching my own responses, I came to the conclusion that, on the first one, I had trouble on the switchover not due to any actual associations, but because the task was slightly different from the others I'd done. There was only one extra category besides "good" and "bad". On every other test I'd come across, there were two categories to sort through. So on the first switchover, it felt awkward. On the second, it felt perfectly natural, as I now had practice at it. However, the effect was apparently slight:
Your data suggest a slight automatic association of (named individual) with Bad.
Your data suggest a slight automatic association of (named group) with Good.
Queue:
science
Alligators in your backyard keep coming back? Don't despair: magnetize!
This morning I happened across an interesting blog at Discover Magazine, called Reality Base. The writer, Adam Frank, seems to be at least somewhat close to my own position on science/religion, though possibly a bit more sympathetic to religion than I am. I hadn't realized how many traditions had claimed Groundhog Day as connected to their own belief systems before reading his post on the movie. I can see the reincarnation aspect, I can see the mindfulness aspect ... I just stare at the screen and go "huh?" on the heavens/hells aspect.
Through that blog, I ran across Kira, which seems to be an organization devoted to exploring what, if anything, might be knowable but outside the reach of science. The little I've read sounds promising, with some epistemological ideas thrown in and some thought-experiments. I'm worried that it might descend into woo at some point, but so far so good.
Last up, Mind Hacks has an interesting post on the phenomenology of car crashes, and also on the brain physiology, but it's the phenomenological aspect that interests me. I've had two experiences that relate. In the first, some idiot was pulling through the parking spaces at the local Albertson's, going too fast and not watching where she was going. My old car, Louis, was nearly totaled. I remember realizing what had happened after I had already stopped the car. Then I became aware of the impact, the noise, the surprised yelp (presumably from me), but I had stopped the car before conscious awareness set in. Likewise, when I had a window blowout on the interstate, I had pulled over to the side before becoming consciously aware of what had happened. The body/mind can respond before the consciousness even knows there's anything to respond to. That's key in push-hands.
Queue:
deviltry,
links,
movies,
philosophy,
science
Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.
Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.~Nick Gotelli (as posted at Pharyngula)
