Quote:
Originally Posted by apocalipstic
I am not a scientist (obviously) but have been giving the subject of why people believe in religion, astrology and so forth much thought.
I wonder, in some cases, like for example astrology, psychic ability and so forth, if it is possible that somehow there are perfectly rational explanations? (science we don't know yet).
Could the planets have a pull on us like the moon might?
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If they did, then this pull would be of a completely DIFFERENT kind of field (meaning one we have never detected before). The only field from the other planets that have ANY effect on us here on Earth is the electromagnetic field (light). The only other field that the planets have that would effect us here would be the gravitational field but because of how fields fall off with distance we are not significantly affected by the gravitational fields of EITHER of our two nearest planetary neighbors (Venus and Mars) and outside of the effect of Jupiter hoovering up objects as they traverse into the inner solar system, Jupiter has no effect on us. That means that this 'astrological field' (if you will) either has to be energy in some form that we cannot detect (but it's NOT dark energy that we can be certain of) or it does not obey the inverse square law. It's not electromagnetism (because we could detect it if it were, there's no part of the EMF spectrum that we cannot detect) and it can't be gravity (for the reason cited above).
This puts the burden of justification on the proponents of astrology to explain what kind of energy it is, to propose tests we could use to determine if this energy exists and whether or not it obeys the inverse square law (and if it doesn't why and how it breaks what appears to be a *fundamental* rule).
Here's the thing that I think is lost in a lot of science education taken at the high school and non-science major undergrad level: a universe with, say, psi powers looks very different than one without. If one is going to propose these powers, okay, but then one should be prepared for curious sorts to ask probing and difficult questions.
Because I'm more comfortable talking about how this works with various scientific issues (because there's no danger I'm going to step on someone's cherished beliefs and thus insult them) I'll use an example of the kind of questioning and curiosity I'm talking about. Let's take string theory.
String theory is a mathematically *beautiful* structure that seeks to explain, amongst other things, why the four forces have the strengths they do and what those four forces would look like if unified. I will admit that from the minute I became aware of string theory I was captivated by it. I would really LIKE for the universe to work this way. However, there are some non-trivial problems with the theory and after five years of reading everything I could find that was in support of string theory I heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday an interview with someone who had been a prominent string theorist who wrote a book called "The Trouble with Physics" which argued that string theory was almost certainly wrong. I went out and bought that book and another book by a mathematician with an interest in the subject called "Not Even Wrong". I waded through both (they're very dense and the subject matter is extremely arcane) but after reading both of those and some various journal articles on the subject, came to the conclusion that string theory was unlikely to be true. While I still hold out SOME hope it might be rescued from its problems, I am dubious this can or will happen which means that no matter how much I might *want* the universe to work this way, it is vanishingly improbable that it *does* work that way.
It required me to ask some very deep and difficult questions and whenever there was resistance to question MY motivations for that resistance. However, the rules are the rules and the two biggest problems string theory has are not trivial. There are some 5 *million* possible permutations of string theory any of which might be true with no way to whittle that down to a manageable number. This means that string theory is not falsifiable as a practical matter and it may not be falsifiable even in principle. If it's only the former, then it's a matter of time but if it's the latter then no matter how beautiful string theory is, it isn't science. The second problem is allied to the first. String theory requires 9 MORE dimensions than our familiar 3+1 (time is its own dimension) which are curled up so small that they are not detectable. This goes back to the falsifiability issue.
The reason I bring this up is to illustrate how I think about these things and what scientific thinking looks like. I also bring it up to show that when I ask these questions about, say, astrology I am applying the SAME standard to that idea that I apply to ideas I actually DO believe might have something to them. I do so because it's only *fair* to do so. It would be unfair for me to have one standard for astrology and another for string theory and it would be terribly inconsistent to boot. To the best of my ability I want to be consistent and fair-minded and that means treating all kinds of claims about the universe as being on an equal footing and not privileging some kinds of claims above others just because some are labeled 'spiritual' and some scientific.
Cheers
Aj