Developing yesterday's theme about those with a propensity to believe in God vs those who reject the notion of a Purpose to the Universe, I want to take a look at the scientific method, which has been crucial in shaping people's mindset in the direction of rational materialism for the past three and half centuries or so.
In 1964, British physicist Peter Higgs first postulated a new massive spin-zero boson. Forty-eight years and €6 billion later, rational science proved him right, with the discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider of what's now known as the Higgs Boson. Which exists for all of 3.2x10-22 seconds.
Now, bosons are not something that figure highly in one's day-to-day life. We all know that atoms are made of nuclei consisting of protons and neutrons, surrounded by a shell of electrons. The Standard Model of particle physics, however, is somewhat more complicated...
At the core of the atom are the proton and neutron, both of which consist of three quarks - two up and one down (whatever that means) in the proton and one up and two down in the neutron. (There are also top, bottom, strange and charm quarks; these are all totally beyond me). Then we have leptons, of which the electron is but one of six. Then there are things called bosons, force-carriers - with gluons acting between quarks in the nucleus (strong nuclear interaction), photons acting between electrons (electromagnetic interaction), W-bosons (mediating the weak nuclear interaction). For the sake of completeness, there's the Z-boson, with zero charge. And finally, there is the crowning glory of contemporary particle physics - the Higgs Boson, which (somehow!) gives mass to particles.
So the Standard Model is a lot more complex than the familiar picture of the atom was in my childhood - but then there's scientific progress for you.
Science had long theorised that a particle such as a Higgs Boson could exist; the equations suggested it. However, billions of proton-proton collisions had to be observed before scientists could look over all the data and arrive at a statistically significant result that indisputably proved the existence of the Higgs Boson.
Now let's look at attempts to prove or disprove paranormal phenomena. Be it something as simple as willing outcomes of coin flips, or influencing a random number generator with the power of the mind, or guessing which of four friends would be ringing you on the phone.
Not a very strong effect. Indeed, a very weak effect. Out of 100 coin-tosses, 51 are heads (where you will heads to come up) and 49 are tails - but if you conduct 100 coin-tosses a thousand times, always willing heads, in the vast majority of the thousand runs of 100 tosses, you get 51 (or more) heads - then that is statistically significant. That's the proposition made by Prof Etzel Cardeña in his peer-reviewed study of psychic abilities, The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review. published in 2018 by American Psychologist, a mainstream publication.
Similar studies have been published by Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake; there does exist a weak effect of mind over matter, but it is strong enough to be observed in a manner that's as statistically significant as discovering the Higgs boson amid the data coming from billions of observations of neutrons colliding in the Large Hadron Collider.
The problem science has with paranormal phenomena is that there's no theoretical framework to explain how it happens. There was masses of theory underpinning the speculation that a Higgs boson exists - there's exactly zero theory behind phenomena of mind affecting matter, or non-local consciousness effects such as precognition or remote viewing. Science hasn't a clue as to how it might work. But - weak though it be - it does work.
Yet if experimental results show statistically significant data - does it matter if the effect is weak? According to scientific debunkers yes - without some kind of a theory backing it up, the work is worthless. Surely, that's what science should do - accept that there is something going on, and try to posit an explanation for this phenomenon - whether it be normal or paranormal.
Lent 2022: Day 31
Consciousness - fundamental and universal?
Lent 2021: Day 31
I'm better than you - no really, I am!
Lent 2020: Day 31
Divine Inspiration
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