Re: The Chi FAQ section 2: Is Chi a Scientific Theory?
- From: "David L. Burkhead" <dburkhead@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:31:28 -0500
Please don't try to talk about what's "Scientific" and what isn't, that
constitutes scientific evidence and what doesn't. Every time you do so, you
get it wrong.
Some examples:
"The most accurate of proofs in science are observable proofs. When an
apple fell in his garden, Sir Isaac Newton concluded that there was
some force that brought it down."
That turns out not to be the case. The idea that there was some "force"
that pulled things to Earth goes more to Galileo than to Newton. The
"apple" story (if it ever happened at all and wasn't simply something made
up after the fact) is more likely that the apple, falling in the wind,
described a curved path. Newton then extrapolated that higher horizontal
speed would make for a "flatter" curve and that sufficient speed would lead
to a curve that matched that of the Earth. In such a case (ignoring drag)
the apple would circle the Earth indefinitely. That leads to "central
forces forming closed circuits and, the inverse square law for gravity which
produces a single, simple, unified theory that explains both Gallilo's laws
of motion and Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
"We are actually not going to accept that a simple proof by observation
(essentially by induction) exists or is even desirable should it
exist."
Actually, the problem here would be that labels are not explanations. It'
wasn't that Newton saw an apple fall and just attached the label "Gravity"
to what caused it to fall, but that Newton made close observation,
extrapolated from that observation, bade predictions based on those
extrapolations, and then saw those observations tested. The moons and
planets conformed to Newton's predictions. Comets, asteroids, additionally
discovered planets, and additionally discovered moons conformed to his
predictions. His predictions were even, in fact, used to _find_ previously
undiscovered planets. Binary, Trinary, and other groupings of stars
conformed to his predictions. Galaxies conformed to his predictions. And
so on. Of course, as we now know, eventually measurement tools discovered
that motions of planets, stars, etc. did not, quite, conform to Newton's
predictions. In that case new theories, making better predictions, were
required. (Said theories _contain_ Newton's as a limiting case, so rather
than being "wrong" it's more accurate to say that Newton was incomplete.)
Another example from Newton is refraction. Newton did important initial
work in optics using a prism to split white light into it's various
components (as we now know). At the time, there were two main theories on
that effect. One was that white light was "pure" and the prism somehow
"dyed" the light into the different colors. The other was that white light
was the mix of different colors and the prism split them up. By using
experiments with multiple prisms, this question was resolved: for example
on one hand "red" light coming out of one prism could not then be "dyed"
different colors by another prism but, on the other, the multicolored light
could be recombined into white by a second prism.
You don't just apply a label and call it science. You try to determine
behaviors, make predictions on _new_ results based on those behaviors, and
then test those predictions against observation.
"Likewise, attempting to prove chi by presenting
anything which is solely explainable by chi is an exercise in
futility."
That turns out not to be the case. It's only "an exercise in futility"
if you don't _have_ anything that is solely explainable by something not
contained within conventional theory to which we will apply the label "chi."
Science is _full_ of just that kind of thing. The neutrino was
postulated and characterized in some detail before anyone ever put together
a "neutrino detector." Energy and momentum were disappearing from certain
nuclear reactions (like, for instance, beta decay of radioactive nuclei) and
there was _no_ known mechanism for that loss. Whatever was taking the
energy and momentum did not have electric charge (or it would be detectable
by that), appeared to have either no, or very small, mass, and so on. It
was either postulate some new particle taking the energy and momentum or
throw out conservation of mass-energy and conservation of momentum. Not
only would the direct violation of two of the most well established laws in
physics have had very severe repercussions it would have been a remarkable
coincidence that the violation just happened to match that expected from an
undetected particle of zero or near zero mass and zero charge (also
"colorless" but "color" and "strong force" postdated this work, IIRC). We
didn't need to be able to detect neutrinos directly to have a pretty high
confidence. We simply had to have a situation that couldn't be explained
_without_ assuming neutrinos--provided that _all_ other explanations were
even more untenable than "unknown, undetectable (at the moment) particle."
If you've got anything like that wrt "chi" you have _not_ made that
clear on this forum.
"Note that requiring any such observation to be explainable solely in
terms of chi (for example, to not have a known scientific explanation)
is in and of itself a logical fallacy"
No, actually, it's not. It's simply a requirement that "chi" not simply
be a labeling of things that are already covered. For instance, were I to
propose as a "scientific theory" that there was something called "terraduxi"
that caused dropped objects to be pulled to the Earth, then said "no, it's
not gravity, it's not related to the moon going around the Earth" and then
started applying the term to water disappearing from puddles, I would be
laughed out of any scientific discussion, and rightfully so.
So far you have applied the term "chi" to things that are entirely
explainable by biomechanics, biophysics, and nervous reactions, to things
that relate more to psychology (subjective "feeling"), and other things that
have entirely adequate alternate explanations in conventional, very well
verified, science.
Taking something that happens and then assigning a label to it does
_not_ make it a scientific theory. Some people who do certain practices
feel something. You call that something "chi." Fine.
When I was in about 4th grade, there was a popular recess trick that
people would do. You would take someone's hand and and manipulate it in
certain ways (wish I still remembere the details but this was a _long_ time
ago). Part of it was to have the person close their fist tightly, you'd
clamp their wrist as tight as you can with one hand and you'd slap and rub
at their hand in certain ways for something like 30 seconds to a minute (at
a guess). Then, you'd turn their hand palm up, have them open their fist
and you'd reach down with thumb and forefinger and mime pulling something
out of their palm. This mimed "pull" would be accompanied by a strong,
highly localized tingle in the center of the palm. The conceit was that you
were drawing an invisible needle out of their hand. Incidentally, I
participated in this trick on both sides--the one doing it and the one it
was done on. I picked it up when I was in school in Virginia and took it
with me when we moved back to Ohio. It "worked" whether the persion had
prior knowledge of the trick or not. Was this chi? Or was it simply a
biomechanical response to muscle tension, reduced circulation, nerve
stimulation, etc. I could simply attach a label to the feeling involved and
point to the trick as an experiment one can do to test it but that would not
make it a scientific theory.
A scientific theory has two parts. It has to be a theory and then,
further, it has to be scientific. Falsifiability is the key to the
scientific part. Where your chi gung example fails is on the theory part.
The key to the theory part is that it has to be explanatory. "Do chi gung
and you'll feel something. We call that something 'chi'" explains nothing.
It's just attaching a label. The requirement "to not have known scientific
explanations" speaks to the explanatory part: first you have to have
something to explain. You don't even have a theory, let alone a scientific
theory, without having something to explain. And you don't have something
to explain, if we already _have_ an explanation that covers that ground.
Nobody proposed neutrinos until they had missing energy and momentum to
explain. Once heat/energy equivalence was learned theories involving a
fluid called "caloric" rapidly went away.
--
David L. Burkhead "Dum Vivimus Vivamus"
mailto:dburkhead@xxxxxxx "While we live, let us live."
My webcomic Cold Servings
http://www.coldservings.com -- Back from hiatus!
Updates Wednesdays
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