kurros There may be some truth in that, but it does not obviate my point that we need objective, empirical data to determine the reality of the universe. Ideas on chi lack this. Evidence is generally either subjective, or taking a form that is not acceptable to good rigorous scientific methods. Chi is vitalism, which I pointed out, is a discredited theory. If you want to suggest on a science forum that it needs to be taken seriously, then there is a duty on you to provide the right kind of evidence.
Skeptical, you skipped over my question "Subjective is usually not true" then are there any circumstances when it is true? an important point i think, and how would we know it was true, could we know, scientifically?
Woo That statement is a gross generalisation, of course. And there are exceptions. If I were to say : "I have a stomach ache. There is something wrong in my gut." I would almost certainly be right. The ache is subjective, but relates to something more. However, my statement was more directed towards beliefs. If you believe in God due to a subjective feeling of the presence of deity, then I would say that you have nothing solid to demonstrate your belief. Such subjective feelings come from a wide range of sources, and as far as I can determine, none have any link to deity. In the same way, if you want to demonstrate the existence of chi, you will need to demonstrate objective and empirical data. Otherwise you convince only the superstitious.
so you go to your doctor and he asks you to demonstrate your belief in your tummy ache, is that satisfactory?
I think if it exists for you, it exists. If you can derive somthing from it that makes you somehow more than you were, then it exists for you. I see kids, and i remember being a kid unpolluted by adult rationale believing in assuming different personalities with different energies, and maybe it was a form of self delusion but it worked at the time. If it works, it exists on some level. Psychosematic perhaps, but the mind works on many different levels and despite our supposed wisdom there is much we still don't know. Who can say for sure?
skeptics demand objective empirical data, the only problem is there is no such thing, ultimately all science has is theory, general relativity, quantum mechanics yes, but no way to resolve the two, there is no ultimate scientific truth, because we just don't know enough about the Universe we live in. some of us believe we have found an answer to that, the skeptics continue to ask for the data, if they would take the time to turn inward rather than outward they just might find what they are looking for. OM
The record of the scientific approach is very clear. In the last 400 years, humanity has progressed further in both understanding the universe, and in manipulating nature to our own benefit, than the roughly 200,000 years beforehand during which we have been Homo sapiens. The approach woowoo recommends has been in force for all of that 200,000 years and has gained us next to nothing.
There's no doubt our technology and understanding of the physical universe is advancing at an exponential rate, but i think you are rather disingenuous to our ancient ancestors to suppose their world view and ideas about the creation of the cosmos and their own origins were of little or no consequence in the evolution of mankind. There may have been a time when the belief in an afterlife was the driving force behind new technological ideas, paleolithic cave paintings and burial ritual, it would make a fascinating study, i'll leave that for another time. The objective and the subjective, inner and outer, we can't separate the the two, all credit to the objective data set that has given us our technology, without the subjective we would be robots, some people really think we are. Then there is the tricky question of truth, in either domain there the absolute remains illusive. The answer as always with these things is to embrace both aspects but i would not want you to take my word for it, rather as an example let me redirect you to the posthumous web site of one of the worlds most famous mathematicians who died recently, Benoit Mandelbrot, these words are on his home page and make my point better than anything I can say: "Seeks a measure of order in physical, mathematical or social phenomena that are characterized by abundant data but extreme sample variability. The surprising esthetic value of many of his discoveries and their unexpected usefulness in teaching have made him an eloquent spokesman for the "unity of knowing and feeling." http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/
As far as I am concerned, our ancestors were simply human. No smarter, and no more stupid than we are. The occasional mega-genius among our paleolithic forebears, no doubt, came up with advances that moved humanity forward. A new way of chipping stone, perhaps. However, progress accelerated when we developed the scientific method, and the practical, empirical process. The is no evidence that subjective feelings have ever contributed in any practical way to human progress. Religious and 'spiritual' ways of thinking may have helped create entertaining tales, but it would be the practical craftsman among our ancestors that moved humanity forward, with better tools and techniques.
I agree completely. I get paid to do science after all. I am not suggesting we just accept the ancient theory how it stands, but I do think it is interesting enough that it deserves the attention of modern research. After all we investigate traditional medicines to see what they really do and perhaps integrate them into western medicine; I feel the other aspects of traditional healing deserve similar attention. And of course people are doing this kind of research, I just did a search and one of the first things that came up was this: http://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/tai-chi-for-diabetes-sufferers/videoRes/StdQuality Ok the video seems to talk about arthritis rather than diabetes like I expected but oh well. Anyway that is a program developed at the UNSW Faculty of Medicine, so people do take it seriously. I know you'll say something about how that it isn't chi creating the benefit, but that hardly matters. There is still a lot to learn here I think.
Friedrich August Kekulé had a dream that helped him discover the benzene molecule. Francis Crick was high on LSD when he first deduced the structure DNA. There are other examples, they're not hard to find.
Well if you want to look at it from that angle, every single scientific idea is an act of creativity, which is based on a hunch. The rigorous stuff comes later.
Woo Both those examples are of people who had done enormous amounts of work and obtained enormous amounts of data from their projects. All that was needed at that point was to think it through. If the thinking was subconscious rather than conscious, what difference does that make? Those discoveries were based on objective empirical data, not on some subjective brainwave.
Woo The point is that the result was from objective and empirical evidence. Not some burst of unfounded intuition. Scientists do that all the time. It is called forming a hypothesis. And the circular nature of benzene, and the double helix nature of DNA were just hypotheses at the time. Where the idea for a hypothesis comes from is less important than what follows. The next part is even more important - using the hypothesis to make a predictive test. At the end of the day, it is the data that counts.
it does not surprise me to here you discount the role of intuition. what good is your data in the hands of a monkey, you make it sound like we are no more than an adding machines, robots. its a very one sided point of view, and one sided points of view are invariably wrong. forming a hypothesis requires, intuition, insight and the creative spark, there is no algorithm for that.
What are you not getting. He did not downplay intuition. It is very important in the creative part of the scientific method as is the study and preparation that was mentioned. With the proper preparation the creation of the hypothesis happens sometime easily, sometimes in a dream, sometimes when relaxed or even while purposely attempting to create a hypothesis. As Skeptic says, it is what follows from that that is important. It is not some vague feeling that chi is real and important it is designing a hypothesis to test and measure to verify whether you feeling is true or not. What you want to do is just stop at the "I Believe" stage which can generally do more harm than good.