The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry by Rupert Sheldrake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have the rational intelligence to be a scientist, but it’s not in my personality to fill in cracks in established mental models. I seek anomalies that open cracks.
~Ran Prieur
Quickly becoming one of my favourite quotes.
Jimmy Wales’ statement is as revolting as the discussion under it. I would suggest that you read it, but only if you have the stomach for tens of “skeptics” parrotting the mainstream opinions about woo, parapsychology etc, claiming the truth and the high ground of knowledge as they usually do. Even the article itself is taking clear sides without shame.
Do these people know anything about the subject? Does Jimmy Wales know anything about the subject, he who with one broad swath pigeonholes so many people as lunatic charlatanes? I don’t know whether this technique in particular has had successes, explicable or inexplicable, in doing what it says it does, I haven’t looked into it to be honest, but I’ve seen the same discussion surrounding “pseudoscience” too many times to count.
Why this hate? Why this elitism? Why this aversion to exploration of the fringes? When did science become all about defending what’s already known? I thought the opposite was the main idea. Is materialist science, peer-reviewd journals, wikipedia, Richard Dawkins and the rest, parts of a bulletproof world theory anyway?
No, they’re not. Far from it. And if you want to know why, you should absolutely read The Science Delusion (title insisted upon by publisher) by Rupert Sheldrake. His main idea is that science and the scientific method are generally good at giving answers about our world, but, just like organised religion 500 years ago did, it has become too inflexible, too bulky, too dogmatic, too rid of assumptions, too sure of itself and too dismissive to be of any real use today. Meanwhile, it’s hindering research that could further our understanding of the world in unimaginable ways.
What’s interesting is that Sheldrake in this book provides us with -what’s normally considered as- hard evidence for a world that cannot be explained materialistically. That includes results of real peer-reviewed experiments that point to the reality of things like brainless memories, statistically significant telepathy and many more chin-stroke-worthy phenomena that truly test mainstream science’s beliefs of what should or shouldn’t be possible.
After reading the book, I checked Rupert Sheldrake’s Wikipedia entry just to see reactions to his work from the scientific communituy. Not surprisingly, the discussion was not much more sophisticated than what I witnessed in the link at the top of this review: accusations of pseudoscience, charlatanism etc pervaded the articles, indications that the skeptics hadn’t really comprehended the criticism aimed at their methodology and worldview, didn’t follow up on the bibliography, plainly assuming that there must have been something wrong with it (confirmation bias), or that they simply didn’t even read the book. Richard Dawkins has said, after all, that he doesn’t want to discuss evidence when it comes to inexplicable phenomena, raising questions about whether he’s really interested in the truth or not – in my personal experience, most skeptics do not have furthering their understanding of our world at the top of their priorities.
In any case, I find the accusations against Sheldrake, and this book in particular, hollow: The Science Delusion has close to 40 pages of notes and bibliography of actual experiments to back it up and Sheldrake’s style and prose themselves are lucid as well as restrained. Even in the parts in which he discusses the inability of science to interpret the phenomena, where he proposes his own theory of morphing resonance as a possible explanation -the parts I enjoyed the least because I cannot exactly grasp the concept of morphic resonance-, he does so without conviction, but rather with the spirit of the curious researcher. A true scientist in my book. The skeptics’ reaction to his work seems to disregard all of this completely; they treat him like they would any old fraud.
But I understand: scientists are also people. What would it have been normal for them to do in the face of rejection of their entire lives’ work plus a few hundred years of tradition? Accept their failure? Accept their dogmatism? Just as scientists are people, science is also a human activity, and as most of human activities do, it also suffers from the same problems human beings generally have, only in a larger, more chaotic scale.
Finally, one more reason I appreciated this book so much was that it was… tender. At the other side of the raging skeptics and this blind rejection there is investigation, there is respect, there is a belief in a state of things that resonated deeply with me. Maybe it’s because Sheldrake’s main field of research has been biology that he shows such love for plants, animals and life in general. For whatever reason, it warmed my heart and made me think that if I ever was a real scientist, Sheldrake would be my rold model: a fighter for truth against the faux fighters for truth, the romantic gardener who everybody calls a hippie but he alone sees what everybody else is too blind to see.
Third five-star review in a row after Μίλα μου για γλώσσα and
Small Gods (lol). Am I becoming softer or just more grateful?
Oh my, it is my gut reaction to disagree with that kind of thinking. You of all people should know that. That being said, I have not read the book, nor have I read the God Delusion in it’s entirety. And I do get what you are saying, or at least the sentiments behind it.
Science is the quest for truth. Out of all the systems mankind has developed for this purpose, it is the only one that has worked.
The half-life of knowledge is a thing, it worries me greatly I do get that it might worry some scientists even more, some to the point of ignoring that it exists.
I imagine people at every single time period, thought they knew about MOST of the stuff that happened. History can show how wrong that sort of thinking is, and I don’t think we are the “aha, finally we know almost everything” generation.
I also don’t think Science is opposed to proving itself wrong, that’s one of the major ways it can grow actually, but I can see why scientists might be overly defensive on things pretending to be science. How can you tell what is pretending and what is actual new scientific grounds? I don’t really know. The amount of evidence is, I guess, the deciding factor ,and when I hear Homeopathy supporters or Astrology “scientists” claiming to be such, I completely get the “these are lunatic charlatans” attitude. Some new brilliant stuff might be getting the bad rep Creationists are getting by claiming that we should “teach both theories”, as collateral.
So, I don’t find Jimmy Wales’s comment revolting, and I also don’t get the amounts of hate this guy seems to attract, and I am definitely more on Richard Dawkins’s side on this one.
Personally, I am completely open to anything, at least I think I am, as long as it can be proven, or supported adequately by evidence. Nothing should be dismissed a priori. Good manners, boldness in the face of the unknown and imagination are what we need.
But seriously, power balance bracelets…
It is very easy to use any number of straw men to show how weak and easy to debate out of existence the other side is, like religion, angels, astrology or power bracelets. But few people, including Dawkins or anyone else from the skeptic side, are willing to talk about the real data that doesn’t fit with existing mainstream science. They always assume there must be some problem with the experiment, and they leave it at that. That attitude doesn’t look like “science being open to proving itself wrong”. That’s the main argument of the book and you seem to agree without realising it. Don’t buy into the hype!
Have you seen that interview Dawkins did with a creationist? Some blonde lady with crazy written all over. That’s what comes to mind when I think of a “refusing to look at the evidence”.
Funding issues aside, if something can be rigorously tested, why would it get sweeped under the carpet by other “serious” scientists? It is my opinion that people on the “lunatic charlatans” side use the word “experiment” and “evidence” with the same loose grip that the creationists use the word “theory”.
I haven’t but I’m not interested in such an interview. I’m with neither side on that one.
The book goes through why something would be sweeped under the carpet in detail. First of all, researchers don’t want to do science on fields related to parapsychology/pseudoscience/woo because it’s taboo (chk-chk-uh!); once you start researching telepathy, for example, there goes your credibility. Imagine if you actually have a statistically significant finding… Your methodology will be questioned forever, and there goes your career. As you can already see, people won’t even look at the experiments or the results, there will be no discussion.
You imagine that somebody will notice. It doesn’t work that way. Even if a study makes it to a scientific publication, other scientists won’t be keen on replicating it for the above reasons, the evidence won’t be deemed sufficient by skeptics who would never look at the evidence anyway, and the results will be overlooked, buried up and forgotten by the scientific mainstay.
But it’s not just a matter of pure science; politics and business is a big part of it, as you said, what gets funded and why. And, as in real politics, what better way of poisoning the well by naming your opponent a “conspiracy theorist”/”loony”/”charlatan”? Who will object? You’re the scientific/political authority, after all.
I’m not saying that all fringe stuff is legit, far from it. But being absolutist and dismissing everything isn’t a sign of critical thinking, nor is it progressive; it’s dogmatic, conservative and misdirected.
I think we can both agree that being absolute is wrong. Always.
And yea, I can see how I agree with the general theme of the book, but I don’t think I agree with the argument that scientists don’t want to investigate occult/fringe-science stuff out of fear of being ridiculed (took me a while to mentally listen to the Tchk-Tchk ka). I remember seeing an episode of Enemies of Reason where Dawkins attended a double-blind experiment that was trying to see if there was any truth to dowsing (finding water by waving a stick). But even though I have not seen any “scientific research” on astrology or the evil eye, I am very comfortable with considering them as crazy. Are there any subjects about which you find yourself feeling the same?
Yes, we can agree that being absolute is wrong, and I can just as easily tell you which of the two sides is leaning towards being absolutist. Actually, no: there are no “two sides”. That’s the kind of mentality we must escape from: there’s not “science” on the one hand and “faith” on the other. It’s not creationism vs materialism. Because both of those sides are absolutist.
I can 100% understand how avoiding taboo subjects would work. It happens with all other aspects of human life: you don’t easily challenge the establishment, you don’t easily voice your opinion against a vocal majority. To assume that somebody would do it and thus we would have some kind of proof which would disrupt the scientific world is not being aware of what most advances in scientific knowledge looked like. I encourage you to read A Short History of Nearly Everything to see what odds and challenges -most of them coming from their own colleagues- researchers and scientists who made big discoveries in the 19th and 20th century had to overcome to question the status-quo.
About Enemies of Reason, I don’t know if you saw the link I have in the review, but you should: it’s an excerpt of the book where Sheldrake tells his side of the story from when Dawkins visited him to discuss telepathy. I think it’s especially revealing. http://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/richard-dawkins-comes-to-call
If it’s a matter of comfortableness, I’m comfortable with saying that rejecting things as crazy doesn’t help with furthering your knowledge. People believe in the evil eye, and that indeed seems to help them. If it’s just a placebo effect, or the effect of belief, why aren’t we researching belief and its effects (actually there are some very interesting studies on the effect of belief and/or hope in the book itself and how people who pray actually live longer; randomly googling: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/why-people-who-pray-are-heathier_b_1197313.html)? Because it shouldn’t work that way! Even though the evidence is there, we refuse to look at it because we’re not comfortable with what it might mean about the way humans really work.
How can you further your knowledge without dismissing things as not true, and therefore, claims that such things are true, crazy?
I read the link and thought it was interesting, but not especially revealing. I am not gonna play Dawkins’s advocate, doubt that he needs one.
As far as placebo effects go, I have no doubt that a) they work and b) are scientifically accepted. I can see how people that pray might be healthier. That by no means is any sort of evidence on the existence of the thing you’re praying to.
I keep coming back to that question though, how can you learn something, if you never dismiss things as untrue. And if you do, what is your compass in doing so?
Am I to accept that every god ever mentioned exists? Am I to lead my life as if telepathy, ghosts, santa claus and ESP are real? I am not trying to bunch them up by the way, what I am trying to say is that you HAVE to dismiss certain things as crazy, in order to learn new things. It’s good to have an open mind, sure, after all, nothing can be really known, right?
But high philosophy aside, everybody draws a line somewhere.
Of course you have to dismiss things in order to further your knowledge. This dismissal should be by way of experiment and research, though, not assumption. The way it goes now is “we know certain things about the world, and according to them, some things just shouldn’t be possible”, when ideally, at least in my opinion, it should be the other way around: what is and isn’t possible, as displayed experimentally, should guide our world theory. Sounds obvious, and at first glance you might say that science today is exactly that, but if it was really so, The Science Delusion would’ve probably never been written.
By the way. I disagree with something that you said earlier, that we don’t think we have it all figured it out. We basically do. At least, mainstream science does. If it didn’t, it would try to incorporate and explain anomalies, or if an explanation were impossible, scientists would try to research further. They would not dismiss them as irrelevant, when there’s obviously something new somehwhere in there! One example I just remembered from the book: http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/animals/dog_video.html
(A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home:
Videotaped Experiments and Observations)
Materialist medicine accepts the placebo effect, but only begrudgingly. Not enough research has gone into why it works and how it can be used more effectively. It hasn’t been integrated. And the reason for that, or at least one of the main reasons, is that too much money stands to be lost if the placebo effect, in other words, the capacity of biological organisms to heal themselves, is really taken advantage of by medical science. At this point in time when drugs are getting more expensive and less effective, or at least the rate at which we discover new cures is diminishing, it would be an important step forward discovering what biological (?) function is responsible for the placebo effect and in turn analyzing and making a system out of the ways people can heal themselves with.
As for the rest of your reply, you seem to be saying something different from what I’m saying. No, you shouldn’t act as if everything under the sun really exists. As I said, you should be scientific about it. Actually, now that I think about it more closely, yes, I’m dismissing something to gain new knowledge. What I’m dismissing is the materialist worldview, a system of theories that is honestly incompatible with reality as we’re living it. It has served humanity for the past years, (maybe – I’m still inconclusive about that), but now it’s time for a paradigm shift. How are you furthering your knowledge, by the way? What are you dismissing in the name of new knowledge? Yes, God is dead, we get it. Time to move on, though.
By the way, as far as I know there are no experiments indicating the existence of Santa Claus! You’re very very biased, tsk tsk.
Maybe in the end each person’s line is arbitrary and no amount of reasoning can shake its position on the axis of experience and abstraction. If that’s so, there’s no point in arguing, as there’s no point in reading Sheldrake’s book. But if the line is mobile, and I do think it more or less is, reading it would further your knowledge. It would at least make you question your assumptions on some things you have too many assumptions about.
Ooh, I just read that the experiment above I linked you to with the dog took place in Greater Manchester. 🙂
I believe in arguing and in questioning one’s assumptions. Reminds me of that night we spent in my hotel room… oh my, this sentence started very suggestive, anyway, when we watched that Day[9] episode on assumptions. I had nearly forgotten about it.
I am not going to speak for Science, the same way I take it you don’t speak for “the stuff that Science dismisses”. Having said that, I do believe that skepticism is the safest stance. Logistically,even with unlimited funding , time would still be an issue, you can’t investigate everything. I do believe though that science is the best tool we have. Our torch in the dark, and it has been growing steadily. There always was an “old guard” of scientists that ridiculed new ideas, but I see that as part of the process, a trial by fire if you will for new ideas to test how robust their support is.
I believe you are painting things bleaker than they actually are.
P.S. One of Sheldrakes books referenced on that puppy experiment (which I did not read, but I did have a look at) is titled: “Psychic pets: a survey in north-west England” . He could at least try to make it sound a bit more credible 😛
now… to me this doesn’t sound like he is trying to sell it
That hotel! I remember the exercise with the circles but I don’t remember what happened after it (fueling the fire here!)
I think our main difference is how we view science as connected to ourselves, what science means to us. You use the word “safe”, saying that skepticism is the safest way to go. I agree, but that makes it less attractive to me, and ultimately less useful. Safety and innovation, or curiosity, don’t go well together. Ran Prieur says it best in the quote at the top of this page.
I think in general Sheldrake used to be more out there with his theories and maybe didn’t seek the mainstream’s approval. In The Science Delusion, which I think is his most recent book, he seems different in that respect, more approachable or at least geared to make his work more friendly towards skeptics or people on the fence, eg not saying psychic puppies :P, even though I suppose that if he had findings that supported the existence of telepathy or extra-sensual perception, the term wouldn’t be off-limits anymore. I could be wrong though, I’ve read nothing else by him.
Reminds me of something I heard in the Infinite Monkey Cage, a fun lil’ science podcast with Brian Cox, I might be paraphrasing but the gist of what was said was:
“Science is the desire to remain confused.”
So yea, I think that Dawkins might have developed some sort of gut reaction to anything parascience-y from all the contact he had with REALLY crazy people, but I think that there are people out there, Brian Cox, Carl Sagan, even shows like myth-busters that I find promote the very foundations of scientific thought, such as curiosity, imagination,experimentation and the importance of challenging one’s assumptions.
And that makes me feel quite good at the direction I see science going.