The Fallacy of Scientific Truth – Part Three
Over the period of the last four centuries scientists have been remarkably successful in reducing the mysteries of life to behaviour that is both understandable and predictable, and is derived from certain fundamental principles.
These basic principles have now been formulated as scientific “laws”. And because nature has been observed to act in accordance with these laws, these scientific laws have also been equated with the “laws of nature”.
The success achieved by this scientific method of enquiry has convinced scientists that they have at last succeeded in understanding the inner workings of nature, and in so doing, have discovered the fundamental rules that govern the operation of the universe.
What was not realised until very recently, however, was that this success was actually more apparent than real. It has now become evident that these scientific “laws” are not in fact actual properties of nature at all, but simply nature that has been moulded to reflect the current expectations of scientific minds.
The Work of Thomas Kuhn
It was Thomas Kuhn, an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science at the University of California in Berkeley, who first glimpsed this mirroring influence of the mind in its construction of reality, in the course of his research into the early history of chemistry.
Kuhn focused his research on the life and work of the British chemist John Dalton, who has come to be regarded as the founding father of chemistry by virtue of his pioneering work in the formulation of atomic theory.
Dalton believed that atoms of certain elements combined together in chemical reactions with atoms of other elements in proportions which always remained unchanged. These proportions, claimed Dalton, always presented combinations of whole numbers of atoms, and never involved parts of an atom.
We know today, for example, that water is a chemical compound involving two different elements, hydrogen and oxygen. We also know that one molecule of water consists of a combination of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, exactly as Dalton predicted.
Furthermore, each molecule of water consists of an unvarying combination of these two elements. We never find two atoms of hydrogen combining with, say, 1.5 atoms of oxygen.
Today, every student of chemistry is taught that Dalton discovered the “real” way in which nature functions. Modern textbooks confirm that this was the way nature had always worked, and that Dalton was merely the first person to tumble to its plan.
However, the truth was not quite so simple. When Kuhn examined the actual historical evidence of that time, it seemed to him that Dalton had not discovered a fundamental “law” of nature at all. Instead, what appeared to have happened was that he had actally been successful in moulding nature to his particular way of thinking.
Prior to John Dalton’s advent into the field of chemistry, a fierce debate had been raging in France between the two chemists, Joseph Proust and Claude Berthollet. Proust claimed that all chemical reactions took place in fixed proportions, while Berthollet argued that chemical compounds could vary in their proportions.
What made this debate so provocative was that each man had assembled an impressive collection of physical evidence to support his contention, and that neither man could convince the other of the fallacy of his point of view.
Now Dalton was not a chemist by training, but was in fact a meteorologist. In approaching the new subject of chemistry Dalton sided with Proust, and argued that in all reactions which were purely chemical in nature, atoms would only combine with one another in proportions which were based on combinations of whole numbers of atoms.
He therefore predicted that one atom of an element would combine with one or more atoms of another element, but not with 1.56 parts of an atom. If such a combination did occur, said Dalton, that combination was not a purely chemical reaction.
It became a basic requirement of Daltonian theory that atoms could only combine in fixed proportions of simple whole numbers.
Naturally, Dalton’s conclusions were immediately attacked by Berthollet, and with good reason, for Berthollet was able to provide empirical proof that certain compounds actually were composed of partial combinations of atoms.
When Dalton looked for evidence to justify his conclusions, he found to his consternation that some results matched his theory, and some did not. Even Proust, who supported Dalton’s view that atoms of oxygen and copper would combine together in a ratio of two to one, found that his experiments yielded a result of 1.47 to one.
Despite the brilliant insight which Dalton had bought to bear upon the theory of chemical combinations, the empirical evidence provided by other chemists did not always bear him out. Nature proved to be far from uniform, and for many years continued to defy Dalton’s neatly ordered plan.
As Thomas Kuhn explains, nature still had to be moulded into Dalton’s chemical paradigm.
“But it is hard to make nature fit a paradigm. That is why the puzzles of normal science are so challenging and also why measurements undertaken without a paradigm so seldom lead to any conclusions at all. Chemists could not, therefore, simply accept Dalton’s theory on the evidence, for much of it was still negative.
Instead, even after accepting the theory, they still had to beat nature into line, a process which, in the event, took almost another generation. When it was done, even the percentage composition of well-known compounds was different. The data themselves had changed.” 1
Creating a Successful Paradigm
The universe was not revealed by Dalton to have been created according to the magic formula of whole-number combinations of atoms. Instead, Dalton’s atomic theory was merely a creation of his mind.
What made Dalton’s theory so attractive to other scientific minds, was that his theory made it possible to assimilate the work of other people like Richter and Gay-Lussac, as well as opening up new possibilities for chemical experimentation.
Had Dalton’s theory initially been rejected on the basis of the conflicting evidence of the time, it is probable that chemistry would never have come to yield the rich practical benefits which we experience today.
Fortunately, as it happened, his theory was successful in gathering converts, even though not all of these early recruits could always achieve the experimental results which his theory demanded.
Yet, as belief in the validity and elegance of the new theory grew, so experimenters began increasingly to produce the results that were expected until there came a time, about a generation later, when they reached uniformity.
It was only then, when nature had been manipulated into a common groove, that chemists could talk with confidence of chemical composition as a fixed “law of nature”. The consistency that then appeared in nature paralleled the consistency of scientific minds.
Nature had gradually been moulded by the minds of chemists until it was able to reproduce that consistency which allows us today to speak of the proportions of atomic reactions as a scientific law.
In truth there never was, nor ever will be any law of nature governing chemical combinations. “Reality” had merely come to mirror the content of people’s minds, as the Sages had predicted.
In the light of the revelations of mystics, we can begin to see how this amazing transformation of the chemical constituency of the universe came to occur.
Our Compliant Universe
To understand this process we need to recognise the fact that the universe is not a physical, objective phenomenon existing independently of our minds. What we consider to be the world outside of us is in fact nothing but a series of images appearing in consciousness.
We have learned to project these images into the form of three-dimensional objects which then appear to have an existence that is independent of ourselves. In the course of shaping our phenomenal world, we have been guided by the ideas of others, and have learned to create a world that is similar to that created by other minds.
We need to understand, furthermore, that the projections of our minds are projections which are coloured by our beliefs, as represented by our thoughts. The way in which we learn to create a common world is by acquiring those beliefs which are common to the group.
To the early pioneers of chemistry, who were making their first forays into the world of chemical analysis, there were conflicting schools of thought regarding the nature of chemical combinations. As can be expected, therefore, these early chemists found that they obtained experimental data which supported a variety of views.
Certain experiments yielded combinations of whole numbers of atoms, while others represented fractional combinations. This was the stage at which the French chemists Proust and Berthollet had their dramatic confrontation.
When Dalton appeared on the scene and argued persuasively in favour of the merits of the whole number ratio, his theory had an internal elegance which immediately appealed to many chemists.
Not everyone was convinced, however, and we can see how for several decades experimental results continued to defy Dalton’s theory. As more and more chemists came to share the Daltonian view, so the experimental results which they obtained came more and more to consolidate into the whole number pattern.
Fractional results became increasingly rare until, after the space of about another generation, they virtually disappeared, allowing the Daltonian theory of chemical combinations to reign supreme. Once all the chemists had begun to think alike, so their results came to reflect this uniformity.
It was this uniformity which served to demonstrate to succeeding generations of students the validity of Dalton’s theory, and that it was in fact a true reflection of the workings of nature.
Today, the textbooks of chemistry leave no doubt at all in the minds of aspiring students that this is a law of nature. Because the novice comes to be indoctrinated into the structure of belief of the overwhelming majority, he or she continues to sustain this universal conformity.
This fundamental belief of chemistry then continues to be verified and validated in the world by each student anew. Yet what their education actually teaches them to do, is to continue to manipulate nature into the accepted pattern of belief.
The Inconsistencies of Science
Although this unifying conditioning is at work equally in all spheres of science, not all students succumb to this conditioning. So, from time to time, odd anomalous results continue to occur. These anomalies are attributed to the shortcomings of the individual student, who is counselled to persist until the accepted or “real” result is obtained.
In the course of education and professional practice these anomalous results tend to be eradicated, as students successfully adopt the universal patterns of belief. Those pupils who consistently fail to embrace the common mould are inevitably branded as being “unscientific”. So they fail to gain admittance to the official sanctuary of science.
The vast emporium of science does not remain static, for there continue to be vendors of new ideas in every field. However, the pioneers of these new advances continue to experience the same frustrations which tormented the early explorers of chemistry. They too find themselves confronted by conflicting results, with no clear evidence as to which idea is the “correct” one.
It is only after the passage of time, and as one single climate of belief comes to predominate, that the results of practical experimentation come to match each other in a consistent way. The Cambridge physicist and Nobel prizewinner Brian Josephson commented on this strange variability of empirical data when he wrote:
“Currently in physics there’s the strange phenomenon that the laws of nature seem to keep on changing. New symmetry violations are being discovered, the velocity of light is found to be different from what people thought it was, and so on.
An odd thing, which may or may not be significant, is that sometimes when a new observation is made different people get different results. In one instance a particular symmetry was broken on one side of the Atlantic, but not on the other; however, after a while everyone got the same results.
The conventional explanation would be that errors were being made on one side of the ocean, but conceivably the true explanation is that the discrepant results were genuine, and that it was the process of communication of knowledge from one side of the Atlantic to the other which caused a kind of phase transition or ordering process, as a result of which identical results were subsequently found in both places.” 2
What Josephson has referred to as “a kind of phase transition or ordering process” which subsequently causes identical results is, in fact, nothing less than the mirroring process of the mind as described by the mystics, and alluded to in the following words:
“The thoughts are the content of the mind, and they shape the universe.” (Ramana Maharshi)
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.” (Dhammapada)
“The world becomes for one whatever one is accustomed to think of it. (Tripura Rahasya)
“Experience is shaped by belief and belief is shaped by experience.” (Nisargadatta Maharaj)
Any system of ideas is equally fertile ground for science. There is no theory, whether inherently scientific or not, which is unable to yield fruitful results. There is no limit to the range of theories which can be validated by belief, or manifested by the application of the necessary mental energy.
But, in order to succeed, any new scientific theory, like any new religious faith, has to secure recruits. Without this proselytisation, no scientific theory can hope to accumulate the necessary data of evidential proof. It is through the medium of the spoken and written word that this process of cross-fertilisation takes place.
New scientific theories generate their support in various ways. They gather new devotees either through their inherent elegance and charm, or else through their ability to explain phenomena which were hitherto misunderstood, or viewed in a different light.
The ideas of Newton, Maxwell and Einstein were only able to succeed in achieving the status of scientific paradigms because of their success in soliciting supporters. These supporters were not easily come by at first.
As the years passed, however, and especially as their former opponents retired and died, so the new adherents came to achieve a dominant position of influence. Once a platform of power had been attained and a consensus reached, the natural forces of the paradigm assumed control.
Textbooks were rewritten to accommodate the new ideas, to make them seem as if they were a logical outgrowth of earlier science. Later generations of students were then indoctrinated into accepting the fact that these new theories were proven evidence of the way that nature “really was”.
With the growth of conviction in the efficacy of these new ideas, new empirical data came to mirror these ideas in a consistent way, which then became further proof that the faith which they had placed in these new scientific theories was justified.
There are numerous instances on record where new theories have failed to garner the necessary scientific support. In such cases the budding theory has been condemned as being scientifically sterile, just like the Biblical seed that fell on stony ground.
While these theories may well have been intrinsically sound, and may even have been supported by convincing evidential proof, their failure to gain admission to the official Halls of Academe, has doomed them to be outcast.
The irony of these rejected theories is that they are invariably castigated as being “unscientific.” Yet, in most cases, the problem lies not with the question of their scientific pedigree, but with the fact that they are out of step with the conventional thinking of their time.
Because science has been built upon the foundation of belief that the universe operates in a consistent and predictable manner, the edifice of science has been forced to reflect this consistency. New theories cannot therefore be admitted to the scientific corpus unless they can be shown to be related in some fashion to what has already been accepted.
New theories are not permitted to stand alone, devoid of associated scientific support. The fact that these novel theories may be verifiable in “reality” is then beside the point. They are doomed to be ignored by virtue of their illegitimate birth, as we may see from the following example.
Karel Drbal
In 1949, a Czechoslovakian citizen named Karel Drbal applied to the Czechoslovakian Patent Office for a patent on a device which, he claimed, could sharpen razor blades. Drbal’s device was quite a simple affair, so simple in fact that the chief patent examiner was quite unable to fathom how it worked.
To test its claims, therefore, the examiner personally used this device for ten years before supporting its claim before the patent commission. In 1959, Karel Drbal finally succeeded in being awarded Patent No 91,304 for his unusual device. 3
The sharpener concerned turned out to be a cardboard model of a pyramid, constructed according to the dimensions of the ancient Egyptian pyramid of Cheops. By an odd series of circumstances, Drbal’s invention was fated to spread across the world in subsequent decades as the miracle of “pyramid power”.
By the nineteen seventies this magical power was alleged not only to be able to sharpen razor blades, but also to relieve headaches, restore skin tissue, aid relaxation, promote inner healing, improve sleep, enhance plant growth, hasten seed germination, revive ailing plants, sweeten the taste of coffee, reduce rust, preserve milk and yoghurt, plus a host of other wonderful remedies.
It was in short a panacea for all ills. Unfortunately the bubble finally burst, and pyramid power was relegated to the domain of such pseudo-scientific myths as phlogiston and animal magnetism. The power of the pyramid was officially exposed as a grand psychological deception that had been fostered on a gullible public by the power of suggestion.
Sadly for Drbal, no millions of dollars were to flow into his pockets, nor would he become regaled as a latter day genius, to be ranked along with the scientific giants for the discovery of a new form of energy. Pyramid power was doomed to be forgotten as an irrelevant anomaly.
Yet the irony of this strange saga was, if any solace can be afforded to Drbal, that his original cardboard pyramid continued to sharpen razor blades. The unchallengeable fact was that it really worked. The problem was that it only tended to work for those who believed it would, and when it did work, those people were unable to say why it worked.
Although the power of the pyramid was attributed to a force called “Neoenergy”, science did not welcome this foundling child, because nobody could explain what Neoenergy was, or how it might be related to any other known form of energy.
Drbal himself volunteered the opinion that his razor blades were sharpened by a process of “dehydration and anoxidation”. The razor blade remained sharp he said, because the power of the pyramid forced water molecules out of the metal blade.
Clearly, this was not the sort of explanation that was likely to prompt a chair in pyramidology at Princeton, Harvard or Cambridge. Pyramid power died a natural death, as have many other theories and devices that were inexplicable in terms of the scientific paradigm of their times.
Had it been possible, however, to incorporate the concept of Neoenergy within the accepted framework of existing scientific belief, and to reinforce this belief with the power of consensual agreement through education in every school and university, we would all no doubt today be driving vehicles powered by the miraculous force of Neoenergy.
(Continued in Part Four)
References
1 Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970, pp. 132-134.
2 Brian Josephson, “Possible Connections between Psychic Phenomena and Quantum Mechanics“, New Horizons, Vol. I, No.5, 1975, p. 226.
3 Serge King, “Neoenergy and Geometric Forms“, in “Future Science”, op.cit., pp. 193-197.
