Paranormal
Science is a powerful tool for investigating the Universe. The extraordinary scientific advances of the twentieth century have furnished us with profound insights into the fundamental processes of life and matter. These advances have certainly made the world a more dangerous place - the atomic bomb is the most obvious symbol of that - but they have also brought great freedoms, from disease, from hunger, from total dependence on a particular environment (ask any Canadian with a central heating system in winter).
These freedoms allow the possibility of a vastly enriched life for ordinary individuals, but they also give the illusion that science is a process of discovery leading smoothly towards a set of fixed and final answers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is important to establish what science is. The most accurate description of science is to say that, at any given time, it consists of a network of theories and models of how the Universe is organized and how it works, and of an army of researchers busy formulating and testing those theories and models. There are, of course, certain rules which govern the development and testing of theories and models against experimental evidence. A theory or model should explain why people, or objects, or particles behave in the way they do, and predict how they will behave in the future. If it does not adequately or reliably do this, then it is replaced by other theories or models. That is the picture which scientists and philosophers of science have of science. In fact, matters are much less clear-cut. In different areas of science, different levels of theory and different criteria for testing them are employed. What works in physics may not apply to psychology, for example.
Likewise, there are rules governing the conduct of experiment. There are good ways to do experiments and bad ways. It is generally thought that, for the results of an experiment to be accepted, it should be possible for other experimenters to repeat the results of the original experiment. This is fine in theory, but in practice it may not work out so easily.
The True Nature of Science
Science is a growing, not a static, method of acquiring knowledge and understanding. It often makes mistakes. Practice often doesn't fit theory. With regards to the field that we refer to as the paranormal, it would do us well to remember that science is not an infallible, wholly objective march towards ultimate understanding.
Many scientists feel that phenomena such as ESP (extrasensory perception) are impossible because they contradict fundamental laws of physics. This is not a viable point of view. In the eighteenth century, following the pronouncement of the great French chemist Antoine Lavoisier that there were no stones in heaven and that none could therefore fall to earth, museums removed meteorites from their exhibits. in a gesture which seems ludicrous now, reality was simply arbitrated out of existence.
In 1850, the German physiologist Johannes Müller stated that science would never discover the speed of the nervous impulse; two years later Hermann von Helmholtz did. When Ernest Rutherford, the physicist who split the atom, was an undergraduate, his tutor told him not to bother taking up physics because scientists had a complete picture of the nature of matter and only the final details remained to be settled! It is interesting to speculate on the consequences for science if Rutherford had accepted that advice. The growing ozone hole over Antarctica was not initially detected by American scientists because their computers were programmed to eliminate the data, the 'anomalous,' out of place data, that showed that he hole exists. Darwinian evolutionary theory (and its neo-Darwinist derivative) has been attacked by biologist Soren Lovtrup.
Examples of imperfections and about-turns in science could be multiplied over and over again. in the realm of the social sciences, the problems become even greater. In economics, it is now widely accepted that classical economic theories cannot explain the combination of simultaneously rising inflation and unemployment that plagued the Western industrial nations in the 1980s, nor do they explain chronically high levels of unemployment in the same economies in the last decade. In psychology, despite claims made during the 1970s that the neural basis of Mind would be understood within 20 years, advances in that direction have been, frankly, negligible.
The notion that science is a dynamic and powerful tool for investigating the Universe is not wrong, but like all human enterprises science is capable of many mistakes and biases which may persist for lengthy periods of time. In particular, science does not deal well with genuine anomalies that challenge established views. This is a key point for the paranormal, since such anomalies are the very stuff it's all about. What is not acceptable, nor should be acceptable in general is the viewpoint often encountered within science which says: "ESP contradicts physics, therefore it cannot exist." This is simply Lavoisier telling us that stones don't fall from heaven again.
This unfortunate mindset is often presented as 'skepticism'. It is anything but. Skepticism is the attitude of the researcher who, faced with an anomaly (such as ESP appears to be), says: "Well, what's going on here? Let's take a look at it!" It is not the attitude of the armchair critic who simply 'knows' it's all nonsense and can't be bothered to address the evidence offered to him. Indeed, those who are placed in the position of challenging the status quo are often the true skeptics, because they do not accept conventional wisdom and are prepared to take an objective look at the evidence.
On the other end of the belief spectrum are the group of individuals known as the 'believers'. This term, too, is somewhat of a misnomer, because a believer must be made out of someone after they have properly thought out and analyzed all the evidence that exists for a particular phenomena before making their judgments about it, as opposed to a blind fanatic. A blind fanatic, just like in the case of religion, has an unfounded belief in something without knowing why they really believe in it or in a lot of cases, not knowing what they're actually believing in. They cannot accept any scientific study which may debunk the existence of something that their belief lies in, and they simply 'know' that what they believe it's all complete truth, no amount of solid, tangible proof can ever sway their belief.
The Paranormal
Throughout history there have been reports of events that were not explainable in terms of the accepted scientific theories of the day. "God did it" or "Satan caused it" do not constitute scientific theories. These kinds of events tend to get lumped together as 'the paranormal', an unfortunate term perhaps, but is used for lack of a better word. And it shall be used, since it is a familiar one. The word 'paranormal' often evokes images of little green men flying around in UFOs, mutilating our cattle, creating crop circles, images of ancient civilizations utilizing earth energies, ESP (extrasensory perception) and PK (psychokinesis), astrology, Loch Ness monster, faith healing, astral planes, reincarnation and hundreds of other weird and wonderful phenomena. As a result, the paranormal is often thought of an outlandish, eccentric bunch of odd phenomena.
The definition of the paranormal, though, is "those phenomena which are not understandable in terms of known scientific laws," or "those phenomena which can not be explained by science, seemingly outside the normal sensory channels." While these are valid enough, a better definition would be "those phenomena which have not yet been explained by science." This meaning also conveys that eventually, a true, logical explanation for any particular phenomena will be presented, thus removing it from the realm of the paranormal.
To get a good idea of this, we go back to the example of meteorites. As mentioned, Lavoisier had declared that stones don't fall from heaven, and it was not known that there was a vast world outside our own planet. As a result, meteorites were considered to be mysterious and paranormal. Such was the mindset at the time. Fast forward to today, and this mindset just described seems to be childish, primitive and unintelligent. To us, it is just a tidbit of known information which is so trivial, that it's almost laughable that people could think in such a way. Yet it is important. It demonstrates how the mindset of an individual or a group of individuals can have an affect on the direction of science and scientific thought.
Getting back to the categorization of these phenomena, it would be illogical to suppose that most, or even many of these different phenomena involve similar underlying causes and mechanisms. Would one expect the Loch Ness monster to be related to reincarnation? However, in order to investigate the paranormal in a scientific manner, it makes good sense to concentrate on those phenomena that can be studied easily and on those that seem to have a linking principle.
Investigating the paranormal is, contrary to popular thought, rather quite boring. True investigations involve hours of research work, collection of data, statistics and poring over them meticulously in order to reach a plausible conclusion or even an explanation regarding the matter. Additionally, due to the spontaneous nature of a lot of the paranormal phenomena, experimentation and investigation of an occurring event is extremely difficult, as I shall explain.
Just like in any other scientific discipline, a paranormal researcher needs to keep an open mind to all sorts of possibilities, or even none at all. A slight bias towards skepticism or belief would prove to be a hindrance in the investigation.
An unfortunate qualm regarding the paranormal stems from the thousands of hoaxers and charlatans who often present unfounded, outlandish claims. Once debunked, they only serve to further disrepute the paranormal. For example, it is well known that thousands of photographs of UFOs have been taken. Several times, these have been found to be fake. This causes people to treat all photographs of UFOs with a harsh skepticism from that point onwards, whether they are fake or real.
However, it is difficult to say which ones are real, and which ones are fake. The reason I make this statement is this: Not everyone would take out the time and effort to elaborately hoax a photograph of a UFO, or report one. Further, even if all UFO photographs were dismissed as fake, and if one were to say that UFOs cannot exist, because nobody has ever taken a real photograph, such a claim would be pure ignorance. Take a minute to think of the last time you saw a photograph of an airplane just as it was about to crash into the ground. Once in your lifetime? And yet when we see a news report of an airplane crash, we know that the plane hit the ground at a high velocity. Not that a group of elaborate hoaxers loosely spread airplane parts all over the ground and then deliberately injured themselves. It is our logic that allows us to make this judgment. Similarly, in the case of a UFO, one cannot simply dismiss any photograph to be fake.
To add to the hindrances in paranormal research, people generally hold an irrational fear of exploring the areas covered by all things paranormal. Much like our ancestors in the beginning, what was unknown was feared, and attributed to a supernatural entity. Science explained several things, and one would be able to observe a stark difference in the depth of the belief that existed in the two times. Yet, the fear remains, uninhibited. People would rather stay away from the exploration of these areas of our own world, and instead choose not to believe in its existence, since it makes things so convenient. Funny, how people can agree to accept the existence of a god for which no logical basis exists, and yet choose not to believe in paranormal phenomena for which a more tangible reservoir of evidence is plain to see!
Sadly, this discipline of science, which is hardly ever taken seriously, very rarely receives the attention it deserves in order to carry out a thorough search for answers.
Here's hoping for the best, that some day we will be able to uncover the vast majority of these phenomena and gain a better understanding of this wild and wonderful place we live in.
