Science is more than meets the eye. Even since I was a child I’ve tried to follow what I can of science without a real microscope or telescope and a doctorate in some incomprehensible subject like chemistry. I guess that’s why I’m a fan of popular science—the kind that is written so a layperson might understand, or at least pretend to. Indeed, one of the complaints from scientists and others alike is that science has become so complex that only a specialist can really understand. I suspect that’s one reason religion continues to thrive; anybody can be an expert in religion, even a scientist. Nevertheless, science is based on empirical observation, now with instruments fine tuned to receive data better than human senses. So I sometimes watch Through the Wormhole to find out what is happening in the realm of pure knowledge. Although simplified to the digestibility level of the laity, Through the Wormhole tries to stay on base with interviews with mainstream scientists who are working at the cutting edge of what’s out there. I recently watched the episode entitled “Is There a Sixth Sense?”
I have no way of knowing what scientists think of such things, but I was glad to see the everyday experience of normal people addressed in this particular episode. Who hasn’t felt that weird pre-cognition from time-to-time, or felt like they were being stared at only to learn that they were? These might be the spooky effects at a distance that so unnerved Einstein, but they are part of human experience. We all go through it, but mainstream science comes up with a convoluted scheme whereby our brains project what actually happened back in memory before it happened so that it just seems like we knew something was about to transpire. Of they point to false positives—how many times did we think something was about to happen and it didn’t? We just don’t remember those. Still, this particular show brings together mainstream physicists and theorists usually considered outsiders, such as Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake (strangely omitted from the IMDB cast list). Several smart people, it seems, wonder if we are really all connected.
Mainstream science has grown terrified of metaphysics. The suggestion that anything might be remotely like the world of religion is frightening to those who believe we just need more precise calipers and higher resolution imagery to explain an entirely physical universe. This little universe we carry around in our skulls, however, is attuned to what we might just have to call the “spiritual” or some such moniker, just to differentiate it from the particles that we are told make up everything. Or is it strings? Don’t ask me; I couldn’t tell an up quark from a down quark. Interestingly, one is even called a “charm.” And then there’s the God particle, the Higgs’ boson that briefly reminded the world that Edinburgh is a top-rate university, although, as we all know, there’s no place like Harvard. For the rest of us, however, there’s the everyday business of work to face. And if I try to read a blog while on the clock, I definitely have a sense of being stared at, even when I’m alone in here.
One of the last fearless scientists