Hi all,
This is a tricky one to write. It was an amazing and strange week in Nong Khai. How to explain? Hmm.
The course we did in Nong Khai was of a much wider scope than I expected. It covered not just 'asana practice' (commonly seen as moving your body into crazy postures), but the full 8-fold path of Patanjali, including the yogic lifestyle, yogic theory, concentration, meditation, breathing exercises... the whole works.
I did candle gazing.
I meditated.
I chanted to 'attune myself to my chakras'.
If I'm going to do this properly, you need to understand where I'm coming from. So, I'm going to split this into two parts, I'm going to give you some personal context (apologies for any errors - I have an interest in scientific philosophy but I don't claim to be an expert in it).
Let's start by getting a bit technical for a moment. Bear with me, and apologies if anything sounds too preachy. Skip back a couple of months to some bedtime reading I was doing...
While reading about the early days of research into global warming, I came across one critique of the environmentalist position, that they are guilty of a logical error called 'affirming the consequent'.
Consider this:
Hypothesis 'a' implies observation 'A'. I observe 'A'. Therefore 'a' must be true.
(The theory of Global Warming predicts melting icecaps. The icecaps are melting. Therefore, Global Warming is true.)
This is false logic. For example, alternative hypothesis 'b' could also imply 'A'. Then observation of 'A' means 'a' or 'b' or both could be true. It does not necessarily imply the validity of 'a' (basically there could be another reason for the icecaps melting, so it does not constitute proof).
The thing is though, there is no scientific model of the world that you can really prove to be true, you can only 'fail to disprove it'. Science only gives a hypothesis that implies observations, and accumulates overwhelming evidence to support the hypothesis. Hypothesis 'a' implies observations 'A','B','C'...'Z' and science accepts the validity of 'a' if all of 'A','B','C'...'Z' are shown to be true. Basically you need to test as many implications of the theory that you can and see if you can disprove it.
Quick famous quote from Einstein: "No amount of experiment can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong"
(side note here... I think there is plenty of evidence for global warming that is shown to be true, so I accept it as being the best model for the observations. Yes it's 'affirming the consequent' but only in the sense that all scientific theory is. I'm no expert I would add, just my opinion...).
When we were travelling in Nepal I came across a book written by the Dalai Lama (The Universe in a Single Atom) where he talks about the boundaries of science. He refers to a scientific philosopher called Popper. He believed that what constitutes real science (or as the Dalai Lama describes it, what falls within the scope of scientific investigation) is that which is falsifiable (can be shown to be false). This kind of makes sense to me as this is the basis of the scientific method. Just as we discussed above, science relies of repeated objective testing of a theory to see if you can show it to be false. What the Dalai Lama points out, which got me thinking, is that if you can't show something to be false, it falls outside the scope of science. For example religion. Life after death. God. So, if there is a set of possible knowledge, scientific method can only illuminate a part of that set.
Consider also that the rigor of the burden of proof in science (or maybe I should say burden of lack of disproof) means that scientific inquiry can only see the world through a very small lens. If you want to rigorously test hypothesis 'a' you need to make it the simplest thing you can so that implies the simplest observations that can be then be rigorously tested (you start making a theory of quantum mechanics by looking at a single particle, like an electron, not the Eiffel Tower). Sure, science can move the small lens around within the framework of 'all that falls within the scope of science', but it means we are a long way from illuminating even all that can be known by scientific inquiry.
Sorry for making you bored. You may be wondering why I'm going on about this. In the western science education system, where the scientific method is often described as not only the best but the ONLY path to knowledge, we have a tendency to scientific materialism... that the world is governed only by scientifically observable laws. This assertion is purely a philosophical belief - science is not the same as scientific materialism. In fact the argument of Popper/Dalai Lama is quite a good one to explain why we can't reject so easily that there may be truths that are unobtainable by scientific inquiry.
So, all this to say that I am not a scientific materialist, that I accept that there maybe things that are outside the scope of science, and that there are things that are in the scope of science that science 'hasn't got round to dealing with yet' (I'd be interested in any comments on your own personal position on this). It doesn't mean that I accept everything that I'm told that doesn't fall within current scientific knowledge. In fact, I found myself sometimes a little overcritical during the course of the week. However, there must be some truth in the ancient Yogic practices and knowledge, much of which has been repeatably demonstrated in the sense of cause and effect (if you focus your mind this way, this effect happens...) for thousands of years. I don't always accept the reasoning WHY it's true though. However, I think there is huge value in trying this out. Firstly, I have the time and not much to lose (and if it's all true, *everything* to gain). Secondly, it's another path to knowledge that might be interesting to explore for a while, one that has been developed a long time before the rigid formalism of the modern scientific method...
Enough about my personal beliefs. In my next blog entry I'll tell you more about the course, Nong Khai, and some of the more interesting characters we met during this crazy week.
Sri
Friday, 15 January 2010
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