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Science is a method.... When something is regarded pseudoscience there's a good reason - it's deluded at best, fraudulent at worst..
A method that is dependent on our current limited technology which makes science itself limited. Is it deluded or fraudulent to attempt to measure ghosts? Is doing so not considered psudocscience?
@shift I doubt you would find anything about ghosts in any credible peer reviewed journal because the whole idea is considered "quacky" by the majority of the scientific community.
I read that Buddhists try not to kill, that is, they could consume meat if they can ensure that it is not killed FOR their consumption... So, one can eat meat if someone offers from their meal... Just that they should not go in search of it, i.e., no killing... And I am not telling you something that I made up... And I guess that monk ate the chicken only because you offered, and he can't stop those merits that you get from serving a Bhikkhu(this point is stressed in many places by The Buddha).
Metta
Yup! That's what I have come to understand. Though it seems shaky if you over-analyze. In a heavy accent Khenpo told us, "The chicken is already dead."
BTW, I'm not wanting to cause trouble but for the sake of clarity: I never understood what people mean when they talk of an "energy" when talking about place, or a thing.
"This place has an energy." "The human spirit has a certain energy field." These expressions make no sense to me. I'll go along with people who use these types of expressions but later I feel like an impostor because I really did not know what they were talking about!
Again, I'm anything but an authority on all uses of the term "energy:" I just can't follow what people are saying when they use the word in a metaphorical sense.
I do understand "energy" when discussing physics. It's measured in joules.
Seeker, an attempt to measure ESP or ghosts is not pseudo-science. Manipulating and misrepresenting results and not following the scientific method is.
There has been plenty of work done on ESP and ghosts. It's just that it's never conclusive.
For example, as a student, Dr. Sue Blackmore had an OOBE (out of body experience) and assumed that she was actually out of her body. She went into parapsychology and started trying to prove the "closed minded scientists" wrong. She found that all her experiments gave chance results. She tried the same experiments with psychics, without psychics under all kinds of conditions. Still, no statistically significant correlation to be found.
So, it's not that scientists don't keep an open mind and try to investigate a wide range of phenomena. It's just that unexplained paranormal activity has not been found.
Buddhists brag about how Buddhism and scientific method does not rule out one another, and Buddhists often even claim that Buddhism is scientific in its world-view. It would suit Buddhists then to differentiate between pseudoscience and real science, as to not make themselves look silly.
Agreed. Science is very good at what it does. Though rich in it's benefits to humans via the technology it engenders and the natural order it reveals, it's quite poor in dealing with spiritual matters.
"God," whatever _that_ is, or "ultimate secrets of the universe" will NEVER be revealed by science.
Just look at it's method (attached below) and see for yourself:
Roger, I think in that context they just mean it as a synonym for 'ambience' or 'vibe'.
Yes. Thank you for reminding me. I was watching that TV show "Ancient Aliens." The commentator was talking about pyramids and discussing their energy generation potential. He went from talking about "vibes" to talking literally about electrical power generation in one or two sentences. I didn't "resonate" with that.
It's funny how the meanings get twisted around. Bless the people TRYING to understand things BUT try to remove what's needlessly puzzling things up. IOW, if you listened to the AA guy, you'd think he made sense, when actually he just went thru the roof with a slippery twisting of meaning. LOL.
We can easily do this when discussing a plants' inner experience.
Me personally? It might be a continuum but I'm drawing the line here: I think it requires a central nervous system to for an organism to have an awareness that we humans can relate to and speculate on. A single cell or a bacterium certainly senses it's environment but it's got no collection point where it amalgamates different sorts of experiences and comes up with behaviors and intentions demonstrating something greater than the sum of its parts.
Oops! That might not be very clear! More (or less?) COFFEE!!! IOW, Somewhere along the line a bacterium and a squirrel become very different as far as "sentience" is concerned.
Also, scientific method is not limited by contemporary technology - only (im)possible experiments are. You do not have to own Harry Potter #7 in order to read and understand the first.
Shift, there's more to those articles than you were able to access. Too bad you can't read all the info; it's pretty interesting.
Nidish, if the goal of your inquiry is to ascertain whether or not plants are sentient, in order to decide if you can eat plants, (I assume you've eliminated meat from your diet?), you might have to starve if your goal is to eliminate the consumption of sentient beings. However, lots of Buddhists eat meat and don't give it a second thought. Inner Asian Buddhists are nomadic, you know. They grow and herd meat for their own consumption, and they actually do the killing themselves. (I have a sheep-slaughtering ceremony on film.) Nothing like a good shot of reality to clarify things. Different parts of the world have very different ideas about what Buddhist practice looks like for laypeople.
compassionate_warrior, the newscientist article is the only one I couldn't get access to. Surely we have the print copies at uni, so when the semester starts again, I'll check it out.
There is no such thing as an "energy field" around humans which can do anything. Even if we didn't want to use our own logic to make these plant "theories" fall apart, we could at least have the courtesy of listening when real scientists (the ones creating the real miracles) tells us, that this is just bogus. They if anyone know what is science and what is not.
Buddhists brag
Pick up a science book, Ficus. (Oh, and Roger would find this of interest as well.) Interesting name, by the way. Here we have a plant among our own members, that not only screams, but it sends us messages on the computer! Now there's a scientific breakthrough for you. I'm discussing with a ficus! RE: energy fields--our entire planet is surrounded with an electromagnetic field that's generated by the energy emitted towards us by the sun, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a positive electrical charge. The Earth, due to it's iron core, has a negative charge. These two influences give everything on earth that is alive, and rocks as well, an energy field. I discussed this with a physicist at a national science lab near where I live. This is old news, many generations old. Science education is way behind the times. And this electromagnetic charge that we and all of nature has (without it we'd be dead; the body works based on the positive and negative charges of the minerals we take in, the calcium in our bones, etc.) is how the gemstones in Tibetan herbal medicines work: each has its own subtle electrical charge that kick-starts cells that are ailing and don't have enough energy to heal. This has been proven in science labs in Germany and Austria.
And FYI, Buddhists never brag. About anything. We leave our egos at the door when we take refuge in the 3 Jewels.
BTW, I'm not wanting to cause trouble but for the sake of clarity: I never understood what people mean when they talk of an "energy" when talking about place, or a thing.
"This place has an energy." "The human spirit has a certain energy field." These expressions make no sense to me. I'll go along with people who use these types of expressions but later I feel like an impostor because I really did not know what they were talking about!
Again, I'm anything but an authority on all uses of the term "energy:" I just can't follow what people are saying when they use the word in a metaphorical sense.
I do understand "energy" when discussing physics. It's measured in joules.
RE: energy fields--our entire planet is surrounded with an electromagnetic field that's generated by the energy emitted towards us by the sun, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a positive electrical charge. The Earth, due to it's iron core, has a negative charge. These two influences give everything on earth that is alive, and rocks as well, an energy field. I discussed this with a physicist at a national science lab near where I live. This is old news, many generations old. Science education is way behind the times. And this electromagnetic charge that we and all of nature has (without it we'd be dead; the body works based on the positive and negative charges of the minerals we take in, the calcium in our bones, etc.) is how the gemstones in Tibetan herbal medicines work: each has its own subtle electrical charge that kick-starts cells that are ailing and don't have enough energy to heal. This has been proven in science labs in Germany and Austria.
Totally understood. Yes. Thanks for the reminder Dakini. When people refer to "energy" I like it when the referent in use can be measured.
When they talk of the "energy" of a night club, or a cemetary or a holy place. I don't mind THAT much.
When they connect the two referents I get a bit upset because my understanding of what's being said starts to unravel.
FWIW.
One thing I will have to look into is the electrical charge of gemstones. AFAIK, it's electrostatic charge which is the same as anything which has an electrostatic charge. Of the only four known forces this one is a form of electromagnetism. Not spewing out information, just wondering how this can be connected to Tibetan herbal medicines. Yes western science and eastern science both have validity and have much to learn from each other. Very cool.
Spew away, Roger; don't hold back. This is interesting and relevant stuff. Check out the film, on DVD: The Knowledge of Healing. It's all about Tibetan medicine. In the middle of the film they show Germans picking apart the "precious pills" (the ones with gemstones in them) and analyzing them to see what makes them tick (so to speak). It's my favorite part of the film. Might answer your questions.
Anyway, if stones were such medical miracle workers I tend to think they would be used - it's not like real, working advice from times past which really works has been abandoned. I must admit I've never heard anything about the body working because of magnetism. I will try to look into the matter..
Anyway, if stones were such medical miracle workers I tend to think they would be used - it's not like real, working advice from times past which really works has been abandoned.
Milk of magnesia uses minerals. Kaoline and Morphine is a medication using minerals. Charcoal is used as a digestive cleansing aid.
I must admit I've never heard anything about the body working because of magnetism. I will try to look into the matter..
Check out this link. I have some of their products.
I haven't read the entire thread, but this has been on my mind lately as well. Are plants inhabited by the silent watcher, the same as animals? If our consciousness is shared by all life, am i also a tree? Do plants experience life or are they simply biological robots? For that matter, are humans just biological robots? ...because from a certain perspective all choices are made based on past experiences, and it is not hard to take the perspective of humans being nothing more than biological machines... the only difference being the true self... but again that begs the question if a blade of grass has the true self as well.
Also if one were to decide that plants are sentient, then where does one draw the line?
Does a rock have consciousness? A single celled organism? A single drop of water? a virus?
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited January 2011
I think the fundamental question is "Where do we (each, as individuals) draw the line? And the answer, in this specific matter, is - where we decide, for ourselves, as skilfully as we can, what is best for us. And each opinion is different, each view is different, and every person is different.
And nobody has a right to decry anybody else's decisions because it's better to accept, than intercept.
Any anatomy and physiology textbook will explain some of it; muscle contractions work in part based on the positive and negative charges of the potassium, calcium, sodium, etc. that we ingest every day. And our heart is electric, too.
The part about the sun and the planet charging everything magnetically would be in a physics or possibly cosmology book. Our bodies are polarized into positive and negative charges at the head and foot. This is how polarity therapy (a type of hands-on healing) works.
Anyway, if stones were such medical miracle workers I tend to think they would be used - it's not like real, working advice from times past which really works has been abandoned. I must admit I've never heard anything about the body working because of magnetism. I will try to look into the matter..
Any anatomy and physiology textbook will explain some of it; muscle contractions work in part based on the positive and negative charges of the potassium, calcium, sodium, etc. that we ingest every day. And our heart is electric, too.
The part about the sun and the planet charging everything magnetically would be in a physics or possibly cosmology book. Our bodies are polarized into positive and negative charges at the head and foot. This is how polarity therapy (a type of hands-on healing) works.
Plants!? I have enough trouble feeling..., well..., not good about what we do to the animals. I say a little prayer TO the fish or chicken when I'm forced to eat animal protein now and then (for current health reasons - long story - boring too).
Nevertheless we are in a kind of hell where animals have to kill each other to survive. Makes me upset now and then and can't wait to "get out."
I have to do more research on it. Then when I see those animal shelter TV ads I have to look away. WOW. IT's heart wrenching for me because I'm not managing it right. Any advice? a quick link or clue, would be appreciated.
As for consuming plants? My brain can't take anymore, I have enough trouble with the animals sooooo: I'm gonna eat the plants and have ZERO regard for them!
Plants!? As for consuming plants? My brain can't take anymore, I have enough trouble with the animals sooooo: I'm gonna eat the plants and have ZERO regard for them!
I think that's a valid choice, Roger. Just like the Tibetans and the Mongols who eat meat. (Not to mention the rest of us... ) And I think saying a prayer before consuming the animal is also valid and helpful. Like Native hunters who thank the animal for sacrificing itself so the hunters and their families can live, before they shoot the animal. It plays in important role in the psychology of meat-eating.
Keep up the good work. Anyway, no need to panic just because some of us regard plants as sentient, or quasi-sentient.
Well, I have not eaten any non-vegetarian from birth, as I am born into an orthpdox hindu family... And, can anyone tell me what is given in the suttas of Buddhism??????
As far as I can tell from a quick research, this magnetism-thing is also in the area of spiritual-healing which has never been confirmed. The closest I get for an answer is that an immense magnetic field (of the like never seen) would kill a human being by drawing out the iron in our cells, destroying them in the process. There seems to be a magnetic field around humans, but not of a kind which has anything to do with health or lack thereof. I will look further into it though
I found something useful now - apparently this magnetism terapy is also considered a pseudoscience for the same reasons as the sentien-plants theory. It's even prohibited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell any magnet as having healing properties in the US due to the lack of evidence.
Also, scientific method is not limited by contemporary technology - only (im)possible experiments are. You do not have to own Harry Potter #7 in order to read and understand the first.
If you don't have the means to the technology to make an experiment possible, the scientific method becomes useless no?. What good is it if you can't even employ it? For example, I propose for the sake of argument, that human energy fields possibly do exist and possibly could serve a constructive and significant purpose. However, because our current limited level of technology, we are simply unable to measure it. That statement could possibly be a true statement. To say it's definitely false is illogical. Don't you think?
As for the OP, I don't think plants are sentient because they don't have "brains" while animals do have brains. The difference between plants and animals is a brain which means it is capable of perceiving or feeling, using the dictionary definition of sentience.
Scientific theories are able to foretell what will happen in a given experiment (it has to be in order to make a safe experiment). Einstein foretold that light will bend when encountering a large object due to the gravitational force, decades before the observations were possible.
You can't disprove that I have a green dragon under my bed which I feed virgin princesses twice a year. Given your current knowledge about dragons, princesses, beds and me - does it sound likely? No. But you can't prove it wrong. That exactly is why the one making a postulate is also the one who must prove that he is right - a very basic and sound principle of science (and debate by the way). So I don't even have to admit, that you could be right about the energy-field - you have to prove yourself right in the first place. To your luck many people have already tried to prove such a thing, so you don't have to try it yourself - but they have all been wrong (as in "they haven't found anything") or not conducting proper science. So currently no such thing exists - or more accurately: We have no reason to take into account that such a thing could exist. Even if we look outside physics, there is no evidence that people operating with such a "field" are any healthier, luckier or happier than everyone else - on the contrary believers in "alternative" explanations run a much higher risk of treating a serious illness with "leaves of elderflower" than the rest of us, who just visit the doctor and get some real medicine (which is thoroughly tested as safe and effective). Buddha did also warn about such practices. For hundreds of years medical practice was more dangerous than being sick, and people recovered more in spite of the treatment than because of it. With the breakthrough of modern science it became possible to distinguish between true and false - to this day, all but a minute few of the "treatments" of old have been proven to be useless or even hazardous. Again - there is a reason for the scientific method. A method, being abstract, is not dependent on technology.
As far as I can tell from a quick research, this magnetism-thing is also in the area of spiritual-healing which has never been confirmed. There seems to be a magnetic field around humans, but not of a kind which has anything to do with health or lack thereof. I will look further into it though
I'm not sure what you mean by "this magnetism-thing". Everything living, including the planet, has an electromagnetic field, that's just the nature of life. If you're referring specifically to the use of the human e-m field for healing, well, you're right, that hasn't been proven scientifically in the West, so we can agree to disagree on that. McGill University in Canada did a study 20-30 years ago of changes in water molecules that took place after a healer held a jar of water. That's the only relevant study in the West that I can think of off the top of my head. But the "healer effect" has been studied extensively in Poland and Russia. The voltage of the average person is very low, about 5 Hz, they say. Healers tend to come in at around 9 or 10 Hz (when resting). A Polish healer living in the Washington DC area was studied, and it was found that when he did his healing thing, there were huge ("impossible" according to the researcher) energy surges of up to around 80 volts. (See the film: "Bioenergy: A Healing Art" on DVD).
Seeker 242 is right, in that it's only been in the last 15-20 years approx., that there has been technology developed that was sensitive enough to register the weak bio-electromagnetic field. It was literally under the radar before then. It also helps to have an open mind, which is hard to find in the scientific community in the West, especially in the US. It's not scientific to just dismiss phenomena or theories out of hand; science is about putting things to the test.
But what exactly does it do which helps people, that other treatments don't? Also - why is it good to have a high voltage in your body (if that is even possible)? Could it be damaging instead? The examinations you refer to are obviously of a kind which the scientific community cannot endorse - hence the pseudoscience label.
Science is not about testing, science is about describing the world as it reveals itself to us in a way that is as close to truth (reality) as we can get. To do that in an appropriate way, a method has developed which ensures that we all get to the same conclusion when doing the same thing. F.ex. we can look at the sky and agree that it's what we would call "blue". That's a very simple experiment. If we want to see which light conditions suit a specific species plant best, we control all factors around the plant and vary the light. It has to be done to a large quantity of plants, which are all of the exact same kind with the exact same growing conditions - the only variable is how much light they get. If it wasn't conducted in that way, no one would know which conditions control what and how they play together and therefore the experiment would be failed. It would be impossible to tell whether it was the amount of water + sunlight which made a difference, or the soil mix + sunlight or something entirely different. When the experiment has been carried out in a proper way, it must be repeated and give the same results overall. If it doesn't, then something is wrong somewhere. Typically this is the step where pseudoscience is revealed - other scientists cannot replicate the experiment and get the same results. Most often they do not get overwhelming results - they get nothing (like was the case with the plant-sentience).
An interesting observation is, that pseudoscience is often found where the "successful" pseudoscientific experiments enable someone to sell something of no or very little value for very high prices - magnets, rocks, pieces of bone, advice on how to live, communion with the dead, decoration tips, saltwater, oils, creme, vitamins, talismans, pieces of cloth... ..
Sometimes the medical system fails people (especially in the US), so they turn to traditional healers. For Indigenous people, it's the natural choice, and in some parts of the world, Native people can't afford modern medical care anyway. But what hands-on healing "energy healing" can accomplish that medical science can't would take up too much space here. And speaking of talismans or sleight-of-hand, these things are intended to trigger a placebo effect that can bring about healing. The mind is a very powerful potential healing force that traditional people recognized and harnessed for healing in ancient times.
...are animals aware of their own existence? Are they capable of self-reflection?
Have you ever had a dog? If so, you'd already know the answer to those questions.
LOL. Taking self-reflection literally... . My cats prove this every time I hold them next to a wall mirror and "force" them to look at themselves. They absolutely resist and successfully stubbornly refuse to look at themselves!! I've had many cats and they ALL did this!
Okay okay, that may not mean they are self aware but is sure proves something!
Good question. No, seriously, When my cats see another neighborhood cat they go nuts! When they look at a cat picture in a cat magazine they get a bit spooked (My wife gets "Cat Fancy" magazine with the HD pinups of cats).
Then there's the mirror exercise I describe above. TOTALLY different reaction, they WILL NOT look at themselves. If I put my hand up and snap my fingers (so they can only see it via reflection) they will use the mirror to check out the sound and fuss I made with my hands.
WEIRD!
Next step? Same thing but use another cat and not my fingers. Will they look at ANOTHER cat via reflection only? If so I guess it will prove cats know what THEY THEMSELVES look like and know THEY THEMSELVES are in the mirror and "refuse" look at __themselves__! That might prove they are self-aware or self-conscious! HAHAHAHA!
Need federal grant money to conduct this research!
My girlfriends dog saw itself in the reflection from a laptop screen (it's a chihuahua), growled, sneaked closer and looked behind the computer. Got confused there was no dog. Repeated several times
But, whenever an animal is attacked, it immediately defends itself... So the idea of self defence is there... So, does that count as sentience?????? And what do Buddhists think about evolution??? I heard Ajahn Brahm say that it was craving... So, plants evolve because of craving.. Does that count as sentient???
No, it defends itself if it can't get away. Fighting is not recommendable as a survival strategy. There is no more sentience in fighting or defending oneself, than in foraging or mating.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Dogs do not go towards something positive, they move away form something potentially negative. Wolves inhabit vast areas of forest, and regularly howl loudly to advise other wolfpacks of their whereabouts. This signal is intended as a communication denoting territory, and the wish to AVOID confrontation. Fighting means someone is going to inevitably get hurt. And that's the last thing a pack leader is prepared to risk. it leaves him potentially vulnerable, and the pack definitely vulnerable. Fighting is a survival instinct and a last resort.
>That exactly is why the one making a postulate is also the one who must prove that he is right - a very basic and sound principle of science (and debate by the way). So I don't even have to admit, that you could be right about the energy-field - you have to prove yourself right in the first place.
Agreed, But like I said, I propose that I can't because our current technology is simply not capable of doing so. What then?
>To your luck many people have already tried to prove such a thing, so you don't have to try it yourself - but they have all been wrong (as in "they haven't found anything") or not conducting proper science. So currently no such thing exists - or more accurately: We have no reason to take into account that such a thing could exist.
Saying it does not exist and saying there is no good reason to believe it exists are two very different statements. The differences are subtle but significant. The first is denying it while the second is not denying it, but rather simply not affirming it. Not affirming it is not equivalent to denying it. If one takes the first statement as true, with regards to the human energy field, then one is committing the logical fallacy of "argumentum ad ignorantiam" or Argument from ignorance. From wikipedia. "Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance, is an informal logical fallacy. It asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false or that a proposition is false because it has not been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option: there is insufficient investigation and the proposition has not yet been proven to be either true or false. In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof."
Wikipedia correctly points out that Carl Sagan understands this subtle difference. "Carl Sagan famously criticized the practice by referring to it as "impatience with ambiguity", pointing out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Given the fact at all matter is composed of nothing but energy fields interacting with one another I don't think is is unreasonable to propose that the matter itself, the human body, has an energy field that interacts with other things in some way. To conclude that it does not simply because it has not been proven, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, is illogical and very unscientific.
- why is it good to have a high voltage in your body (if that is even possible)? Could it be damaging instead? The examinations you refer to are obviously of a kind which the scientific community cannot endorse - hence the pseudoscience label.
Science is not about testing, science is about describing the world as it reveals itself to us..
The Polish healer said that his healing sessions tended to really exhaust him (especially cumulatively, after a day of it, I think), until he got some advice from Tibetan lamas, who taught him how to better regulate the energy. So apparently it was a little damaging until he learned how to manage his gift.
It is possible, he was wired up in a lab and tested. I don't object to the pseudo-science label; I realize this is the way the world (especially the Western world, which is particularly close-minded and quick to dismiss phenomena without investigation) works. I have confidence that this will all be adequately proven in time.
Of course science is about testing. One forms a hypothesis, then tests it. Or one examines unusual phenomena, as the Germans and Austrians did with Tibetan mineral remedies. Or one takes someone else's hypothesis, or test results, and tries to replicate the experiment to prove or disprove the validity of someone's previous test results.
I've now been confused about who said what earlier, and I might have tagged Dakini where Seeker242 should have been. Sorry if I made a mistake.
@seeker "Agreed, But like I said, I propose that I can't because our current technology is simply not capable of doing so. What then? "
Yes, but as I said, a method is not limited by technology - only possible experiments. I agree on the rest of your post and I admit I may be too quick to rhetorically dismiss certain things - the right thing to say would be "there is not reason to believe, due to lack of evidence". I feel inclined to add, that I think research should be conducted into fields yet classified as pseudoscientific, until it has been undeniably proven that there is nothing to look for anymore. In relation to this thread, I think that point has been reached - plants simply are not sentient.
Part of science is about testing. The test (experiment) is a relatively new addition to science though, and (almost) only applies to natural science.
The quick dismissal is necessary in order to ensure proper results. That science may move too slowly and new findings overlooked for decades due to that is a classic and rightful criticism. What one thinks is individual, but I personally say it's better to be safe than sorry. If some doctor said that there might be some effect from the use of some new alternative method, focus could be taken away from the old, reliable treatment. Even worse - if the alternative only took symptoms, people could ultimately die from lack of treatment. When talking medicine (where I think this discussion is most important) the development does seem to go in the direction of more complicated, modern treatments - and hastily away from traditional treatments. As there is no reason to not like traditional treatments at all (medicine being pragmatic), the development must be objectively justified.
About the high-voltage-in-polish-man, I don't know what to say. It sounds strange and in the light of contemporary medicine; useless
About the high-voltage-in-polish-man, I don't know what to say. It sounds strange and in the light of contemporary medicine; useless
Well, it does sound strange from a Western perspective. It's more of an Eastern thing. And I think the high-voltage surges are probably not unusual for healers. more research needs to be done.
Aren't you in Europe somewhere, Ficus--Denmark? The medical education and treatments are much better in Europe than in the US, so people in the US tend to look to "alternative" treatments when they have chronic illness. My impression is that in some countries in Europe, much of what is considered "alternative" here is part of the regular medical system there: herbs/vitamins, massage, acupuncture, mineral baths (Germany),Tibetan medicine (Germany, Switzerland), and so on. It used to be that way in Canada as well, until recently. In the US "mainstream" medicine is about pharmaceuticals and surgery (a corporate agenda). Underlying causes of illness aren't addressed. Count your blessings.
Again, it depends what the voltage is. Shuffling your feet can make you give off 1000s of volts in static electricity, for example. Without saying where the voltage surge was measured and under what conditions, the statement is meaningless.
Comments
@shift I doubt you would find anything about ghosts in any credible peer reviewed journal because the whole idea is considered "quacky" by the majority of the scientific community.
"This place has an energy." "The human spirit has a certain energy field." These expressions make no sense to me. I'll go along with people who use these types of expressions but later I feel like an impostor because I really did not know what they were talking about!
Again, I'm anything but an authority on all uses of the term "energy:" I just can't follow what people are saying when they use the word in a metaphorical sense.
I do understand "energy" when discussing physics. It's measured in joules.
There has been plenty of work done on ESP and ghosts. It's just that it's never conclusive.
For example, as a student, Dr. Sue Blackmore had an OOBE (out of body experience) and assumed that she was actually out of her body. She went into parapsychology and started trying to prove the "closed minded scientists" wrong. She found that all her experiments gave chance results. She tried the same experiments with psychics, without psychics under all kinds of conditions. Still, no statistically significant correlation to be found.
So, it's not that scientists don't keep an open mind and try to investigate a wide range of phenomena. It's just that unexplained paranormal activity has not been found.
"God," whatever _that_ is, or "ultimate secrets of the universe" will NEVER be revealed by science.
Just look at it's method (attached below) and see for yourself:
It's funny how the meanings get twisted around. Bless the people TRYING to understand things BUT try to remove what's needlessly puzzling things up. IOW, if you listened to the AA guy, you'd think he made sense, when actually he just went thru the roof with a slippery twisting of meaning. LOL.
We can easily do this when discussing a plants' inner experience.
Me personally? It might be a continuum but I'm drawing the line here: I think it requires a central nervous system to for an organism to have an awareness that we humans can relate to and speculate on. A single cell or a bacterium certainly senses it's environment but it's got no collection point where it amalgamates different sorts of experiences and comes up with behaviors and intentions demonstrating something greater than the sum of its parts.
Oops! That might not be very clear! More (or less?) COFFEE!!! IOW, Somewhere along the line a bacterium and a squirrel become very different as far as "sentience" is concerned.
Regarding a plant's nervous system... it's not central, but it's still quite effective.
http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/pdf/NeuroPlantTZ-Biologia.pdf
Shift+1 said it
Also, scientific method is not limited by contemporary technology - only (im)possible experiments are. You do not have to own Harry Potter #7 in order to read and understand the first.
Nidish, if the goal of your inquiry is to ascertain whether or not plants are sentient, in order to decide if you can eat plants, (I assume you've eliminated meat from your diet?), you might have to starve if your goal is to eliminate the consumption of sentient beings. However, lots of Buddhists eat meat and don't give it a second thought. Inner Asian Buddhists are nomadic, you know. They grow and herd meat for their own consumption, and they actually do the killing themselves. (I have a sheep-slaughtering ceremony on film.) Nothing like a good shot of reality to clarify things. Different parts of the world have very different ideas about what Buddhist practice looks like for laypeople.
RE: energy fields--our entire planet is surrounded with an electromagnetic field that's generated by the energy emitted towards us by the sun, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a positive electrical charge. The Earth, due to it's iron core, has a negative charge. These two influences give everything on earth that is alive, and rocks as well, an energy field. I discussed this with a physicist at a national science lab near where I live. This is old news, many generations old. Science education is way behind the times.
And this electromagnetic charge that we and all of nature has (without it we'd be dead; the body works based on the positive and negative charges of the minerals we take in, the calcium in our bones, etc.) is how the gemstones in Tibetan herbal medicines work: each has its own subtle electrical charge that kick-starts cells that are ailing and don't have enough energy to heal. This has been proven in science labs in Germany and Austria.
And FYI, Buddhists never brag. About anything. We leave our egos at the door when we take refuge in the 3 Jewels.
When they talk of the "energy" of a night club, or a cemetary or a holy place. I don't mind THAT much.
When they connect the two referents I get a bit upset because my understanding of what's being said starts to unravel.
FWIW.
One thing I will have to look into is the electrical charge of gemstones. AFAIK, it's electrostatic charge which is the same as anything which has an electrostatic charge. Of the only four known forces this one is a form of electromagnetism. Not spewing out information, just wondering how this can be connected to Tibetan herbal medicines. Yes western science and eastern science both have validity and have much to learn from each other. Very cool.
Damn it, I've been unmasked!
Anyway, if stones were such medical miracle workers I tend to think they would be used - it's not like real, working advice from times past which really works has been abandoned. I must admit I've never heard anything about the body working because of magnetism. I will try to look into the matter..
Charcoal is used as a digestive cleansing aid. Check out this link. I have some of their products.
http://www.relievepain.com/?gclid=CLatxK_YsKYCFQJO4QodyUqrZw
Also if one were to decide that plants are sentient, then where does one draw the line?
Does a rock have consciousness?
A single celled organism?
A single drop of water?
a virus?
And the answer, in this specific matter, is - where we decide, for ourselves, as skilfully as we can, what is best for us.
And each opinion is different, each view is different, and every person is different.
And nobody has a right to decry anybody else's decisions because it's better to accept, than intercept.
But they are alive!
In a constant state of flux, yet in a constant state of balance that is life itself.
Coming going coming going based on conditions. Impermanence in action.
Nature is a great teacher for any student of enlightenment. We are not separate.
Everything is frozen around here and seams dead right now. But it is just a temporary phenomena.
Where's my seed catalog.
The part about the sun and the planet charging everything magnetically would be in a physics or possibly cosmology book. Our bodies are polarized into positive and negative charges at the head and foot. This is how polarity therapy (a type of hands-on healing) works.
The part about the sun and the planet charging everything magnetically would be in a physics or possibly cosmology book. Our bodies are polarized into positive and negative charges at the head and foot. This is how polarity therapy (a type of hands-on healing) works.
Nevertheless we are in a kind of hell where animals have to kill each other to survive. Makes me upset now and then and can't wait to "get out."
I have to do more research on it. Then when I see those animal shelter TV ads I have to look away. WOW. IT's heart wrenching for me because I'm not managing it right. Any advice? a quick link or clue, would be appreciated.
As for consuming plants? My brain can't take anymore, I have enough trouble with the animals sooooo: I'm gonna eat the plants and have ZERO regard for them!
Keep up the good work. Anyway, no need to panic just because some of us regard plants as sentient, or quasi-sentient.
As far as I can tell from a quick research, this magnetism-thing is also in the area of spiritual-healing which has never been confirmed. The closest I get for an answer is that an immense magnetic field (of the like never seen) would kill a human being by drawing out the iron in our cells, destroying them in the process. There seems to be a magnetic field around humans, but not of a kind which has anything to do with health or lack thereof. I will look further into it though
It's even prohibited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell any magnet as having healing properties in the US due to the lack of evidence.
See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4582282.stm
Edit: It's not illegal as-such, but it requires a clearance. No clearance has ever been given.
As for the OP, I don't think plants are sentient because they don't have "brains" while animals do have brains. The difference between plants and animals is a brain which means it is capable of perceiving or feeling, using the dictionary definition of sentience.
You can't disprove that I have a green dragon under my bed which I feed virgin princesses twice a year. Given your current knowledge about dragons, princesses, beds and me - does it sound likely? No. But you can't prove it wrong.
That exactly is why the one making a postulate is also the one who must prove that he is right - a very basic and sound principle of science (and debate by the way). So I don't even have to admit, that you could be right about the energy-field - you have to prove yourself right in the first place.
To your luck many people have already tried to prove such a thing, so you don't have to try it yourself - but they have all been wrong (as in "they haven't found anything") or not conducting proper science.
So currently no such thing exists - or more accurately: We have no reason to take into account that such a thing could exist.
Even if we look outside physics, there is no evidence that people operating with such a "field" are any healthier, luckier or happier than everyone else - on the contrary believers in "alternative" explanations run a much higher risk of treating a serious illness with "leaves of elderflower" than the rest of us, who just visit the doctor and get some real medicine (which is thoroughly tested as safe and effective).
Buddha did also warn about such practices. For hundreds of years medical practice was more dangerous than being sick, and people recovered more in spite of the treatment than because of it. With the breakthrough of modern science it became possible to distinguish between true and false - to this day, all but a minute few of the "treatments" of old have been proven to be useless or even hazardous.
Again - there is a reason for the scientific method. A method, being abstract, is not dependent on technology.
Seeker 242 is right, in that it's only been in the last 15-20 years approx., that there has been technology developed that was sensitive enough to register the weak bio-electromagnetic field. It was literally under the radar before then. It also helps to have an open mind, which is hard to find in the scientific community in the West, especially in the US. It's not scientific to just dismiss phenomena or theories out of hand; science is about putting things to the test.
What's the frequency of what exactly? What's the voltage of what exactly?
But what exactly does it do which helps people, that other treatments don't?
Also - why is it good to have a high voltage in your body (if that is even possible)? Could it be damaging instead?
The examinations you refer to are obviously of a kind which the scientific community cannot endorse - hence the pseudoscience label.
Science is not about testing, science is about describing the world as it reveals itself to us in a way that is as close to truth (reality) as we can get. To do that in an appropriate way, a method has developed which ensures that we all get to the same conclusion when doing the same thing.
F.ex. we can look at the sky and agree that it's what we would call "blue". That's a very simple experiment.
If we want to see which light conditions suit a specific species plant best, we control all factors around the plant and vary the light. It has to be done to a large quantity of plants, which are all of the exact same kind with the exact same growing conditions - the only variable is how much light they get.
If it wasn't conducted in that way, no one would know which conditions control what and how they play together and therefore the experiment would be failed. It would be impossible to tell whether it was the amount of water + sunlight which made a difference, or the soil mix + sunlight or something entirely different.
When the experiment has been carried out in a proper way, it must be repeated and give the same results overall. If it doesn't, then something is wrong somewhere.
Typically this is the step where pseudoscience is revealed - other scientists cannot replicate the experiment and get the same results. Most often they do not get overwhelming results - they get nothing (like was the case with the plant-sentience).
An interesting observation is, that pseudoscience is often found where the "successful" pseudoscientific experiments enable someone to sell something of no or very little value for very high prices - magnets, rocks, pieces of bone, advice on how to live, communion with the dead, decoration tips, saltwater, oils, creme, vitamins, talismans, pieces of cloth...
..
And speaking of talismans or sleight-of-hand, these things are intended to trigger a placebo effect that can bring about healing. The mind is a very powerful potential healing force that traditional people recognized and harnessed for healing in ancient times.
Okay okay, that may not mean they are self aware but is sure proves something!
Then there's the mirror exercise I describe above. TOTALLY different reaction, they WILL NOT look at themselves. If I put my hand up and snap my fingers (so they can only see it via reflection) they will use the mirror to check out the sound and fuss I made with my hands.
WEIRD!
Next step? Same thing but use another cat and not my fingers. Will they look at ANOTHER cat via reflection only? If so I guess it will prove cats know what THEY THEMSELVES look like and know THEY THEMSELVES are in the mirror and "refuse" look at __themselves__! That might prove they are self-aware or self-conscious! HAHAHAHA!
Need federal grant money to conduct this research!
There is no more sentience in fighting or defending oneself, than in foraging or mating.
Wolves inhabit vast areas of forest, and regularly howl loudly to advise other wolfpacks of their whereabouts. This signal is intended as a communication denoting territory, and the wish to AVOID confrontation.
Fighting means someone is going to inevitably get hurt. And that's the last thing a pack leader is prepared to risk. it leaves him potentially vulnerable, and the pack definitely vulnerable. Fighting is a survival instinct and a last resort.
to every creature except humans, of course....
>That exactly is why the one making a postulate is also the one who must prove that he is right - a very basic and sound principle of science (and debate by the way). So I don't even have to admit, that you could be right about the energy-field - you have to prove yourself right in the first place.
Agreed, But like I said, I propose that I can't because our current technology is simply not capable of doing so. What then?
>To your luck many people have already tried to prove such a thing, so you don't have to try it yourself - but they have all been wrong (as in "they haven't found anything") or not conducting proper science.
So currently no such thing exists - or more accurately: We have no reason to take into account that such a thing could exist.
Saying it does not exist and saying there is no good reason to believe it exists are two very different statements. The differences are subtle but significant. The first is denying it while the second is not denying it, but rather simply not affirming it. Not affirming it is not equivalent to denying it. If one takes the first statement as true, with regards to the human energy field, then one is committing the logical fallacy of "argumentum ad ignorantiam" or Argument from ignorance. From wikipedia. "Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or appeal to ignorance, is an informal logical fallacy. It asserts that a proposition is necessarily true because it has not been proven false or that a proposition is false because it has not been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option: there is insufficient investigation and the proposition has not yet been proven to be either true or false. In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof."
Wikipedia correctly points out that Carl Sagan understands this subtle difference. "Carl Sagan famously criticized the practice by referring to it as "impatience with ambiguity", pointing out that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Given the fact at all matter is composed of nothing but energy fields interacting with one another I don't think is is unreasonable to propose that the matter itself, the human body, has an energy field that interacts with other things in some way. To conclude that it does not simply because it has not been proven, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, is illogical and very unscientific.
It is possible, he was wired up in a lab and tested. I don't object to the pseudo-science label; I realize this is the way the world (especially the Western world, which is particularly close-minded and quick to dismiss phenomena without investigation) works. I have confidence that this will all be adequately proven in time.
Of course science is about testing. One forms a hypothesis, then tests it. Or one examines unusual phenomena, as the Germans and Austrians did with Tibetan mineral remedies. Or one takes someone else's hypothesis, or test results, and tries to replicate the experiment to prove or disprove the validity of someone's previous test results.
@seeker
"Agreed, But like I said, I propose that I can't because our current technology is simply not capable of doing so. What then? "
Yes, but as I said, a method is not limited by technology - only possible experiments.
I agree on the rest of your post and I admit I may be too quick to rhetorically dismiss certain things - the right thing to say would be "there is not reason to believe, due to lack of evidence". I feel inclined to add, that I think research should be conducted into fields yet classified as pseudoscientific, until it has been undeniably proven that there is nothing to look for anymore. In relation to this thread, I think that point has been reached - plants simply are not sentient.
@Dakini
Part of science is about testing. The test (experiment) is a relatively new addition to science though, and (almost) only applies to natural science.
The quick dismissal is necessary in order to ensure proper results. That science may move too slowly and new findings overlooked for decades due to that is a classic and rightful criticism. What one thinks is individual, but I personally say it's better to be safe than sorry. If some doctor said that there might be some effect from the use of some new alternative method, focus could be taken away from the old, reliable treatment. Even worse - if the alternative only took symptoms, people could ultimately die from lack of treatment.
When talking medicine (where I think this discussion is most important) the development does seem to go in the direction of more complicated, modern treatments - and hastily away from traditional treatments. As there is no reason to not like traditional treatments at all (medicine being pragmatic), the development must be objectively justified.
About the high-voltage-in-polish-man, I don't know what to say. It sounds strange and in the light of contemporary medicine; useless
Aren't you in Europe somewhere, Ficus--Denmark? The medical education and treatments are much better in Europe than in the US, so people in the US tend to look to "alternative" treatments when they have chronic illness. My impression is that in some countries in Europe, much of what is considered "alternative" here is part of the regular medical system there: herbs/vitamins, massage, acupuncture, mineral baths (Germany),Tibetan medicine (Germany, Switzerland), and so on. It used to be that way in Canada as well, until recently. In the US "mainstream" medicine is about pharmaceuticals and surgery (a corporate agenda). Underlying causes of illness aren't addressed. Count your blessings.