Have you experienced something science could not explain?

[tar]

JillSwift,

 

"Science as a method isn't interchangeable with "truth". It's how we discover truth."

 

Okay, you can't use the words interchangably, they each have their own meaning, however I will stick to the idea that reality is true, and science is a rather good way to discover the truth.

 

And I fully accept your other points as to the truth and reality of experience, and the limitations of applying scientific method on past events where all the contributing factors are no longer present to study.

 

But even still, certain scientifically based explainations can be made in retrospect.

 

I continually attempt to find the real explaination for my one "saw a ghost" experience. Mass hypnosis, embellishing my memory based on other recounts of the events, adjusting my memory of the events based on later obtained information, my minds attempts to justify emotions and actions at the time, etc. etc.. I even explore the possibility that ghosts are real somethings and we trick ourselves into NOT experiencing them, and discount their existence because otherwise we would have to deal with them, and the consequences of their presence, which we may have already decided was unuseful or undesirable.

 

I don't "believe" in ghosts, they have no known mechanisms within/which to operate under and exist. However I have an image of a man standing in a location where a man of that description would probably not have been standing, and the knowledge that a man of that description once did exist, and in fact hung himself at that location. I could easily attribute the image to suggestion and imagination, if I had known about the way the man dressed, and that he hung himself at that spot, before I obtained the image of him standing there. However I had the experience first and gained the knowledge latter. I suppose there is a good possibility that I superimposed the image of the man standing there, on my memory of the day, in the years after the incident, and if I could remember the actual "turning of the corner" without any post-concieved notions, I might not have seen anybody standing there at all. In reality, we may just all have been feeding off of each other's apprehensions and discomfort, decided it would be better to leave, tightened the distributor cap, and left. Later, we embellished and justified, after learning a man had commited suicide at the place.

 

Regards, TAR

[JillSwift]

But even still, certain scientifically based explainations can be made in retrospect.

Well, likely explanations can be ferreted out, but wihout actual evidence, nothing conclusive can be said, and is really just speculation.

 

Your ideas about what may have generated your own ghost story are rational and likely, given they stick within known mechanisms and phenomena. However, precisely what it was that made it happen we can't really know in the scientific sense. Evidence is everything, and one person's perception (or even several people's perceptions) isn't evidence.

 

That's the hardest part of science to tackle, for me, being able to say "I don't know."

[tar]

JillSwift,

 

I find it hard as well (to say "I dont know"). I like to think that it does though make sense, and fit together in some way. It sort of has to. And as such, the possibility exists that someone else does know, or at least has a better, more realistic explaination of those things I don't understand. And even if something has never been figured out, and written down, or shared with other humans, I still imagine the possibility that someone else, has put the right 2 and 2 together, to grasp the truth of a given situation. And even if the sum total of all knowledge, however gleaned, from the beginning of life on this planet, until now, falls short of explaining certain real things, I still hold open the hope, and the possibility, that at some point, someone, or some group of somebodies, will figure it out.

 

The exact conditions of my ghost experience cannot be restaged, but others have had unexplained, but real experiences along the same lines. As the evidence mounts, concerning what is and isn't present, in similar experiences, there will probably come a point at which most reasonable people would agree upon what it is that really is happening in those similar type situations.

 

I do not rule out far fetched explanations. Just unreal explainations. If there is no real mechanism, that fits in with the rest of reality, then it just ain't real. It just ain't true, it just doesn't explain it.

 

For instance.(far fetched.) Perhaps humans have the ability to sense the imprint of other humans on a location where a human has passed. Indian trackers can glean such info from disturbed leaves, and subtle imprints in moss and such. Humans leave a scent, obvious to dogs, but perhaps slightly perceptible to other humans as well. The vibrations of a human voice can leave an imprint on vinyl if the vibrations vibrate a needle pressed against it, and can be "heard" again if the needle is allowed to ride along the same track, and repeat the exact vibrations. What other things in our surroundings are imprinted with the photons, chemicals and vibrations, eminating from or reflected off our being? However we effect reality, does not ever really have a way to be erased. It does not seem to be reality's way. Reality just seems to absorb it, and incorporate it, into what is. Far fetched, but not unrealistic, that humans can experience another human, even after they are dead.

 

As a strange example. My mother, as she was a week away from dying of cancer, signed a series of birthday cards, with her weakened scrawl, and gave my sister her small savings, with the understanding that my sister would mail them with included bills, at the appropriate times. Rather strange for my daughters to receive birthday wishes for years after, from their departed Grandmother, but there was no doubt that they were indeed from her.(with some assistance from my sister and the post office.)

 

But her imprint was truely experienced.

 

Regards, TAR

 

P.S. Random thought. When the relected photons off your body reach the eyes of your neighbor, he/she sees you, you are real, and alive. Other photons reach other eyes, farther away. Maybe a photon or two gathered carefully by a device on Alpha Centauri will announce your presence in reality today, 4.3 years from now. Or what you were up to 4.3 years ago is real, NOW (minds eye view of universal now) on Alpha Centauri. Far enough away, and you are just being born. Or an observer at the proper distance, could just NOW (universal now, again) be witnessing the day on Earth that my mom signed the cards.

[forufes]

 

"Science as a method isn't interchangeable with "truth". It's how we discover truth."

 

Okay, you can't use the words interchangably, they each have their own meaning, however I will stick to the idea that reality is true, and science is a rather good way to discover the truth.

but isn't science

a way to explain the truth?

 

it takes a founded happening, analyzes it, notes down it's findings and stores it to use it afterwards in analyzing some other happening..

 

when you say;"discover the truth".. it's like you're saying the truth exists, and can be grasped by science -or any other method for all that matters-, it's like you're saying the universe is based on 100% perfect scientific laws and science is advancing to unveil them and become perfect..and "discover the truth"..

 

what i'm trying to say is, truth doesn't follow science, science follows truth(and you can substitute "reality" for "truth")

 

if someday a guy had his skull cracked, was found to have no brain, and continued living, would he be wrong or would brainology be wrong?

[tar]

Forufes,

 

"what i'm trying to say is, truth doesn't follow science, science follows truth(and you can substitute "reality" for "truth")"

 

But when it comes to saying what is real, and what is true, science has the best approach. A single human, born in the woods, raised by wolfs would certainly be able, to by himself/herself experience reality, and by himself/herself determine what is real, and what is true. You have to run to catch a meal, it gets cold periodically and hot, certain places and things and creatures are dangerous, others good to eat, a big hot bright thing appears sometimes in the sky, etc. etc.

 

But he doesn't have any words for these things, other than wolf body language, grunts and howls. He might learn the things the pack knows, which were probably learned by trial and error, by watching and imitating them. Maybe he howls at the moon because he is sad that the hot thing isn't giving him any warmth. He would probably be better able to plan his day, and arrange his activities, if he had a little science. If he knew a bit more truth about reality. If he knew when the seasons would change, when the night would come, if he knew how to locate and form materials with certain properties into tools and clothes and structures and traps and weapons and such. Takes a lot of trial and error to figure that all out. It is good that the people before and around us are taking the time to experiment and figure out, exactly what is going on in reality, writing it down, checking it against everybody elses information, and advancing the total knowledge, the amount of truth, that the human race has access to.

 

Regards, TAR

 

P.S. Reality would not let him continue living in such a state.(the cracked skull guy with no brain.)

Edited September 15, 2009 by tar
.(the cracked skull guy with no brain.)

[JohnB]

That's the hardest part of science to tackle, for me, being able to say "I don't know."

 

I don't understand. "I don't know" is wonderful, it means that there is something still to learn, to dream about knowing.

 

"Nobody knows" is even better. Because one day somebody will know and they will share that with the rest of us.

 

The day we run out of "I don't knows" is the day we end as a race, because it will mean that all the questions have been answered and that there is nothing new left in the Universe. No more questions, no more impossible dreams.

 

Nothing left to contemplate but continual boredom.

 

We should treasure the "I don't know"s for they lead to growth and knowledge.

[insane_alien]

luckily for us at the moment answering one 'i don't know' usually leads to about 50 other 'i don't knows'

 

and it should be pointed out that treasuring 'i don't know's doesn't mean we should avoid turning them into 'i know's

[JillSwift]

I don't understand. "I don't know" is wonderful, it means that there is something still to learn, to dream about knowing.

 

"Nobody knows" is even better. Because one day somebody will know and they will share that with the rest of us.

 

The day we run out of "I don't knows" is the day we end as a race, because it will mean that all the questions have been answered and that there is nothing new left in the Universe. No more questions, no more impossible dreams.

 

Nothing left to contemplate but continual boredom.

 

We should treasure the "I don't know"s for they lead to growth and knowledge.

I was raised in a deeply religious home. Any and all gaps in knowledge were filled with teh bibble.

 

Really. If I said "I don't know" about anything then we sat down and "found out".

 

This led to some seriously strained credibility once my questions stopped being simple, then to the collapse of my faith once the contradictory nature of that book became solidly evident. As I learned how to be a skeptic, however, I found that I had a terrible habit of filling in what I didn't know with speculation, so that I didn't have to "not know".

 

So, on the intellectual level, I know that not knowing is really just opportunity. But my emotional reaction to not knowing is still to fill in the gap as rapidly as possible. It has hindered my educational carrier.

[bascule]

I've had experiences that I could not explain scientifically short of a reductionist "it's all in my head" explanation. This is, most likely, the cause.

[tar]

JohnB,

 

I don't think we ever have to worry about getting bored. Figuring something out, and having a solid model to match reality against, is a victory, and a completion of a sort, but a very valuable one that sets the stage, for the next step, which makes it a beginning of the next pursuit, which is undertaken with more knowledge, and down one or more of the myriad of paths, the new knowledge has opened up.

 

We tend to take a lot of things for granted, without realizing or thinking about all the people, all the insights, all the effort, that caused those things to be.

 

Pick just about anything around you right now (man made) and consider the long chain of human effort and knowledge it took, to get that thing into it's present useful form.

 

Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Biology, probably all the sciences, were utilized, and as such, all the work that was done in all the fields by all the people, down through history, was done in small part, for you. Together mankind, found the mines and built the tools to dig out the right stuff, put it together and ship it to your neighborhood. Every step involved, was similarily dependent on all the victories that came before it. The gear in the truck, the asphalt in the road, the match that lit the dyamite that blasted the hill that the road ran through, each with its history of human effort and the application of scientific knowledge, passed along, giving us ever increasing ability to manipulate our world and open new doors for our generation, and the next. I don't think we will ever get bored of it. It's too big, and too long lived, to ever run out.

 

On another thread I am trying to build a model in my head, that makes sense (to me) concerning the nature of the universe. What it looked like 13.73 billion years ago from this region, what it looks like now, and what we are looking at, when we see it. Funny thing is, I am dealing with strings of galaxies in between voids like froth between clay balls, that I might be able to build a mental model with that would contain the entire visible universe. I forget that one of those little dots in the froth, is the Milky Way Galaxy which, by itself is so huge that LIGHT, which flashes around here, faster than fast can be, would take 4,000 human generations to cross from one end to the other. That's your kid's, kids, and their kids, and their kids and 3,994 more generations. Seems that even if we learn a way to reach Alpha Centauri, we will still have a whole lot of playgound left to explore, before we exhaust the wonders, even in our immediate neighborhood. Yes, reality won't ever be exhausted. Not by us humans.

 

We can build a realistic globe, but that still leaves a lot of places on the Earth, that no human has ever stood. I would bet that I could find a small patch of forest within 20 miles of my home, that no human has explored in 100 years. Of course I might be lost, at that point, with no trails to follow back to the road. Hopefully that pack of wolves that raised my earlier example would look after me.

 

Regards, TAR

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

JillSwift,

 

Scientifically speaking, I believe it's been proven, that much of our perception involves "filling in the gaps." We look for patterns, we think in patterns, and just a few dots and lines in the proper relationship to each other, can suggest a human form, or a face, cause we fill in the gaps. We see "the man in the moon" when we are actually looking at crater shadows and such. I don't think, that you should think that "filling in the gaps" with speculation is a bad thing. In fact, it may well be, exactly how we think, and why we are capable of what we are capable of. It may be a very important part of what us thinking humans are.

 

In fact, I would be willing to say, that any scientist, that thought they could think, without "filling in the gaps" with speculation, would be thinking that they had a way to think, in an unhuman fashion, which would be rather impossible, considering that they are humans.

 

That being said, I would like to suggest a bridge between religion and science. A bridge I have built for myself, having had as you had, an early religious upbringing and a subsequent reasoned abandonment of early beliefs.

 

Mindless superstitions, and pointless rituals, seemingly abound in the human population. But I have come to the conclusion that they might not be as mindless and pointless as they appear. Some people "find" religion later in life, like the "born again" Christians. Others, like you and me, have it at first, and later discover it is not true. But consider this. Of a congregation, in any church or mosque or sinagoge, or shrine, there are young and old, learned and unaware, strong believers and those of shaken faith. The tenets of any religion are often modified and evolve over time with the society that practices the religion. And those who go to gatherings go for many reasons, some of them social, some political, some economic, some psychological, some emotional and some of them, actually having to do with ones relationship with objective reality, or truth, or the universe, or God.

 

We as a race have been trying to figure this thing out, since we first had words in our heads. A lot of good insights, have been had along the way, and shared with others. We have built societies, where individuals care about each other, protect each other, share with each other, teach each other, and we have established laws and rules, and morals, and institutions that live on, beyond the years of any individual human.

 

So take all the false imagery from each religion, and you are left with the same reality, that each is describing in their own fashion. You are left with the exact same reality that you and I are of and in. And both you and I know we are part of something that existed before we were born, and will continue after we die. And every conscious human knows the same thing.

 

So hence my bridge. Reality is true, we are real, we are conscious of reality BECAUSE of our individual human mortal perspectives. Whatever ways we develop to share our consciousness with other humans, whatever ways we develop to maintain and enjoy our consciousness and make it possible for others to maintain and enjoy it and continue to maintain and enjoy it after we die, are good ways. Where it takes science, we use science. Where it takes "filling in the gaps" we'll use cosmic turtles, angels, Santa Clause and other figurative made up stuff. We're still talking about the same thing.

 

Regards, TAR

[iNow]

Reading your post above, tar... I get the sense that you would enjoy/appreciate the content of this thread which I created.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=40233

[tar]

iNow,

 

Yes, thanks. I read a bit, and it sounds interesting. My computer seems to have some purposes of its own, and is not paying close attention to what I am trying to do, hence I didn't get too far through the first speaker due to slow, interrupted download. You have a lot there and a number of links, and its 3am here. I have to pick it up tommorrow after work.

 

I will say though that I am going into it a bit biased. I am not convinced that this compartmentalized approach, with this modality and that, is going to turn out to be the most accurate way to understand the whole deal. I'm thinking our thinking is a bit more holistic than that. And I get a feeling that scientist studying this stuff think they can be more objective than is humanly possible. We are what we study, and my personal bias says that the agency we see in the world around us is not so unhuman as they think, in that our human agency and purpose, is an outgrowth of the agency embedded in all matter and life that has found ways to reproduce its pattern.

 

But more later, after I finish your thread.

 

Regards, TAR

[JohnB]

Sheesh, literalists.

 

tar, I don't think that you quite got my point. "I don't knows" are good because they represent the opportunity to learn. When we run out of them, then we are in trouble.

 

However, as IA said;

luckily for us at the moment answering one 'i don't know' usually leads to about 50 other 'i don't knows'

so I don't think this is likely in the short term. (Say the next 100,000 years or so.)

 

In the context of this thread the only possible answer to the OPs question is "I don't know". While you correctly (I think) differentiated between things that can be explained now and things that science will never explain, I believe your conclusion to be in error.

 

To assume that science would never be able to explain something is actually making a prediction concerning the future development of scientific thinking and knowledge. I believe such a prediction is impossible to validate in any way. Who could have predicted 400 years ago Relativity and Quantum Physics? Or even the knowledge of the EM spectrum that gave rise to radio?

 

And as such, any experience would have to fall into two basic catagories. Real and imagined.

 

On this basis, it is quite possible to have a real experience that science cannot currently explain, but will be explainable in the future. So while experiences can indeed be divided into "real" and "imagined", the criteria for making the distinction is not as clear cut as you might think.

 

IMO we live in a world typified by two words, hubris and impatience.

 

Impatience because people want their answers now, right now and have great trouble with the idea that right now, there isn't one.

 

Hubris because many take the POV that if our science, knowing all as it does, cannot explain it right now, then it is imaginary.

 

Personally I take the words of Isaac Newton to be as true now as then.

“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

 

If you take the long term view, we are still children playing on the sea shore and compared to what there is yet to know, we know so very little. I kinda like it that way, far better a "great ocean" to explore than a puddle.

 

Two other quotes that I think are apt;

Charles Darwin;

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

 

And Bernard Bailey, physicist;

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.

 

So, on the intellectual level, I know that not knowing is really just opportunity. But my emotional reaction to not knowing is still to fill in the gap as rapidly as possible.

It should also be tempered by the acceptance of the possibility that you may never know. As tar pointed out, virtually all discoveries are based on previous ones, so if the neccessary previous ones have yet to be completed, then you will never be able to find the last piece of the puzzle.

 

To quote Ned Kelly;

Such is life.

[JillSwift]

It should also be tempered by the acceptance of the possibility that you may never know. As tar pointed out, virtually all discoveries are based on previous ones, so if the neccessary previous ones have yet to be completed, then you will never be able to find the last piece of the puzzle.

C'est la vie.

 

Oh, wait, Mr. Kelly already said that.

[iNow]

I've shared this before, but I thought that perhaps some of the participants (and readers) of this thread might find it valuable.

 

 

98OTsYfTt-c

[bascule]

Science can't explain spitty slurpy!

[forufes]

 

I don't "believe" in ghosts, they have no known mechanisms within/which to operate under and exist. However I have an image of a man standing in a location where a man of that description would probably not have been standing, and the knowledge that a man of that description once did exist, and in fact hung himself at that location. I could easily attribute the image to suggestion and imagination, if I had known about the way the man dressed, and that he hung himself at that spot, before I obtained the image of him standing there. However I had the experience first and gained the knowledge latter. I suppose there is a good possibility that I superimposed the image of the man standing there, on my memory of the day, in the years after the incident, and if I could remember the actual "turning of the corner" without any post-concieved notions, I might not have seen anybody standing there at all. In reality, we may just all have been feeding off of each other's apprehensions and discomfort, decided it would be better to leave, tightened the distributor cap, and left. Later, we embellished and justified, after learning a man had commited suicide at the place.

 

Regards, TAR

 

when was the first time you remembered that you've seen the guy?

 

1-did you remeber that you've seen the ghost once you've been told about the real guy who commited suicide.

 

2- or did you remember the ghost image at least once before you were told about the real guy, and perhaps even told of your ghost to friends or noted it down or something?