THE SCIENCE DELUSION BY RUPERT SHELDRAKE | MY THOUGHTS

[Mr.Jasaw]

great stuff brother, been intending on reading this book, and now you've convinced me to finally get into it .. i know Sheldrake from his concept "intellectual phase locking" which is bias in an institutionalized scientific circles that basically makes researches not want to deviate too much from what other scientist concluded, so it basically comes out as an echo chamber

[JimBob]

Researchers do not commonly reject outliers as bad data, without determining why the outliers exist... that is known as p-hacking, and essentially is data manipulation. If this is found in a paper, it is retracted, if it even made its way through peer review.

[JimBob]

The speed of light is currently known as a constant as we have yet to see it vary, but the community is certainly open to knowing if the speed of light varies, which is why experiments are done to find the value to higher and higher precisions, to see if it varies at all in the far end of the precision range. The impact the varying speed of light would have on physics would be quite large and is some of large interest to multiple scientific fields. It sounds to me like the book may be a bit questionable then.

[JimBob]

If the book says that the speed of light decreased... then I wouldn't trust the book from a scientific standpoint. The speed of light, as far as we've been able to measure, has remained 100% stable. We have only increased our precision of our measurement, which makes me think they're incorrectly trying to argue measurement error as a variation.

[JimBob]

In general, my response to this book and video is that one should be able to support their metaphysical and religious views without misrepresenting the works of others and the general scientific method. This seems to be a case of making science and the science community the enemy of your beliefs, for no reason other than a misunderstanding of their intent.

[ihafidh]

Jazak Allah khair. Always great to listen to your book reviews. I benefited a lot from your review on Rethinking Islam and the West and went on to read it myself.

By the way, at 2:26, did you mean to say “Metaphysical Naturalism” instead of “Methodological Naturalism”?

[JimBob]

Apologies for the splitting of my replies, was battling YT's bad spam filtering that kept eating my replies.

[JimBob]

Science is only concerned with the physical reality and not the metaphysical. This isn't a bias as much as metaphysical is simply outside the scope of science and doesn't attempt to solve problems of the metaphysical nature. This is due to the limitations of the scientific method to investigate things that fall outside of the observable reality.

[phillipmaxwellastrology]

You can do anything from teach about the book in depth to giving an overview and not spoil a book like Sheldrakes. With a book that's fictional or non fictional storytelling there's a story that needs to be preserved and the plot could be ruined beforehand. With a book of scientific exposition there are layers of information to understand so someone explaining it doesn't mean there's more you could learn and discover after someone has discussed in depth. That being said then you did a good job, and if you want to reveal more about these kinds of books you can't go wrong

[DetInspectorMonkfish]

what "longstanding notion that science is this absolute perfect method that doesn't make mistakes"? I don't know a single person who believes that. I know plenty of people who believe much more ridiculous things such as their religious beliefs are perfect and couldn't be mistaken. You for example. But i know of literally nobody who would claim the former.

[darkrebel]

I haven't read the book but I listened to his TED talk on the book. I'm a biologist, and I've been surrounded by scientists for years. I believe that sheldrake is making one of the same errors in thinking that he accuses science of making, namely that of reductionism and dualism. The problem with how science is communicated, largely lies in the fact that most people are not actually scientifically literate, or statistically literate, and as such, when we communicate science, it inevitably must get reduced down to the lowest common denominator. Me using the term scientifically illiterate is not a judgement against these people (just a descriptive observation), I am grossly illiterate in many topics because I cannot and do not want to study every topic known to man. I personally have several scientific publications, two on neuroscience and structural biology, and another on developmental biology, and every time I have to explain to someone who is not a scientist what my discoveries are, and what the implications are, I necessarily have to omit ~90% of the actual rationale etc in an attempt to reduce it to a level of understanding that corresponds with someone who is not an expert in the field. This same phenomenon also applies to the general ethos around science and how it is perceived by the public vs what it actually is.

The materialistic worldview is an excellent example of this. The notion of materialism is often grossly oversimplified among the scientifically illiterate community. Scientists are often very good at non-dual thinking. We understand very deeply that there are apparent paradoxes in reality. We have to confront these paradoxes every day in our scientific research. We also understand that a big source of paradox is a dualistic mode of perception. Humans are evolved such that our rational, thinking part of our brain (which fuels the rationality of science) must by definition be dualistic. The very substrate of our consciousness is based on the ability to discriminate one thing from another, categorize things. Our consciousness cannot process information without reducing it down to simplified approximations and comparisons.

Every scientist I've had the pleasure of discussing such things with, fully understands the limitations of such a dualistic, reductionistic approach. Science is much like the rational part of the human consciousness. There has been a massive shift in scientific thinking over the past ~50 years or so, centered around the idea of chaos theory and emergent properties of chaotic systems. As usual, the actual scientific application of emergence is wildly misunderstood by the general public, as demonstrated by the colloquial term "butterfly effect." The butterfly effect is not chaos theory, but it is colloquially confused with chaos theory. The real takeaway from chaos theory and emergence theory that applies to the actual work of scientists, is that we as scientists all know that reductionism fails to explain everything. Chaos theory and emergence theory is in a big way, the scientists' way of saying that the material world is not fully explainable by simple dissecting reality into its constituent parts, based on our current level of knowledge. Scientists recognize this gap in our understanding.

See, as scientists, when we are doing our research, we have taken into account far more perspectives on our work than the scientifically illiterate public will ever understand. We may make a statement that has come from the synthesis of 27 different perspectives, but the audience can only grasp one or two of those perspectives, and so the message gets bent out of shape due to the message being reduced to the lowest common denominator.

This is a long-winded way of saying that, at least based on the authors' Ted talk on his book, he is making that exact mistake. He is reducing the scientific community down to something that it is not, simply because he does not understand what science actually is. he understands pop-science, not real science. And sure I'm sure he uses a lot of sources from actual scientists, like Dawkins (I personally think Dawkins has a rather narrow view that doesn't not represent the majority of science or scientists).

His description of what science is, is at best a reduced approximation of the reality of science, and by definition when you reduce and approximate things this way, you get details wrong, and in his case, much of his criticism is aimed at details that he got wrong. He is fighting an opponent of his own imagination, as best as I can tell at this point. He is a great example of hwo pseudoscience spreads.

That being said, it would be so ironic if it turns out I'm making the same mistake I'm accusing him of because I haven't actually read his book. So maybe I should go read his book haha

[commentarytalk]

The main premise: "Science as Scientific Method" is fundamentally a useful tool for developing domains of knowledge of the physical nature of reality or the universe or the world around us and is effective used as such.

So taking this premise and comparing the consequences:

1. Scientific Method is effective however it is not The Only One Method, there are other effective methods also outside of science and legitimate in the same sense of being useful.
2. This Scientific Method relies heavily on deductive reasoning that is taking apart something to find simpler or more fundamental units with which to measure and generate more "universal" mathematical formula models that describe broader patterns in reality at wider more applicable scale. However this as said is one method only and it's use is mainly for describing the natural phenomena OBJECTIVELY without reference to the human experience as conscious observers and beings. This distinction is quite important.
3. As such Science although useful for it's descriptions eg engineering calculations concerning the integrity of a building says nothing about whether or not that building FEELS RIGHT for a given person talking about their holistic experience subjectively. Now extending this one simple example illustration, trying to base how we live our lives and how our societies function based of a scientific - as you say materialism or physical basis - only is as such MISSING a large and important component of reality extended that of the mind itself... even psychology is severely lacking reliant on statistical modelling ie population replication not on individual information in the experience itself. Extrapolate the consequence of this and they're everywhere in modern Western Secular Society.
4. What is the unfortunate consequence at large in this society: It's to turn Science a method into a totem and it becomes "Scientism" AKA "Western Secular Religion": An atheistic version of religion and a misuse of Science. As you said a part of the problem is taking science and treating the current theories that to present knowledge can be considered facts or laws of nature as immutable or dogma as such and ignores the edge cases or measurement variance eg The Speed of Light does not account for a faster expanding universe or quantum effects which are both faster than light. Namely it works within wide bounds but it's still an incomplete description of underlying reality aka like all knowledge it is both "current fact" and future work in progress" simultaneously.
5. Inevitably the way a society operates it needs a structure or basis for the actions and collective organization of the people in the society. Where science talks about the world we can use that knowledge however where it is silent that is with respect to the complexity of interactions within societies that Religions deal with and combine multi-discipline areas eg philosophy, morality, ethics, culture, tradition, scriptures, economics, law and politics... a lot of this is not within the remit of Sciences of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology though that information may flow and inform the above.

For Religion the solution is complex in operation but simple in outcome:

Which system the Western Secular Religion or the Traditional Religion eg Islam leads to an overall more coherent and functional basis for societies that develops the people within both individually and as groups?

The post is too long to provide an answer, but we can look at different societies and outputs pointing to which ones are using processes better suited to the human full experience of life - above only materialism...

[s.a]

Could you please make a video on how to understand and interpret NDEs from an islamic point of view brother?

[anywallsocket]

Sheldrake is gripping for relevance, full stop.

[buildwithmusawwir]

I am wondering what would happen when these athesit will Face the God?