NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/martial/16078

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 7.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!dwovax.enet.dec.com!stark
From: [e-mail] (Todd I. Stark)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: More ki/qi/chi & science
Date: 21 DEC 92 12:50:57
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 137
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: DWOVAX
Summary: Different ways of organizing experience; 'science' misrepresented.


Responding to this interesting exchange between Mikel and Stephen.

Stephen seems to be arguing for an inherent bias and hypocrisy
he believes run rampant in Western science (and philosophy, perhaps).

I won't deny the conclusion of a conservative bias in this kind of industry,
though I'll argue against Stephen's specific reasoning below.  I'll also agree
that the Ki idea is of *great* potential value, scientifically if it could
be expressed in appropriate terms.

[e-mail] (Stephen Chan x4485) writes...
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mikel Evins) writes:
>>It is innocuous to say that something is outside the realm of
>>scientific discourse. The issue of whether that characterization
>>invalidates an idea is a philosophical question quite separate
>>from its accessibility to scientific study.
>
>    My point is that these clean & pure distinctions that philosophers
>make are not at all reflected in everyday attitudes and subjective experience.

So Mikel is seemingly saying that researchers may reject aspects of
human experience, and still come to meaningful general conclusions about
some admittedly limited aspect of experience, and I agree.  Rejecting
'subjective experience' is not intrinsic to all science neccessarily, though.

Case in point, there have been highly successful and well accepted scientific
disciplines that study introspective and subjective experience, and
their acceptance varies somewhat with the fashion.  In fact, one of these was
the dominant force in U.S. psychology in the first two decades of the
Twentieth century, Titchener's Structuralist psychology.  Some aspects
have had a revival recently, I believe.

Mikel further implies that imputations of 'truth' to an idea is
a traditional problem in philosophy, rather than modern science,
which is also true.

Stephen's reply seemingly claims that philosophers don't know what
they're doing, making simplistic distinctions, and that therefore his
perspective on the bias of science should stand in spite of Mikel's well
reasoned argument.  I don't deny that a conservative bias generally
exists, though I argue that it is 'nothing special' nor inherently
a problem in the long run.   Progress happens in spite of human
beings being human beings.  :-)

So I suspect that this straw man philosopher would quickly burn if we discuss
specifics.

Case in point, there is a rich tradition of philosophers on the European
continent (especially France and Germany) who would have no problem with the
notion of Ki, and even some (though not all) who also would support the value
of scientific inquiry.   The failure of Ki to be the dominant topic of
interest in scientific journals in most fields is hardly a matter
of ideological oversight.  Similar concepts have arisen many, many times
in different forms over time.  Those that have been discredited and
remain so were mostly discredited on specifics, not on general principle.

If such a fuzzy idea as a 'system' or a 'homeostat' can become well accepted,
(not to mention the particle zoo previously mentioned) life force isn't that
hard to imagine if it can be described in acceptable terms.  Seemingly, if
properly presented, it could accompish great elegance in integrating
levels of description in different sciences, and maybe even taking in
some parapsychological anomalies in the process.

>>Logical Positivism is a philosophical stance that is on equal
>>footing with other such stances; its merits are arguable,
>>just as are other philosophical stances'.
>
>    Analytically, you are entirely correct. An unfortunate characteristic
>I've noticed in people is that they tend to be unaware of, or unwilling to
>fully acknowledge the flaws in a position. This is especially true if the
>stance is implicit, and is never explicitly explained and compared to other
>stances.

Logical positivism is not the dominant stance in the philosophy of science,
either in philosophical circles or scientific ones.   Conservatism and
Kuhnian 'normal science' notwithstanding, the very fact that
there are now theoretical sciences of cognition is ample proof of this.

>    Henh, henh, henh...I think we've come across a certain kind of
>hypocrisy...
>    Scientists often conjecturing the existence of things which they have
>never directly observed, then asking the government for billions and billions
>of dollars to create instrumentation with which to _attempt_ to observe these
>hypothetical particles.

For the most part, theoreticians don't write about metaphysical existence, at
least not in their published results.  They mostly care about mathematical
descriptions and experimental results.

No doubt psychological and social factors influence
science, and you could claim that 'all the peers' are conspiring inadvertently
to support the dominant framework, but it seems pointless to describe this in
vague ideological terms, especially dinosaurs like LP.

It would be, I think, misleading and false to argue that Ki is not discussed
in most scientific journals because of a 'biased refusal to accept an
alternate theory' or anything like that.

>    What's the difference? All these quarks (or whatever) are unobserved,
>purely theoretical and could very well only exist in the minds of the
>scientists (subjective enough, huh?).
>    Besides, who ever actually *sees* things like mesons and neutrinos? All
>that is ever seen is their effect on the environment as they break down, or
>as they rip through a big vat of fluid.
>    One never actually *sees* qi, but one can observe it's effects. But in
>this instance, that's just not good enough to justify further research.

As a thought exercise, list the phenomena associated with Ki and how they are
produced, and express what exactly the Ki hypothesis is in mathematical terms
and then try to devise experiments to test aspects of the Ki hypothesis
against competing ones.

I suspect that at the point of the description, you'll discover why
this concept doesn't appear intact in many technical journals.  They
don't organize their experience in the same manner as the traditional
Chinese healer.

The best you can do is test for anomalies and then try to put a
new hypothesis together in properly precise mathematical terms to explain
them.   I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it might resemble Ki
in many ways, and not by coincidence.  ;-)

>    Stephen
>--
>    Stephen Chan
>    uunet!srg!schan or uunet!srg![e-mail]

                            kind regards,

                            todd
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Todd I. Stark                  [e-mail]           |
| Digital Equipment Corporation                     [phone]           |
| Philadelphia, Pa. USA                                                       |
|  "I'm in a hurry, I don't know why.  All I really gotta do is live and die" |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+