Scientific Method

Not a War But a Revolution: Materialism is Wrong

            In War of the Worldviews, Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow (perhaps best known for co-authoring The Grand Design with Stephen Hawking) debate, through dueling essays, the question of whether a spiritual consciousness should play a part in our current scientific worldview.  Mr. Mlodinow adopts the staunch materialistic standpoint, constantly arguing that only what can tested, weighed and measured is real.   According to him, this invisible spiritual element, advanced by Mr. Chopra, is simply an illusion; a nice thought without scientific credibility.  Taking out his ruler and compass, Mr. Mlodinow finds he cannot measure “consciousness” and therefore concludes it does not exist.              One of Mr. Mlodinow’s often repeated attacks in his essays is that metaphysics and philosophy are worthless, too malleable, and of no use for science.  What is real is what we see, and what we see is a world independent of our brains.  Who needs metaphysics?              He...

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Funerals, Thought Leaders, and the Need to Question Authority

German physicist, Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, is credited with observing that “science advances one funeral at a time.”  What did he mean?  What we call “modern science” is in fact a set of theories advanced by the day’s leading scientists, teachers, authors, and textbook writers.  (Included among this group would be Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krause, Stephen Weinberg, Leon Lederman,  John Gribben, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennet).  These individuals “control the airwaves” by defining the body of scientific knowledge that they hand down to their students, television commentators, readers, and the public at large.  Boosted by their association with Science, the most authoritative intellectual discipline, these thought leaders direct the course of our worldview and determine  the theories and ideas we are supposed to believe in.   These ideas and theories include the Big Bang (the world was created in a gigantic explosion of matter, space, and time), cosmic inflation (the matter present at the Big Bang expanded by 50 orders of magnitude in...

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