Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine and columnist for Scientific American, represents the best and worst of modern science. On the plus side, he writes well, typically picks interesting topics, and gives me a lot material to write about. On the negative, he displays the sort of overly-confident, “it is true because I said it is” attitude that is all too prevalent in modern science. One of his favorite topics, which he writes about in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American, is the distinction between science and pseudoscience. This time he pokes fun at the Electric Universe conference at which he was recently asked to speak. The Electric Universe community apparently believes that electricity, instead of gravity, is the dominant force in the universe. And so Shermer, of course, ridicules this group for straying from mainstream science. He points out that because the Electric Universe community has no peers it...
...
According to modern physics everything is made up of atoms, which is to say particles. Our entire modern worldview, from space exploration to the Large Hadron Collider, and modern medicine, is premised on the notion that particles – electrons, neutrons, quarks, the Higgs boson, DNA, germs, viruses and cancer cells – are the ultimate constituents of the universe. These particles, we imagine, exist out in the world, free-standing little things, with an existence independent of perception, independent of consciousness, independent of mind. According to quantum theory, the leading scientific theory of the physical world, particles do not exist, except in our imagination. Does something seem wrong here? “Atoms are not things,” says Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum theory. Niels Bohr, the 1927 Nobel prize-winner in physics and another founder of quantum theory, writes in The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,...
...
Scientific materialism — the form of science predicated upon the belief that dead matter is the ultimate reality — is slowly fading away. My current thinking is that we believe in this worldview not because it is right, logical, or even plausible, but because the leading scientists all operate within a system of thought that assumes it is true. Since science is the most authoritative intellectual discipline, we happily go along with the will of our thought leaders. After all, who are we to question all of these professors and Nobel-prize winners? But it turns out that scientists do not believe in materialism because it is correct, but rather because of an assumption (or fear?) that the very practice of science cannot occur unless “there is a real world out there” (to use Lee Smolin’s phrase from The Trouble with Physics.) The very message of quantum physics, however, is that there is not in fact...
...
In his famous article, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics, physicist Eugene Wigner pondered how it is that mathematics is so effective at explaining the workings of the physical world. This is the same topic of the recent NOVA special, The Great Math Mystery, which offers a very well-done and interesting account of how mathematics governs the universe from the smallest particles to the sweeping spiral galaxies of the heavens. The effectiveness of mathematics in mapping the workings of the universe, however, should also give pause to anyone who believes that materialism is the final word not only on how the world works, but on science itself. Today, in science, we see highly educated people pondering the intricate machine-like precision of physical reality yet science has no mechanism to account for how this is possible. Simply put, since materialists have drained mind, spirit, God, and intelligence from the physical world, they have no...
...
Chasing a failing worldview is like heading down a dead-end street: the signs that the street is coming to an end may be all around you, but bullheadedness keeps your foot firmly on the accelerator; after all, this is where everyone else is going. But then the dead-end comes and, once again, you have this thought that perhaps you should have paid more attention to the warning signs. Social and peer pressure are powerful forces, however, and it is a rare soul who challenges the march of the masses. This brings us to dark matter, which is thought to make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe. But dark matter is not really “matter;” it’s not extended in space; does not resist a force; and cannot be seen. Dark matter (like dark energy) is better thought of as a placeholder concept waiting for a better theory to explain the cosmos. With dark matter, the law of gravity trumps...
...