Shaving Science With Ockham’s Razor
Click here for PDF file: Shaving Science With Ockham’s Razor
Please feel free to write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com with suggestions as to why the premise of this essay is wrong:
PREMISE: There are no scientific findings which preclude considering consciousness as a causal factor in the universe. Nor are there findings in any area of science – including quantum physics, parapsychology or near-death experience research – which require the consideration of consciousness as a causal factor (both of these statements are in regard to current scientific methodology).
Our book, “Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness: Seeing Through the Eyes of Infinity“, is available on Amazon.
There’s a 45 minute CD that comes along with the book. We made the CD for two main reasons. One was to help those who do not have a meditation practice develop one. The first 5 tracks of the CD are brief guided meditations accompanied by music. These include basic breathing exercises, relaxation and concentration practices, and meditations for refining awareness. They are basic meditative practices that can provide a solid foundation for whatever kind of meditation practice you may eventually wish to pursue.
The second reason we created the CD was to provide a contemplative, experiential version of the main themes of the book, including the ultimate causes of suffering, the means for developing a more enduring sense of joy, meaning and purpose, and the relationship between spirituality and social change.
In 2012, we will be posting a series of videos based on themes from the book.
Hello, I read your essay with great delight.I thank you. This subject can’t be treated without becoming personal, wthout being who you are. So , please, let me expalin how I am aware of things.
In my feelings and thinking I intuitively accept that my perceptivity has its limits, that I was born with in me some “force” that made me been born, that was not “mine” but makes me to become me.
You succeed in adding up rational argumentation to that other part of me saying at every moment “you ain’t seen nothing yet” (BTO quote
, because I can’t see it yet, it just keeps comming in, overwhelms me, drives me, to bring me back to that state of unknownable (you have to be in it to eventually “know” it ), not see-able (but forseeable) and unfeelable ( but already “real” in our emotions).
What I want to come to is : everything “exists” for its own “reason”, colouring our “being” with every “heartbeat” or environmental “vibration”, every here have a (their) destiny to be “here”, in their proper state, a kind of composition, concentration of elements with a gelifcation. In that kind of state between beginning and end, it is that in-between-state that governs for the “time” being, to keep up this state, and while doing this, to hold onto it as long as possible because this is what it is..
This state dictates what can be, within a playing field that is “given” and has of course its limitations : the elements (or “powers” ) of composition, concentration and gelification.These limitations are build in in “observation”, “movement”, “connectivity outwards” (i.e.relation).. etc. And it leads to not being able to communicate with every “item” inside “us” (every element of “our” composition, concentration and gelifcation), and with every item around us : we ” stand-under” (love the word “under-standing”). That is why “we” can’t grasp everything, be it as a group or as an individual: “there is something out there”. That is why, we- as humans- talk (litterally and otherwise) different languages, act differently, are not the other. That is why our “real-it-I”( just playing on , now with “reality”) is not that of the species around us, the elements of nature, tcs. They have their own code of existence, their own way of being. And so I come to your argumentation.
It matches with the idea there are multiplex realities for being in the state all is. Every reality is true for and with its own references. This multiplexity is infinite. So science when it does not “see” the “natural” limitations everything has by the really “natural” need for its own referencingto be “comfortable” (sorry, can’t help it : my mind spells this as “come-fore-ablility”), is not science anymore. That is how I read your article.
An di do one more step : every idea claiming its own truth (even in religon) is the aknowledging of its own limits. The acceptance of multiplexity is the way out of this, but of course it is not so come-fore-able.
Greetings,
Hi Michel:
Thanks for your response. I love your word play (come-fore-ability; real-it-I). I’m curious – how did you find this site? I just threw the blog together very fast so I could share this essay with a few people, without doing any advertising. I’d be curious to know how you got here.
Jan and I are currently working on the scripts for the videos related to this essay. We’re also working on some videos demonstrating basic meditative/contemplative practices which – we hope – will help people relate to the ideas in the essay in a more experiential way.
By the way, if you or anybody reading this (anybody else out there?) have any suggestions for putting together a whole website/blog/facebook-etc package, please let me know. We’re considering “Site-Build-It”. I saw a very nice site on lucid dreaming put together by Rebecca Turner. She said she found site-build-it to be a very good resource. Any more suggestions along these lines would be really helpful.
In fact, if anybody has suggestions for contemplative/experiential exercises to help make this essay “come alive” (more in touch with real-it-I) I can post them here.
Thanks!
Don
Hello,
Here Michel. Sorry for the delay. You ask me how I found your site…well, I don’t remember exactly : I found somewhere a link: because of the title of your article referring to Ockham’s razor rule.
For whatever reason, right now I’m intrigued by the wisdom of the Ockham’s razor, and as you probaly concluded, I’m also triggered by complexity and multiplexity.. so, the all idea in prospect is : what is the possible contribution of Ockham’s razor rule, when we are in a setting of multplexity. It has a great use when dealing with complexity, but will it be the same in a setting of multiplexity?
I’ve no science degree, I’ m just an individual person to try to understand things of life. I’m not publishing. And even with friends who are practising yoga, I never did.
I come to the things I wrote to you, just by putting some ideas together, and I wanted somehow back you , surely not because I’m a yogi (but don’t start yet to despair), but because I wanted to explain how I see (and feel and make sense ) of infinity, an dto back you when you write :”here are no scientific findings which preclude considering consciousness as a causal factor in the universe. Nor are there findings in any area of science – ”
My backing up you is also no science, it is a hunch of belief ..that
infinity = a complex of multiplexities, each of these on itself also being a system on its own, with its own referencing, and “reason” (or for some people: consciousness). What do you think about that?
BTW I’m not relgious either.
I think that reality leaves a lot to the imagination (sorry – that’s a quote from John Lennon:>))
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, but if it adds up to – there’s more on heaven and earth than science can currently account for, I’m with you.
This is why Jan and I are focusing much more on music and videos than on writing. There’s a poem from Rilke that we’re working on, set to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. It’s almost done, and we should be able to post it some time soon. Here’s the poem:
Buddha in Glory
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Hi Don (and Jan) ,
You are right when you write “if it adds up to – there’s more on heaven and earth than science can currently account for, I’m with you”.Sorry If I’m not all clear in my writing .. English is my third language, and not my native one.
I think “science” is now limiting itself to what is its methods allow. Luckily there is “natural”science and social science, arts and humanities. The natural science is dealing with the physical, trying to expand its methods to social sciences and phenomens. That is not succesful, because it does not take fully into account interactions, attraction, complementarity, multipexity of which our world, the worlds around us, and the worlds in us are composed. We are still far away from a science accepting e.g. that people really can regain their health just by a placebo pill or by religion.
I go where you go : where science and heaven meets, trying to bridge the gap by an explanation that is “scientifical”, i.e.the proof of the existing gap where science has not yet an answer.
This is only the beginning. I’ve no blog yet, but I’ll built one, someday, just to have reactions about my thinking.
So let’s keep in touch, you have my mail adress, and my respect.
Michel
Hi again – you’re doing fine, far better than I do in Spanish, which I should know, having been a choir director for a Spanish Catholic church for some years (though the priest, who knew I was Jewish, always would say “Shalom” during the hand shaking that goes on during the exchange of “peace” – or “La Paz”).
About placebos – did you know that different kinds of placebos have different effects? A colored pill is more effective than a white one. Capsules are generally more effective than pills, colored capsules with beads even more effective, and the most effective are injections. One doctor claimed success using forceps, saying that the (placebo) pill was so powerful he didn’t dare touch it with his hands.
Best,
Don
Hello Don,
I did not know about the differences in the reactions on placebos depending their colouri, form or way of administration. Where can I read this?
This a nice article about acupuncture .. http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/a-healthy-poke-demystifying-the-science-behind-acupuncture/245816/
Btw: thinking in terms of multiplexity when talking about sciences opens up a dialogue towards all people who are religious, because mulitplexity in complexity leads to infinity, to not being able to find is the beinning or the ending, so to what is to me the equivalent of a god bridging alpha and omega, it means amazement, wonder, smalness, humility, and a common ground for further dialogueing to understand what matters how.
I’m with John Lennon. Science and its methods (even) are evolving; frequently, scientists are saying, “Ooops…” and recognizing that previous theories erred, or needed further experimentation and data. Those of us who are not engaged in a specific scientific search for what is real are left with our imaginations. Your premise is interesting, but…..so what? (This may sound rude… sorry, but…..) Perhaps some millennia science will be capable of answering most of the “big” questions. In the mean time, we simply “do our own thing”…. which is good.