Month: May 2018

“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”  Whether it was Feynman, Einstein or Vonnegut who actually said it (if any of them), Dawkins has certainly taken it to heart.

His knowledge of the subject matter is unmistakable, with certain marked exceptions, and while one would do well not to forget what this book was intended to be, it’s difficult to ignore the distinct air of condescension wafting up from nearly every page.

The Magic of Reality is not Richard Dawkins’ best work, by far.  Although that opinion may be coloured by my pre-existing familiarity with basic natural science.  His treatment of topics, such as plate tectonics and cosmology are, shall we say, rudimentary.  But that may be by design.  Where he discusses biology and evolution his expertise is easily identified, but his earlier works, such as The Greatest Show on Earth for example, are much more comprehensive and informative than this book.

If we accept that his intention was to publish a primer on the natural sciences or even on the value of a scientific world view, then I suppose this book was a success.  Though by virtue of who Dawkins is, I doubt that many of his readers have the dismal level of scientific literacy one would need to see this book as valuable.  Perhaps, if it finds its way into the hands of a few less informed people, teenagers maybe, it would be a worthwhile effort, but there are far better and less biased books available on the subject.

Dawkins has, in this book, tackled subjects that are outside of his professional purview.  This isn’t to say that his opinions and insights are unwelcome (in most cases), but why take on the burden of elucidating on subjects for which your own knowledge is limited (or non-existent).  Oddly, he takes on the UFO Abduction phenomenon, dismissing outright any claim that something unexplained is happening to however few sincere people in the community.  Dawkins is, however, entitled to his opinion, predictable as it might be, but the reader would do well to understand that it is just that, an opinion, and not a scientific fact (in the case of UFO Abduction at least).

Reading The Magic Of Reality isn’t a wasted effort, but I would suggest that there are better books on which to focus your attention.

This book made me a Happy Atheist.  Not that I wasn’t before I read it, but in some small way PZ Myers has made me that much happier.  I have already recommended this book to a number of friends and will continue to do so.  Unlike many of Myers’ critics, who predictably complain that he broke no new ground here, and that his approach was unrefined and lacked direction, I enjoyed the pace and meandering path the book led me along.  In fact, I dare say, this is precisely the point of any book, to allow the author to guide you along the path that they intend, not the one you think should be.

The Happy Atheist is a heartfelt and unpretentious look at the folly of religion.  It is blissfully free of condescension and elitism, which many of its contemporary works cannot claim.  And it is smart and witty and impassioned.  Myers set out to write a book on atheism, using humour as a weapon against superstitious wish-thinking, and he succeeded, at least in my mind.

I was immensely impressed with Myers lament for the lost history of generations past.  Lost because their lives, their struggles and their triumphs were not recorded and handed down in the form of a sacred book.  He deftly illustrates the historic and poetic value of the Bible, emphasising its importance as a tool for recognising that our ancestors were people, with lives and dramas and loss.

Though if you take only one thing away from this book, let it be this:  every person has the right to designate any silly thing as sacred to them, but they do not have the right to dictate what is sacred to you and me.  This is the most succinct and intelligent argument that I have ever read against the fallacy that religious beliefs somehow deserve the reverence that the devout so often demand.

Whatever your personal opinion of PZ Myers and his secular antics, or his scathing and often misunderstood wit, you would do well to add this book to your shelf, along-side The God Delusion and God Is Not Great, and if you’re truly enlightened, perhaps even a copy of the Koran and the Bible.

Everything you experience is in the past.  In fact, the nature of reality dictates that everything you will ever experience, everything you can experience will have already happened by the time you experience it.

Confused?  Allow me to explain.

Light travels fast, as you may already know.  Really fast.  Mind bogglingly fast.  299,792,458 metres per second to be precise.  Or in more relative terms, roughly 300,000 kilometers per second.  That’s pretty much the ultimate speed limit of the universe.  According to Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, nothing can travel faster than light, but if you could, which you can’t, but if you could, you’d be able to plant yourself at any point along the space-time continuum.  That is to say that you could travel to any place or time that you choose, with certain caveats, the most relevant being that you can’t.

Still confused?  I’ll continue then.

When you look to the stars at night, those twinkling little dots of light in the sky, what you are seeing is the light emanated by distant suns.  Some with planets around them, others without.  That light that you see is confined by the same speed limit as the light our own sun emits.  That means that a distant star, one perhaps several thousand light-years away, isn’t exactly as it appears in the sky.

When the light leaves its parent star, it’s travelling at 300,000 kilometers per second, but there are many millions, or even billions of miles between stars. For example, the nearest star to our solar system (besides our sun) is called Proxima Centauri and it is approximately 4.24 light-years from Earth.  That means that it takes light, the light emitted from the star, approximately 4.2 years to reach Earth, and subsequently…your eye.  That is precisely where the term light-year comes from, it is the standard by which galactic distance is measured, and all because light travels at a constant speed.

So, in case you slept through high school science class, that means that all you can ever see of the stars in the night sky, is their past.  Their distant past in most cases.  In some cases we’re talking about billions of years distant.

You may be thinking that this is all well and good for stars that are thousands, millions or even billions of light-years away, but how does this mean that everything I experience is in the past?

Aha!  This is where it gets interesting.

Like I said above, light speed is constant.  It’s dependable, like a trusted neighbour, or your mom.  It will always travel at 300,000 kilometers per second.  Well, that’s not exactly accurate, but outside of some very specific circumstances it is constant.  That means that the light emitted from the light bulb in your bedroom also travels at that speed.  Now, unless you’re mega-rich and have a mansion the size of a galaxy, that light probably only has a few feet to travel, so in any perceptible way it happens instantaneously.  But our perceptions aren’t really trustworthy.

Even over a distance of a few feet it still takes time for the light to travel from the bulb to the wall, where the wall’s surface, depending on its colour, absorbs all but a very narrow band of the spectrum, and the light is then reflected away from the wall and into your eye.  This is where it impacts the special cone shaped cells that line your retina, and you see it.  This all happens in a very short fraction of a second, depending on the size of the room, but rest assured, it happens constantly, everywhere…in every room with a light bulb that is turned on.

So you see, that elapsed time between the light streaming out of the light bulb, hitting the wall and being reflected into your eye takes time.  It means that the state of the wall, or whatever object you’re looking at, could conceivably be different than it was when the light hit it, than it appeared when that light hit your retina.

Not convinced?  OK, well, there’s more.

The speed limit of light is not the only factor that contributes to the fact that everything you experience is in the past.  After all, that’s only one of our five senses (as though we have only five).  In fact, it’s our senses that really prove this concept to be true.

Let’s stick with light for the time being.  After that light jumps through all the hoops I laid out above, it does indeed strike the back of your eye.  It’s collected by those little cone shaped cells on your retina (there are also rod shaped cells, which do the same thing, in a slightly different way, but this isn’t important to this discussion).  Those little cones do a little magic (not really) as they convert the different wavelengths of light and the varying brightness of that light into a complex series of electrical impulses that travel up the optic nerve, through the back of the eye and into the visual cortex of the brain.  There, those electrical impulses are sorted and correlated with a whole library of memories and the entire jumbled mess is converted into an image.  Not like a jpeg or something.  Well, actually, it’s a little like a digital image, but that’s another story.

Next, your visual cortex serves up a conceptual model of that image to your conscious mind, which you experience as visual information that has been encoded with spatial information and made relevant to your world view through a comparison to memories, dreams and previously learned information.  It’s a complicated process, though somewhat elegant if you think about it, and it happens constantly.  Even when your eyes are closed and you’re asleep.

I know, I know…I still haven’t explained how this means everything you experience is in the past.

OK, here it is.  That process, like the speed of light itself, happens almost instantly…almost.  It does take a certain amount of time for those little electrical impulses to travel up the optic nerve, or the auditory nerve, or the olfactory nerve, or…well you get my point.  It also takes a small amount of time for the synapses in your visual cortex, or your olfactory bulb, to collate and cross reference the information against your previous experience, and then finally it takes a further fraction of a second for that information to be served up to your consciousness as a perceptual sense.  The point is…it all takes time.  Not much time, but as with the consequence of the speed of light, the information being received by your eye is technically out-of-date by the time it reaches your consciousness.

The world at large is constantly changing, from nano-second to nano-second and our perception of this world is, in fact, nothing more than a conceptual model served up to our consciousness by the hardware of our nervous system.  Just as you can never technically consider yourself truly in the moment, this fact also proves that your senses are really only giving you a general approximation of your external reality.  You aren’t ever actually experiencing the real thing…and what you experience is always filtered and coloured by your previous experience and knowledge.

When you consider the elegant but convoluted means by which your optic system feeds you information, consider also the many ways that this system can break down.  Most of those ways will result in blindness, or partial blindness, but some will just skew the information your brain is being fed.  Which will in turn skew your perception of reality.

All in all, this has been a somewhat wordy way to illustrate that your senses can’t be trusted.  This applies to the paranormal world in a very specific way, and I know you got the point.  Try to remember it.

In this book Christopher Hitchens presents a portrait of the beatified and saintly character known as Mother Teresa.  Then he uses his keen intellect, his wit and his powerful insight as a brush to strip away decades of misrepresentation, misunderstanding and a general inability to see the Virgin of Calcutta in the light of truth.  The image that remains is, in a word, appalling.

To be clear, Hitchens isn’t suggesting that Mother Teresa had endeavoured to deceive anyone.  No, in fact he very carefully and clearly points out that she has never asserted anything but the truth about her motives and methods. Except possibly in failing to admit the nature of some of her associations over the years.  With this caveat included, I think the New York Press’ indictment on the back cover more than a little uncalled for: “If there is a Hell, Hitchens is going there for this book.”  Not that such a threat would have in any way affected the secular giant that was Christopher Hitchens.

Though I do have a complaint to level about this book.  As with several other titles by Hitchens, this book is a prime example of the intellectual snobbery for which Hitchens was so famous.  He refused to dumb-down the language or to dilute the metaphors in order to make his work more appealing to the masses.  This has endeared him to the New Atheist movement, which as a rule, venerates such elitism.  It’s unfortunate though, that the great power of Hitchens’ insight into the failings of religion, especially that of the Catholic Church, remains inaccessible to a large section of society.  A section that would benefit from a clear and concise valuation theism.  This isn’t to say that his work is unreadable, no, not at all.  With a little effort and a vigilant eye, his ideas are well understood, but this effort isn’t likely to be undertaken by those without a vested interest in the subject matter.

The Missionary Position is an important book, if diminutive.  To my knowledge, it is the only unbiased study available on the actions and words of a woman who was canonised by her congregates long before her death in 1997.  You may claim that Hitchens was anything but unbiased, and there might be some truth to that, but despite his personal feelings about the fraudulent reputation of Albanian born Anjezë Bojaxhiu, turned Catholic sister, turned religious visionary and champion of “the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low”, his treatment of the subject remained even-handed throughout.

In the wake of the release of his latest book, there has been a bit of Dan Brown-itus floating about the bookish community.  Both from fans and critics.  Dan Brown has a singular ability to both inspire and to spark distain.  While he has a huge following of fans, myself included, he has also generated a rather large, almost cult-like anti-fan base; people who would rather see his career take a dive than to enjoy the fictional mysteries he writes.

His latest book, Inferno, if you haven’t read it yet (spoiler alert by the way), is an homage to the Divine Comedy, or more specifically, the first part in the comedy, Inferno, commonly known as Dante’s Inferno.

Written by renowned Italian poet Dante Alighieri between 1308 and 1321, this epic poem is widely considered to be, not only the preeminent work of Italian literature, but one of the greatest works of literature in the history of mankind.  It is a truly beautiful and inspiring piece of writing, as are the final two parts, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

For those unfamiliar, the Comedy tells the tale of Dante as he embarks on a journey through hell and purgatory in pursuit of his love, Beatrice, who resides in heaven (paradise).  Dante is guided through hell (and purgatory) by the ancient poet known as Virgil, and the two of them make their way through the ten circles of hell, observing and discussing the various horrors they witness along the way.

Though he has said that his motive for writing Inferno was to inspire a greater love and awareness for the Divine Comedy, Brown’s story only makes use of certain imagery and art that has been inspired by the Comedy over the centuries.  The main subject of the book is actually a matter of extreme importance and urgency for humanity: overpopulation.

As the story goes, there is an international movement or community of academics, scientists and futurists who believe in and work toward achieving a concept known as Transhumanism.  Designated popularly by the symbol H+, transhumanism, which may sound somewhat ominous, is actually a rather optimistic ideal relating to the effort of improving human longevity.  Essentially it speaks of making people immortal through the use of technology.  Most scenarios envision combining biology and technology and thereby eliminating disease, decay and death, and ultimately creating a utopian society where no one dies and everyone lives in a perpetual state of health.  It actually sounds pretty good, if you ignore certain problems.

Those problems of course, tend to be pretty big ones.  Not the least of which is achieving the technical ability to successfully merge our fragile bodies with robust technology, but we may be closer to that goal than you realise.  In any event, there is a much bigger problem to overcome before we even get to that point, and this is the problem that Brown’s Inferno tackles in, I must say, a somewhat elegant way.  Brutal, but also elegant.

That problem is overpopulation.  It’s a massive problem, and it’s one we face right now, regardless of our dream to become cyborgs.  We, as a species, breed a lot, almost exponentially.  To illustrate the significance of that word, consider the story of the man who invented chess, of all things.

According to the Persian poet Ferdowsi, in his epic and ancient poem Shahnameh (which is considered to be entirely apocryphal), the man who invented chess submitted his new invention to the Persian King who was so impressed that he offered to reward the man with whatever he wanted.  The man being a mathematician told the king that he wanted grains of wheat.  Specifically, he wanted the wheat counted on a chessboard: starting in one corner of the board, he wanted one grain of wheat on the first square and two grains on the second square, then four grains on the third and so on, doubling the number of grains with each successive square.  Now, you might think this a reasonable request, as the king certainly did, and he ordered an administrator to count out the wheat and award it to the man.  The problem, which the king did not understand at first, is that the man was requesting an exponential progression of wheat, which, by the time you reach the final square on the board, would result in far more wheat than you might imagine.

The count on the final square would be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat or 2⁶³ grains.  That’s more wheat than the massive Persian kingdom could have produced in several years.  It’s a huge number.  And unfortunately for the mathematician, who many believe was just offering a joke, the king found no humour in the situation and promptly had him executed.

This, as I said, illustrates how quickly an exponential progression can result in unimaginably huge numbers, and some believe that our collective birthrate is exponential.  It isn’t really, but it’s close.

A popular graph image (shown below) further illustrates the problem, showing that over the past several decades and centuries, our global population has skyrocketed, and the consequences of such growth are catastrophic.  Notice I didn’t say potentiallycatastrophic, as there’s nothing uncertain about it.  Our huge numbers have resulted in environmental disaster; global warming, the depletion of resources like oil and coal and water and food, a constant state of war, and the rapid spread of disease, just to name a few.  Our planet cannot sustain our current population, which is quickly approaching seven billion worldwide.

Some experts estimate that we’ll reach 10 billion by the year 2050, othesr say it’ll happen before then.  And if you fail to see the problem here, I’m really not sure how else to make the point.  Something must be done to curb our breeding progress, though there are those who believe otherwise, the Catholic Church for one.  But with a rational view of the situation, one can hardly deny the importance of not only reducing the rate at which we multiply, but also – and this is the main point of Brown’s book – we have to find a way to essentially cull our current population.

This is a horrific suggestion, I know.  Everyone has a right to exist, to live, to enjoy the fruits of labours past, but the reality is, our planet cannot sustain us.  Some enlightened people, notably people like Carl Sagan, have suggested that our future is in space.  That our only hope of survival is to leave this little blue ball.  Others think that’s much too ambitious, that our technical ability lags too far behind our ability to procreate and that the realisation of that solution will come much too late.

Other still, namely Brown’s fictional antagonist, Bertrand Zobrist, suggest that an actual cull of our population is necessary. That is to say that a certain percentage, a large percentage at that, should be eliminated.  Or in other words…killed.  I told you it was brutal.

Fortunately, well it was sort of fortunate, Zobrist came up with an alternative that was no less brutal, but at least it didn’t involve the arbitrary selection of a large number of people for planned genocide.  He developed and released a genetic virus that served to effectively sterilize nearly one third of the global population.  It offered a uniquely elegant (in my view) if not slow acting solution for the overpopulation problem, in that a third of the people on earth would no longer be able to procreate.  It would immediately reduce our numbers (immediate in relative terms) and thus ease some of the pressure on our planetary resources.

Whether you agree that it’s an elegant solution or not (I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t), one thing Brown neglected to address in his story, was the fact that, in order for a transhumanist future to manifest, our birthrate would have to be reduced to nearly zero.  A one third sterilization would not do the trick.

If the goal of transhumanism is to make us immortal through technology, then even a small birthrate would eventually put us right back in the same situation.  I suppose one could argue that by the time we’re capable of staving off death permanently, we’ll also be technologically matured enough to advance colonies of humanity throughout the solar system, or even the galaxy, but that hardly solves the problem.

Now, before the comment section on this post fills up with righteous condemnation of me and my sick pragmatism, let’s be clear than I’m not suggesting we do any such thing.  I simply see not only how desperate our situation really is, but I also see the value in exploring the various possible solutions, no matter how uncomfortable they make us.  Dan Brown has, as I mentioned earlier, generated rather large criticism, both of his writing (which I personally enjoy, but others don’t’), but also of his ideas.  Many disbelieve the severity of the problem, others deny that it exists at all, but most recognize that we have to do something.

If there were a question I was leading up to with all this, I suppose it would be: if you had the power to turn off the reproductive ability of a third of our population, would you do it, based on the knowledge that our survival depends on it?

Of the many posts on this website, some are more popular than others.  Some topics seem to strike a chord with readers, or perhaps it’s my treatment of those topics that stir the hearts and minds of the few who happen across my work.

One of those popular posts has been what could be called a ‘review’ of the infamous Ovilus.  That’s actually a string of posts, but the latest has gotten more attention than the others overall.  I’m not certain that the Ovilus post is popular because people agree with my point of view, but if the commentary following it is any indication, many do not.  And that’s ok, anyone and everyone is entitled to disagree with me.  I’m generally quite willing to debate the issues and make my own case, and at the same time, I’ll happily listen to your well-reasoned arguments (providing they are well-reasoned, on topic and not personal attacks).

Another post that was popular is my critique of EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon.  I wasn’t exactly charitable with that topic, though I didn’t think I was being particularly harsh either.  I simply said that the evidence gleaned through so-called EVP research isn’t evidence of ghosts.  Or rather that it can’t be considered evidence of ghosts because there are too many other possible causes for the phenomenon.  Though I acknowledge the skeptic explanations of pareidolia or even delusion – which, although it can seem like a dismissive and insulting suggestion, is a good possibility in some cases – I’m actually talking about other environmental causes, like unexpected electromagnetic fields and their effect on recording mediums, as only one example.

Today’s post is connected to that very idea.  Among the tool kit of the modern Ghost Hunter there are numerous pieces of equipment that are considered staples of the endeavour. Flashlights, cameras, micro-recorders and maybe even the Ovilus (much to my own chagrin).  But the one device that nearly every Ghost Hunter relies on in their investigations is the EMF meter, and I question this practice in much the same way as I question the collection of EVP data.

The EMF meter is, for those not already familiar, a device for measuring electromagnetic fields in the general proximity of the device’s sensors.  Electromagnetic fields are everywhere, quite literally.  Our environment, that is the entire planet, is inundated with waves of energy.  The most powerful come from our sun, most of which is absorbed by our atmosphere, but everything that uses electricity in any way also generates an EM field.  Electromagnetic energy is a form of radiation and it is measured along a spectrum – the electromagnetic spectrum – which includes at its extreme ends: Gamma radiation and ELF waves (extremely low frequency).  Along the spectrum between Gamma rays and ELF are frequencies that correspond to radio waves (which includes cellular signals and other communications transmissions) and even the light spectrum that we’re able to detect with our eyes (the visible light spectrum).

EMF meters are generally designed to measure AC currents that are generated by electric appliances with frequencies between 50 and 60 Hz, with obvious variation between different models, but they can all detect EM fields outside of those generated by AC current.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I’m not qualified to argue about the technical specifications of EMF meters, nor am I an expert on electromagnetic theory, but I do have a working understanding.  I submit though, that such knowledge isn’t necessary to see the flaw in this situation.  I’ll explain.

It’s really as simple as this: there are many possible causes of EMF fluctuation in a given space, and as long as there is doubt about what caused the reading, it cannot be attributed to any one phenomenon.

The more experienced among you will already be gearing up to type out a comment pointing out that you, specifically aren’t claiming that these readings are attributed to one phenomenon and/or that baseline readings are always taken (though I doubt the word “always” applies) to differentiate those readings from what are commonly called emergent EM fields (that would be an unexpected field of electromagnetic energy that doesn’t appear to have been caused by sources that contributed to the baseline reading.  Unexpected and unexplained.)  If that’s you, the one getting ready for a fight, relax, I’m not referring to you.

With some exception, the Ghost Hunter will claim that this emergent field is evidence of the presence of a ghost, or more reasonably evidence of a paranormal event.  It is not.

Well, let me hedge my bets a bit here; it probably is not.  Even with the utmost care taken to minimize the influence of electrical appliances in the area, there are errant EMF fields everywhere, fluctuating, cancelling each other out and permeating every structure and every living body.  They’re there, and they can be measured by an EMF meter.  Cheaper meters are much more susceptible to interference from errant EMF than are the more expensive meters, which generally work in a different way than say, the K2 meter.

But all of this is beside the point.  Unless the source of the field can be identified, it cannot be attributed to any one phenomenon.  But I repeat myself.

Much of this boils down to a problem the paranormal community is dealing with in a most ineffectual way.  The question is, why do Ghost Hunters use EMF meters in their investigations?  I’ve asked around, and I got some weird answers.  Some talked about the likelihood that an unexplained field was direct evidence of the paranormal; basically saying that if baseline sources are ruled out, it must be paranormal.  Others said, indirectly, that they do it because someone else does (not in those words of course, but when one says that they don’t understand it well enough to explain it, so go check so-and-so’s blog for an answer, the logical inference is that they only do it because so-and-so made them think it was a good idea).

And this leads me to the real point: having not had the opportunity to survey the entire community of Ghost Hunters around the world, I’m stuck with generalizations, but from what I have seen and the conversations that I’ve had, a large portion of that community really doesn’t understand what it is they are measuring with an EMF meter.  Many use models that don’t even given them an actual EMF reading, they just have lights that turn on when a field is detected.  What, if anything, does this tell you about what is causing the field?

The presence of an unexpected or unexplained electromagnetic field is an anomaly.  It may or may not be relevant to the investigation at hand, but in order to determine its relevance, one must identify its source.  It answers no questions to simply squeal and declare that there be ghosts here.

From a scientific standpoint, there may be some merit to the idea that certain phenomena can be identified and/or tracked using a measurement of electromagnetic energy.  However, for that endeavour to bear fruit, the researcher must have both an understanding of what the meter is measuring, how it measures it and what that measurement means in relation to every element of the environment in which it was observed.  Pointing your meter into a dark room and declaring that any readings you get are the result of ghosts is quite silly.

So, I said it.  I meant it.  And I fully expect that many will disagree.  I know that there are also quite a few who agree with me, and I cordially invite both groups to voice their opinion on the matter in the comment section below.  If you don’t wish to enter the argument, then I ask that you simply ask yourself, if you use an EMF meter to search for ghosts or for paranormal activity: why?

John Brockman has done it again.  Well, Edge.org has done it again, with Brockman at the helm.  For those unfamiliar, Edge.org, which has been called the smartest website on the internet, undertakes to bring the brilliance of our era, in science, literature, philosophy and art, under a single umbrella for the purposes of providing insight into some of the issues we face as a people.

Specifically, Brockman publishes a book, on a semi-annual basis, which is essentially a compilation of many short essays by the finest minds on the front lines of progress in our culture, answering a single question.  This year’s question (2012): What is your favourite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?

The book, titled This Explains Everything, is a wonderful tour through the foundational principles of many scientific and philosophic disciplines.  Some of the names involved are Freeman Dyson, V.S. Ramachandran, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Alan Alda, and Michael Shermer, among many more.  The answers given run the gamut between the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection to the unification of electricity and magnetism, and from the concept of apparent motion (in motion pictures) to Metabolic Syndrome (cell toxicity).

It is a wonderful collection of insights by the leading minds in every field, and provides the perfect starting point for further study of concepts and theories you may not even have known existed.  It can be tedious at times, as some of the respondents aren’t exactly natural science writers, and some of the answers are more technical than others.  Even if you only skimmed through, giving attention to only those answers that interest you, you will learn something, I guarantee it.

Another excellent effort by Edge.org and John Brockman.

If you spend any amount of time on the internet, particularly Twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this meme image. (Right)

What you’ll quickly deduce from the image is that someone, namely whoever made the picture, believes there to have been a common origin to the design of the pyramids, in Egypt, Asia and South America, among others.  That is to say that those people who built the pyramids at Giza, or Teotihuacan, or Cambodia, all worked off of the same blueprint.  Or in the simplest terms available, they all got the idea from the same place.

This idea, that all pyramids are connected by way of a common history, is part of a concept or school of thought known as Pyramidology.  Overall, this is a collection of failed pseudoscientific concepts covering everything from:

• The Meteorological hypothesis – which discusses the geometric/astronomical alignment of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
• The Numerological hypothesis – which discusses the esoteric geometric dimensions of the Egyptian pyramids, invoking the sacred cubit, which, surprisingly enough, was first postulated by Sir Isaac Newton.
• Pyramid Power – which is ridiculous; but for those unfamiliar posits that the shape of pyramids engenders certain supernatural powers, such as healing, psychic enhancement and the generation of unspecified energies.
• Pseudoarchaeological hypotheses – which includes the common origin idea and ancient alien hypothesis.

The scientific success of Pyramidology, or the lack thereof, seems to do little to dissuade the more credulous among us, for the above ideas permeate the Fortean community.  Of particular interest is the issue of common origin.

You might guess that the father of ancient alien theory, Eric von Däniken, would have his hands in this, and you’d be right, but the idea didn’t originate with him.

19^th Century author, amateur scientist and, of all things, US Congressman, Ignatius L. Donnelly is credited with the Atlantean hypothesis of common origin, not only for the pyramids, but for other key pieces of ancient culture.  He is also responsible for popularising the antediluvian civilization concept and he was a well-known proponent of the Shakespearean Authorship question.

In his 1882 book titled Atlantis, The Antediluvian World, Donnelly provided the basis for the hyperdiffusionist view of history, claiming that the common origin of the pyramids was the lost civilization of Atlantis.[1]  He says that the pyramids are the most visible example of Atlantean influence on other world cultures.  This idea is furthered by other proponents, such as Grafton Elliot Smith who claimed that small groups of people travelling by boat, spread the basic concepts of pyramid construction from Atlantis across the Fertile Crescent and into Asia.[2]

Von Däniken and other ancient alien theorists have further advanced Donnelly’s ideas, connecting the ancient cultures of Asia, South America and Egypt, claiming that the similarities between each demand the logical assertion that they were seeded by a single historical entity, in his case that entity was aliens and not the lost civilization.

At first glance these ideas may seem to have some merit, notwithstanding the fact that they are all unanimously considered pseudoscientific in academic circles.  Pyramids from all three cultures do possess a striking similarity, in that all take the shape of a pyramid.  Though that’s really as far as it goes.  Outside of their superficial similarities, the pyramids of the Mayan or Cambodian or Egyptian regions have drastically different styles and even purposes.  From the stepped pyramids of the Yucatan to the Smooth sided, gold tipped Egyptian pyramids, which long predate all others; from the four sided to the eight sided (The Great Pyramid of Giza is actually eight sided), they really only seem similar to the untrained and uncritical eye.

One might be able to argue that the stylistic differences between cultures are the result of each culture assimilating the knowledge passed on in the ways suggested by Donnelly and von Däniken, but there’s a simple rebuttal that should be aesthetically pleasing to most Forteans, one that conforms to their favourite scientific/philosophical principle – Occam’s razor.  The simplest of all explanations for the similarity between pyramid structures around the world, is that, in construction, especially in megalithic construction, there are certain shapes that are more likely than others to be successful.  The square pyramid just happens to be the most structurally stable building shape known to man.  Not only is it stable, but it’s simple, easy to engineer and construct on a large scale.  It’s also likely to survive the ages, when constructed using stone (as they obviously were), in turn giving us many surviving examples to compare, as opposed to stick framed, wooden structures or even other less stable stone construction a la Greek and Roman ruins that are far younger and in much worse condition.  So it stands to reason that the use of pyramids in monuments, monuments that were intended to stand the test of time, would have been popular and that the genesis for this style of construction would have come out of independent common sense evolution of construction techniques.

The same is true for any number of other advancements in ancient culture.  Take the advent and rise of boats for example.  While there may have been a certain amount of regional knowledge trade among neighbouring tribespeople and villages, this relatively local spread of techniques for building boats could not account for the worldwide use of boats over time.  It is a certainty that many, if not most early boat builders came up with the idea independently.  And the similar shape of most boats of the time can be attributed to elements of necessity in their purpose and the environment in which they were used (on water).

While it may not be possible to prove beyond a doubt that these building practises arose in disparate cultures independently, the evidence for that being the case is quite strong, certainly much stronger than the alternative.  Notwithstanding the fact that there is zero archaeological evidence to support the existence of any mechanism for transmitting such knowledge across the globe, it simply isn’t necessary to invoke a grand conspiratorial knowledge base used by cultures that were geographically separated by thousands of miles and by geological barriers such as mountains, deserts and oceans.

As mentioned, Pyramidology, in its entirety, is widely panned as pseudoscientific nonsense, it holds to a romantic notion of connectivity, to each other and to the greater universe, but it’s not necessary.  Science provides us with the same connectivity, through anthropology, genetics, cosmology and physics, and these principles come with verifiable and repeatable explanations and evidence.  It may seem like men like Donnelly or Smith or von Däniken are pioneers in abstract thinking.  That they have unique and genuine insights into the mysteries of our past, but in most cases these people do nothing but muddy our understanding of history with unsupported claims and often, lies.

 

If you’ve been keeping up with my work at all over the past year or so, you’re familiar with my interest in the mind-body question.  That is the question of whether we, humans, have souls or if consciousness is the result of neurological processes alone.  A big question to be sure, but one that a select few people believe they are close to answering.

One such person is Sam Parnia M.D., PhD.  For those in the Fortean community, Parnia probably needs no introduction, but for those of you unfamiliar, Parnia is a Critical Care physician and Director of Resuscitation Research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York.  A global authority on the scientific study of death, Parnia is considered to be a leading expert on the mind-body question and specifically Near-Death-Experiences.  He approaches the issue of death and how it relates to consciousness in a wholly scientific manner, as opposed to the historically popular theological or philosophical treatments we all know so well.

Among his colleagues, Parnia is renowned for being the best known proponent for updating current medical practices regarding resuscitation in hospitals.  The current mindset in emergency rooms or critical care units is of cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) being used as a last ditch effort to bring back a person who has succumbed to our ultimate end.  This mindset, Parnia (and others) contend is responsible for many thousands of people being lost to correctable ailments with little or no effort put toward bringing them back.

Parnia claims that procedures, such as those practiced in Japanese hospitals currently – namely drastically cooling the body immediately following death to minimise neuronal degradation, and artificially oxygenating the patient’s blood to ensure that their heart will function properly upon resuscitation – will drastically improve both the chance that a person can be brought back from the brink following a correctable incident (a heart attack for instance) and will also increase the time allowed between death and successful resuscitation; to several hours in some cases.[1]

The above is arguably considered to be Parnia’s primary focus in research, though many people have latched onto one of his more flamboyant research projects with a fervor.  That project is the AWARE Study, or AWAreness in REsuscitation which has been undertaken by the Human Consciousness Project.  Most are aware (no pun intended) of what this project is, though probably not by name.  AWARE is a presumably scientific study into Near-Death-Experience or NDE as most know it.  In this particular study, researchers, led by Parnia, are working with some 25 hospitals in Europe, Canada, and the US.

“During the AWARE study, physicians will use the latest technologies to study the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest. At the same time, they will also be testing the validity of out of body experiences and claims of being able to see and hear during cardiac arrest through the use of randomly generated hidden images that are not visible unless viewed from specific vantage points above.”[2]

Many people in scientific, metaphysical and paranormal/Fortean circles have been anxiously awaiting results from this study, though, to our disappointment, those results have been slow in coming.  This is due in part to the fact that such research takes a great deal of time.  While people die every day, controlling the circumstances in which they die, as well as where they die, so as to make use of any anecdotal testimony they may share following resuscitation is quite difficult to arrange.  Parnia and colleagues have also been somewhat tight lipped about their progress, and understandably so.  Though this leaves those of us who are out of the loop to fumble for numbers and sound bites to play with.

Parnia has recently published some preliminary findings in his book (with Josh Young) Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting The Boundaries Between Life And Death (HarperOne 2013).  And to my mind, those results are less than encouraging.  In lieu of reading the book, which I have not yet done myself but fully intend to (as I would encourage anyone reading this to do also), Parnia participated in an interesting interview with NPR[3] which highlights my point.

Methodologically, there are problems with this study that might be barriers to its success.  In the NPR interview, Parnia admits that only about 1 out of 1000 patients has remembered an NDE that included an OBE or out-of-body-experience (which is necessary for the gathering of data points in this study).  This is due to the conditions I mentioned above, wherein it’s exceedingly difficult to control the conditions of a person’s death, so as to ensure that their experience will qualify for inclusion to this study.  Add to this the fact that the confirmed numbers of people who have what could be called an NDE following “clinical death” – a term Parnia loathes – are fewer than 15% of those who died and were resuscitated.

When questioned about the fact that more than eighty percent of those people who die as a result of a cardiac condition and whom are resuscitated do not report an NDE or OBE, Parnia claims that those numbers are inaccurate, describing a process that appears similar to one forgetting a dream after waking, with memories of the NDE/OBE fading quickly after gaining consciousness.  Which may appear to be a reasonable answer, but in reality if the patient does not recall a Near-Death-Experience, then they cannot be said to have had one, which excludes them from the statistical results of the study.  What Parnia attributes as a cause for this situation does nothing to strengthen these preliminary conclusions, which are that few of the participants in the AWARE Project have shown positive results.  That is, few have had experiences that support the purpose of the study, and to-date, not one patient has relayed the content of the placards, or even noted seeing a placard at all.

A negative result is still a result though.

This view of the numbers gives perspective, but no one is claiming that NDE’s with OBE components don’t happen.  The skeptical view is that those experiences are much too subjective to be considered reliable testimony on the reality of an after-death landscape.  As I’ve written in the past, there is a drastic dichotomy between the typical scientific assessment of this issue and the typical philosophical position.  The AWARE Project is a common sense attempt to bring a little science into what has historically been a spiritual subject, but while many people are setting up camp directly under the ‘confirmed’ sign, Parnia’s comments don’t really seem to warrant such.

I would encourage those interested to pay close attention to this study and to the Human Consciousness Project, as I’m quite certain they are our best hope for finding an answer to this question.  To be clear though, while the results of the AWARE Project hold the potential to shed light on issues that we’re all interested in – namely the after-life, ghosts, the existence of the soul, etc. – Parnia makes clear that his purpose is not that grand.  He is not in search of a religious affirmation of the after-life, nor is he hoping to prove that ghosts exist (and his study would do little in that regard anyway), he is simply trying to better understand the process of death and how it relates to cognition and the successful resuscitation of people who might yet have the potential for a long and productive life.

A professional psychic named Ilona recently made a remark that startled me. I was interviewing her for my new book and I’d thought I’d heard it all, but that certainly was not the case. Her comment wasn’t an epiphany-inducing personal prediction. Nor was it about anything as agonizingly cliché as the world ending. But it did have implications that, in my mind, reverberated down through the unfolding centuries to come. She predicted that in another 500 years psychic ability would become mainstream.

Think about that. Try to envision a world in which the average person would possess what we now consider to be extraordinary abilities as a clairvoyant or medium. (For the sake of clarity, clairvoyants are people who know something about the past, present or future that they should have no way of knowing. Mediums are people who communicate with the departed.) The ramifications of such a development are mind-boggling.

Can you imagine what sort of impact universal psychic ability would have on business and political practices? How would the stock market work if it were no longer a gamble? Would history professors channel figures from the past to provide more accurate first-hand accounts of milestone events? And on a personal level, would widows and widowers find it harder to remarry with their late spouses popping in and out of their lives?

I began researching this notion in work done by scientists. There are a number of organizations that dedicate themselves to validating and/or debunking the paranormal and many have Suggested Reading Lists. One book I read, written by a John Hopkins-trained neuropsychiatrist who had taught at Harvard Medical School, suggested that psychic ability represents an evolution of the brain. When describing psychic ability, Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, in her book The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena, explained that the nervous system is like an energy antenna. In some people, the antennae are so sensitive that they can pick up information that eludes the rest of us.

Genetics vs Trauma

According to her observations, most gifted clairvoyants and mediums inherit their ability. So that highly sensitive nervous system has a genetic component. That may, in part, explain why she suggested psychic ability as an evolution of the brain. It would be interesting to see if that psychic neuro-variation could be pinpointed on the human genome. Although, that might be complex to do as scientists have conceded that it is not necessarily a single gene that accounts for a single human trait so much as the totality of genes interplaying with each other.

Dr. Hennacy Powell also observed that some people acquire psychic ability through trauma. For instance, well-known psychic medium George Anderson developed brain swelling as a complication from chicken pox at the age of six. He was not expected to survive, but he did. When he recovered, his nervous system was altered and he was able to see dead people. Famous Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos fell off a ladder and hit his head, an event which initiated his abilities. And Joseph McMoneagle, who worked for the U.S. Army Intelligence remote viewing program for more than ten years, developed his psychic ability after a near-death experience. (Remote viewing is another name for clairvoyance.)

I should disclose that for most of my life, I have been a strong skeptic of paranormal phenomena. I apparently belong to the more Neanderthal branch of humanity that is deficient in psychic ability. In fact, I have spent most of my career writing about scientific topics and I confess to feeling more comfortable with information that is supported by double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.

I can only suggest that our quantum universe must have a sense of humor, because when I met my future husband more than 20 years ago, the last thing I was expecting was that he would be one of those psychic types.  To make my situation all the more absurd, in keeping with the genetic tendencies mentioned earlier, half of his family is psychic as well. So, for the past two decades, I guess you could say I’ve been surrounded.

Measuring the Method

The scientific method that establishes fact through reproducible studies was designed to measure properties in the physical world. So is measuring etheric phenomena possible with this method? Is it even valid? Are we trying to capture a cup of water with an 8-ounce sieve?

I fully realize that any experiences I might have to share, from a scientific standpoint, would be considered anecdotal and subjective. But I would like to suggest that paranormal phenomena, by their very character, tend to be that way. I am not alone in that viewpoint. Dr. Irvin L. Child, then Professor of Psychology at Yale University, observed in a paper presented to the American Society for Psychical Research in 1974 that “unlike other areas of experimental study, paranormal phenomena have never been the subject of any kind of dependably repeatable experiment … Psi phenomena may, of course, be of such a nature that no procedure will ever be adequate to guarantee their occurrence at a particular time and place.”

As a case in point, my husband’s Italian grandmother, Dolores, had sporadic precognitive dreams that came true. But she couldn’t summon a dream upon will nor could she manufacture them in a reproducible volume. Her predictions tended to be about specific impending accidents or death. One might reason that mortality can often be anticipated based on age. But that wouldn’t explain the morning she woke up, extremely upset, and insisted her daughter call an uncle they rarely contacted. Dolores was convinced something terrible had happened. It had. His college-aged son had just been in an automobile accident and died ten days later.

You could certainly attribute that to coincidence. And I certainly did when such events occurred shortly after I married my husband. But after 20 years of inexplicable experiences, I have grudgingly changed my mind.

Time, the Final Arbiter

Louisa Oakley Green is the author of Loitering at the Gate to Eternity: Memoirs of a Psychic Bystander. Her recently published book (visit www.psychicbystander.com) offers a combination of history and research on various types of paranormal phenomenon as well as more than 100 true paranormal stories. She has been a professional writer for more than 40 years, working as a journalist, magazine editor, creative director and science writer. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Stephen.