Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA14660 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 16 Mar 2002 13:35:23 GMT From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: FW: MD Dawkins on quantum/mysticism convergence Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 08:00:37 -0500 Message-ID: <NEBBKOADILIOKGDJLPMAMELPCMAA.debivort@umd5.umd.edu> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0019_01C1CCC0.A8458500" X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Importance: Normal Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Good morning, everyone,
From another list...
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of nargess sabeti
Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2002 7:41 AM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Dawkins on quantum/mysticism convergence
Glenn Bradford <gmbbradford@netscape.net> wrote:
Richard Dawkins, in a Forbes article written three years ago, speaks his
mind on the notion, popularized by Fritjof Capra and others, that the
science of quantum mechanics is converging with religious mysticism.
DAWKINS:
[A] kind of marriage has been alleged between modern physics and
Eastern mysticism. The argument goes as follows: Quantum mechanics, that
brilliantly successful flagship theory of modern science, is deeply
mysterious
and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply
mysterious and hard to understand. Therefore, Eastern mystics must have
been talking about quantum theory all along.
Similar mileage is made of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle ("Aren't
we all,
in a very real sense, uncertain?"), fuzzy logic ("Yes, it's okay for you
to be fuzzy,
too"), chaos and complexity theory (the butterfly effect, the Platonic,
hidden
beauty of the Mandelbrot Set--you name it, somebody has mysticized it
and!
turned it into dollars). You can buy any number of books on "quantum
healing," not to mention quantum psychology, quantum responsibility,
quantum morality, quantum immortality, and quantum theology. I haven't
found a book on quantum feminism, quantum financial management, or
Afro-quantum theory, but give it time.
The whole dippy business is ably exposed by the physicist Victor Stenger
in
his book, The Unconscious Quantum, from which the following gem is
taken.
In a lecture on "Afrocentric healing," the psychiatrist Patricia Newton
said that
traditional healers "are able to tap that other realm of negative
entropy--that
superquantum velocity and frequency of electromagnetic energy--and bring
them as conduits down to our level. It's not magic. It's not mumbo
jumbo. You
will see the dawn of the 21st century, the new medical quantum physics
really
distributing these energies and what they are doing."
Sorry, but mumbo jumbo is ! precisely what it is. Not African mumbo
jumbo but
pseudosc! ientific mumbo jumbo, down to the trademark misuse of the word
energy. It is also religion, masquerading as science in a cloying love
feast of bogus convergence.
--
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