Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA15048 (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 17:36:08 GMT Message-ID: <3C937BF9.99A647A4@clara.co.uk> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 17:08:09 +0000 From: Douglas Brooker <dbrooker@clara.co.uk> Organization: University of London X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: FW: MD Dawkins on quantum/mysticism convergence References: <NEBBKOADILIOKGDJLPMAMELPCMAA.debivort@umd5.umd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Lawrence DeBivort wrote:
> 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.
> --
>
and memetics is a science?
sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.
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