In the Alternative/Complementary Therapy arena there is a lot of talk about 'energy'. It has various names.. 'vital force', 'chi', 'life force' and so on. BUT what is it?
In there was to be only one sticking point between the scientific community and the spiritual community then perhaps it would be on this issue of energy.
The problem is basically that New Age thinkers tend to use the word energy as a noun. A word which describes 'something'. Scientists have a very different definition of what 'energy' is.
The famous equation E=MC2 defines energy.
E = energy and it is equivalent to the mass of an object (M) times the speed of light (C) squared.
Now both mass and speed are measurements so that means ENERGY too must be a measurement. In simple terms energy is a measurement of of 'work'. It is a measurement of the amount of work it takes (or would) take to interact with the world. Every school child knows that there are clearly defined 'categories' of energy... POTENTIAL ENERGY .. basically energy that is 'stored' in some way and KINETIC ENERGY.. that is energy that is in motion. In reality these categories tend to cover the fact that energy cannot be described as a thing but as something that has specific traits....
When energy makes things happen it does so by causing a change in shape, speed. volume, pressure, temperature,chemical reactions and density and so on.
Energy is an agent of change.... and it is measure on calories, joules of kilojoules.
When New Age folk talk about energy they are not talking about anything that can be measured.
So what are they talking about...
Well many scientist would argue 'nothing' - and in many of the instances where New Age Alternative folk claim energy at work' science has consistently shown it either to be something else or non existent.
Now lets get something out of the way here..
SCIENCE is not a belief system - it is a process - a way of doing things or thinking about things. The 'scientific method'.
Science does not prove anything it sets out to disprove specific ideas; testing specific claims by trying to identify and control all of the possible variable that make things happen.
Let me tell you about Emily Rosa.
At the age of 10 she was given the rare honour of being the youngest person to have a paper published in a scientific journal. She was interested in Therapeutic Touch and wondered what kind of 'energy' the practitioners were feeling - if indeed they were really feeling anything.
She set out to test the practitioners claims of the human energy field.
I leave it with you to read the full story but suffice it to say that a simple experiment actually showed that experienced practitioners of Dolores Kriegers TT could not detect the human energy field let alone interact with it. Emily's work was published in 1998 and to date, there is no published experimental replication or refutation of Emily's original study. It presently stands alone as a test of TT practitioners' raw ability to detect or manipulate the 'human energy' field.
NOW here's the thing..
ALL traditional, spiritual and New Age ideas about energy are pre-scientific and tend to defer to magical thinking. (PLEASE don't get me onto the misuse of Quantum Theory by the New Age community...!!!) So there will be NO common ground between the rationalist and the mystic in the way energy is talked about...
So, shifting focus a little now...
In 'energy based' therapies the client does percieve an effect. There as lot going on here and we should not deny the individuals subjective experience.... and that's an issue for next time...
HOWEVER before the next installment you may like to look at this..
In there was to be only one sticking point between the scientific community and the spiritual community then perhaps it would be on this issue of energy.
The problem is basically that New Age thinkers tend to use the word energy as a noun. A word which describes 'something'. Scientists have a very different definition of what 'energy' is.
The famous equation E=MC2 defines energy.
E = energy and it is equivalent to the mass of an object (M) times the speed of light (C) squared.
Now both mass and speed are measurements so that means ENERGY too must be a measurement. In simple terms energy is a measurement of of 'work'. It is a measurement of the amount of work it takes (or would) take to interact with the world. Every school child knows that there are clearly defined 'categories' of energy... POTENTIAL ENERGY .. basically energy that is 'stored' in some way and KINETIC ENERGY.. that is energy that is in motion. In reality these categories tend to cover the fact that energy cannot be described as a thing but as something that has specific traits....
Energy is a property or characteristic (or trait or aspect?) of matter that makes things happen, or, in the case of stored or potential energy, has the "potential" to make things happen.
When energy makes things happen it does so by causing a change in shape, speed. volume, pressure, temperature,chemical reactions and density and so on.
Energy is an agent of change.... and it is measure on calories, joules of kilojoules.
When New Age folk talk about energy they are not talking about anything that can be measured.
So what are they talking about...
Well many scientist would argue 'nothing' - and in many of the instances where New Age Alternative folk claim energy at work' science has consistently shown it either to be something else or non existent.
Now lets get something out of the way here..
SCIENCE is not a belief system - it is a process - a way of doing things or thinking about things. The 'scientific method'.
Science does not prove anything it sets out to disprove specific ideas; testing specific claims by trying to identify and control all of the possible variable that make things happen.
Let me tell you about Emily Rosa.
At the age of 10 she was given the rare honour of being the youngest person to have a paper published in a scientific journal. She was interested in Therapeutic Touch and wondered what kind of 'energy' the practitioners were feeling - if indeed they were really feeling anything.
She set out to test the practitioners claims of the human energy field.
I leave it with you to read the full story but suffice it to say that a simple experiment actually showed that experienced practitioners of Dolores Kriegers TT could not detect the human energy field let alone interact with it. Emily's work was published in 1998 and to date, there is no published experimental replication or refutation of Emily's original study. It presently stands alone as a test of TT practitioners' raw ability to detect or manipulate the 'human energy' field.
NOW here's the thing..
ALL traditional, spiritual and New Age ideas about energy are pre-scientific and tend to defer to magical thinking. (PLEASE don't get me onto the misuse of Quantum Theory by the New Age community...!!!) So there will be NO common ground between the rationalist and the mystic in the way energy is talked about...
So, shifting focus a little now...
In 'energy based' therapies the client does percieve an effect. There as lot going on here and we should not deny the individuals subjective experience.... and that's an issue for next time...
HOWEVER before the next installment you may like to look at this..
WARNING
The clip is from Penn and Tellers sceptic show B**LLS***T and does contain adult language.
If this offends then do not play the clip
If this offends then do not play the clip
Background: The show brings a critical eye to all commonly held conspiracy theories; New Age scams and so forth. The experiment in Listen-etics was not set up in the sense that the 'clients' thought they were experiencing a legitimate experiment/trial of an actual technique.
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