Limits of scientific method

By Jaime Licauco
Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE WAY PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY IN THE Western world, look at the nature of reality, which is based almost solely on what science regards as real, has long been in need of some rethinking, if not revision.

I want to make it clear at the outset, however, that I am not against science and I’m not referring here to the scientific method, with which I have no quarrel. I do not think that we can improve on the methodology of science as far as validating physical reality is concerned. It is already perfect and one can add nothing more to it.

It has proven its value or effectiveness for centuries. Were it not for science, people would probably still be living in caves and dying at the age of 30.

However Western orthodox science has ignored a great deal of other realities and human experiences because it is based on the following unstated assumptions:

1. Our knowledge of the outside world is derived only from our physical senses.

2. All qualitative properties can be reduced to quantitative ones.

3. There is a clear distinction between the objective world and subjective experience.

4. The mind cannot exert any influence on the physical world.

5. What we call consciousness or awareness is only a secondary phenomenon or result of physical biochemical process.

6. We can only know the present moment and cannot foretell future events, except that which can be predicted from known causes and past historical data.

7. Individual consciousness does not survive death. Therefore spirits or so-called ghosts do not and cannot exist in reality.

The above assumptions underlying the scientific method have become the only accepted means by which reality of anything is validated and accepted by scientists. Everything else outside of these is imaginary or devoid of objective and independent existence.

The main problem with mainstream scientific method is that its assumptions are true or correct only as it pertains to physical reality. It does not include the nonphysical world. That is its main limitation.

And when scientists try to apply the scientific experimental method to things other than the physical, they get into trouble in trying to explain them rationally. It is like a child who jumps from a tall building using an umbrella as parachute. He falls to the ground dead. Why? He was using the wrong instrument or tool outside of what it was intended for.

Similarly, when scientists try to explain rationally how natives of Fiji Islands, for example, can walk on extremely hot rows of molten lava rocks, six feet long, three-feet wide and three-feet deep, without being burned, they get into some logical quandary.

It has been explained by scientists that the reason the natives are not hurt is because they have developed very strong sweat glands that get activated when they step into molten lava, thereby cooling it. Or they may have developed “very thick soles” on their feet. These explanations, no matter how ridiculous, are accepted by scientists, rather than admitting that their minds may have exerted an influence on their physical body that makes it immune to burns.

According to Dr. Willis Harman, president, until his death, of the Institute of Noetic Science in Sausalito, California, in his very important book “Global Mind Change, The New Age Revolution in the Way We Think,” “A total belief system is on organization of beliefs and expectancies that the person accepts as true of the world he or she lives in.

It does not have to be logically consistent, indeed, it probably never is. It may be compartmentalized, containing logically contradicting beliefs which typically do not come into conscious awareness at the same times. The person unconsciously wards off evidence that might reveal such inner contradictions.”

What is an appropriate methodology in one level or aspect of reality, according to him, may not be applicable in another level. The scientific method was never intended to explain nonphysical reality, and, indeed, it cannot. And when applied to nonphysical subjective reality, the scientific experimental method flounders or breaks down.

As quantum physicists have discovered to their initial shock, there is probably not even such a thing as objective reality on a quantum or sub-atomic levels. There are only subjective constructs.

The immutable laws of Newtonian physics, which work so well on the macro-level, simply do not apply in the micro or subatomic levels. What seems to apply there, despite strong objections from mainstream scientists, is consciousness. As the great English physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington said: “The stuff of the universe is mind stuff.”

Another modern physicist, Dr. Fritjof Capra, pointed out in his best-selling book “The Tao of Physics,” “The discoveries of modern physics necessitated profound changes of concepts like space, time, matter, object, cause and effect, and since these concepts are so basic to our way of experiencing the world, it is not surprising that the physicists who were forced to change them felt something of a shock.”

To insist therefore in applying only the objective experimental scientific methodology to subjective, personal experience, is to miss a great portion of what constitutes reality, as a whole.