Paradigm Shifts

Back around about 1966 I stumbled on Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, thus shortly after it appeared (Chicago University Press, 1962). It was on the shelf of Midwest Research Institute’s Economics Library. All work stopped as soon as I opened the book. For someone who had been brought up on the cyclic nature of culture, the book was confirmation, first of all. By “scientific revolutions” Kuhn meant “paradigm shifts,” defined as major changes not only in methods but also in the world-views of various domains of science. By then I had already absorbed the notion (by way of Carl Jung’s book, Psychology and Alchemy) that practical, physical sciences—however defective in their methods—could over time transform themselves into mystical practices, indeed also going back to the physical side centuries later. Here was a book that looked at this phenomenon in some searching detail.

The book surfaced again recently while I was re-reading Carl B. Becker’s Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death (State University of New York Press, 1993), one of the best surveys of this subject I’ve ever encountered. In Chapter 5 Becker discusses “A Model of Resistance and Change in the Sciences.” He notes what no doubt people of my bent have long noted with interest—namely that a paradigm shift in physics has produced a world-view that might be named, after Werner Heisenberg’s, Uncertainty. There is no there there—only waves of probability. We’re at least one Astronomical Unit beyond classical mechanics, Einstein having changed Newton’s certainties, and Quantum Mechanics having dissolved even Relativity. Quantum physics generated String Theory—in an effort to produce a theory to unify them all. But—judging by a paper Brigitte had come across titled “Is String Theory About to Unravel” by Brian Greene, in the Smithsonian (link)—string theory has produced so many endless (billions) of shapes Reality might actually have, with no hint at all which might be legitimate, that we seemed to have entered a genuine Cloud of Unknowing in physics. Thus Physics, as a science, is altogether compatible with Parapsychology.

But, as Becker points out, in Biology and Psychology, the old paradigm of materialism is still hanging in there fairly hard even if resistance is weakening, see for instance earlier posts this month of Wilder Penfield.

Now if a once practical chemistry—strictly this-worldly and trying to make gold out of silver, etc.—managed to transform itself in the Middle Ages into a occult mystical practice, I have the notion that Becker’s view, namely that the paranormal sciences will eventually establish their own legitimacy in due time, is probably correct. But the shift in paradigms, especially very big one, thus from material to psychic orientations—or back again—is rather slow, slow. It comes about one generation at a time. Therefore I won’t see the day arriving. But it’s moving at the rate of a large tectonic plate. And then we may know just a little more….

Empires of Empiricism

I got to thinking about the meaning of empirical in the context of contemplating the paranormal, more specifically the subject of precognitive dreams. The word is very closely linked to science in such combinations as “empirical method” and “empirical research.” Now it turns out that the word itself derives from the Greek empeiria, meaning experience. Curious, therefore, that the paranormal falls beyond the pale of modern science—considering that such study is entirely and solely dependent on the examination of experience, accessible only, therefore, to empirical investigation.

The reasons for this stand-off are traceable to the drift in the meaning of the word as well as its deeper roots. Empeiria itself derives from the Greek word meaning skilled, which derives from the words en and peira, thus in and trial or experiment. From Greek the word emigrated to Latin as empiricus, meaning a physician who worked from experience—as opposed to a physician who worked from philosophical principles such as a dogmatic, theoretical knowledge that the imbalance of humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood) were entirely responsible for disease.

Thus empirical first served to separate the skilled artisan from the thinker, then the skilled professional from the philosopher. The trial-and-error in that root (applied with an open mind of course) became foundational for science—despite the fact that some sciences don’t permit trial and error (e.g., astronomy, geology). In modern times the qualitative approach to using observation yielded to the dominance of the quantitative approach. (The greedy manufacturers of instruments got the upper hand and caused all this—as arms manufacturers cause war.) And therefore the empirical approach, if deprived of trial-and-error, replication, and precise measurement, is no longer an acceptable avenue to the gathering of insight into the darkest shadows of reality.

I hope this exposition is a helpful nudge back to a more comprehensive approach to genuine science. But now you wonder about empire, don’t you. Is that connected here somewhere, or was I once more yielding to linguistic urges in framing the title of this post? The latter. Empire comes from the Latin imperium, meaning rule or command. Its root is once more im-, meaning in, and parare, to order.

The above composed by a financial contributor to Online Etymology Dictionary.