One often used excuse for not taking the paranormal seriously is that it is worthless to the human condition. I disagree with this argument. In many ways, understanding of the paranormal is the root to understanding ourselves and our actions.
This is therefore the first in an occasional series of essays in which I try to show how the paranormal may impact on our lives in ways we do not even think of as paranormal. Indeed, it could be at the centre of knowledge.
My research into the paranormal has taught me a great deal.
And one of the greatest lessons is that what we class as ‘reality’ rarely is. Rather, the human mind is pre-disposed to create delusions in almost every area of knowledge.
This can be seen in the process of knowledge appraisal. Data is collected. This is married with hypothesis, leading to theory. Validation leads to consensus. The consensus becomes the accepted view, until such time that new theories displace it.
It is in the consensus that the delusions arise.
If we take Big Bang, or even evolution, huge chunks of the required data is missing. Yet invariably the theory is defended as a ‘truth’. And defenders can become evangelical to the point of fanaticism.
Often, mathematics is used to bolster the consensus. Yet, math has no reality outside the human mind. Further, based upon logic, attempts to validate math have always led to the ‘axiom’, or self-evident truth. Which is, of course, a fancy phrase for ‘belief’.
This argument can be countered.
This is done by pointing out that scientific theory often leads to technological innovation. Hence, the theory must be correct. Yet, how can the theory be correct if it is later dumped or radically changed?
Something must be wrong here. And it is further complicated by the fact that the technology continues to work, even when the theory leading to it is abandoned. However, there is a partial answer if we think of theory as an act of creation.
I’ve often asked a simple question concerning belief.
If a society believes in a God-force, and all their actions are as if the God-force were real, the reality created would be identical whether the God-force was real or not. Hence, belief has created a hard, definite reality.
This is, in fact, covered by quantum theory. In the ‘observer effect’ it is argued that a definite can only come out of the probability of the subatomic world through an act of observation by an intelligence capable of defining it.
Seeing thus becomes creating. And if we apply this to the process of knowledge, we can argue the slowly evolving knowledge we humans accrue leads to a reality based upon the believed consensus, slowly evolving through repetition over centuries.
The upshot of this approach can be disconcerting. For it argues that science captures only one possible reality. A different consensus could lead to a whole new world of experience and technological innovation. Yet it also leads us to a single word to explain what our ‘reasoned’ reality really is.
That word is ‘magic’.
© Anthony North, June 2008
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