Comment on Crystals
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 months agoYes, and well-argued. I see how conflating the meanings of the same words would help woo woo peddlers convince someone who didn’t know better to buy a crystal for $36 dollars when the LHC hasn’t found anything that supports that supposition. A distorting of truth for the sake of a few bucks, indeed.
I think we’re probably at cross purposes here however, because I’m not disagreeing with that at all. My only point was that there was a period in scientific history when “metaphysics” was synonymous with “woo woo” or its equivalent. And that the presumed-proven superiority of scientific inquiry is a modern conceit we enjoy at the risk of missing the larger point.
As an example, let me quote from the Wikipedia entry from “History of Metaphysics” (I chose it because it’s relevant and succinct, this Heidegger lecture at the University of Freiburg is of course a great read as well, and very much more thorough.)
Cognitive archeology such as analysis of cave paintings and other pre-historic art and customs suggests that a form of perennial philosophy or Shamanic metaphysics may stretch back to the birth of behavioral modernity, all around the world. Similar beliefs are found in present-day “stone age” cultures such as Australian aboriginals. Perennial philosophy postulates the existence of a spirit or concept world alongside the day-to-day world, and interactions between these worlds during dreaming and ritual, or on special days or at special places. It has been argued that perennial philosophy formed the basis for Platonism, with Plato articulating, rather than creating, much older widespread beliefs. [Emphasis added]
I like this opening because right off the bat one is faced with the idea that the modern concept of metaphysics is not in fact modern, and that’s perfectly fitting for a concept of All That Is. That it was practiced and taught by Shamans - while admittedly academic supposition - is pretty on-the-nose with the idea that “our” metaphysics - the academic, scientific understanding, is (or can be) “woo woo” - the out-there, seemingly beyond-reason, interpretation of it. At the same time.
So if we can return to my previous character, Joe Woo Woo, here he is now approaching in full Shamanistic regalia - the (I’m making this up but you know how I mean) feathers, the shakers, the paint, the wild primal being in costume(?). That implied image is a direct connection to our understanding of metaphysics surely as much if not more than our discoveries or the existence of the LHC. Far, far older and in some ways more complete than what the LHC has given us.
Is it not?
That’s what I found such an interesting contradiction about this, uh, meme :) Of course that’s heavy on the metaphysics and very light on the science, so I appreciate it’s off-topic a bit. I think science tends to get so surrounded by the Tools of Science that it sometimes can’t see anything that isn’t Official Science. Of course, I’m not a real scientist, so I would think that I guess.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
What Heidegger is saying in your excerpt is that in ancient times, it seems that people widely believed in a kind of unseen, parallel world of spirits, which Plato was using as a basis for his ideas, as opposed to wholly inventing his philosophy entirely on his own, without any precedent.
He is pointing out that Plato’s metaphysics can be seen as inspired by, developed off of the foundation of earlier metaphysics, as opposed to Plato just wholly inventing them out of nothing.
When Heidegger gave that lecture, Europeans had very recently actually discovered or deciphered/translated actual empirical, physical evidence for the worldview or metaphysics of many peoples and cultures outside of Europe/The Mediterranean Coast or within that region going back further than Socrates.
They were fairly early into discovering and beginning to translate and understand much of what we, nearly 100 years later, now have widespread access to. Archaeology was still a young field at this time.
The lecture you are quoting was given in 1935 in German, and not even translated into English until 1959!
Heidegger was trying to connect what were at his time, newly discovered dots, toward tracing out the development of various forms of human metaphysics.
Heidegger is not saying that our modern concept of metaphysics is identical to those of shamans thousands of years ago.
He is instead tracing… the history… of widely varying, changing and differing metaphysical theories and ideas, either provably held or postulated to be held by many different groups of people over large time scales.
The entire point is that metaphysical theories change over time.
‘Metaphysics’ is not a single theory, any more than ‘Biology’ or ‘Astronomy’ is a single theory.
Those are all container terms which describe bodies of knowledge and thought within specific parameters, and they’ve all developed over time and place.
Plato has his metaphysical theories, as does Aristotle, and Kant, Leibniz, Hume, and these Perennial Shamans are proposed to as well. They are not all the same ideas and they are often in conflict with one another.
Anyway…
If John Woo Woo shows up in shamanic garb and you find this more convincing that him not being in shamanic garb, I would take the post modernist approach and just tell you that you find this more convincing because you have been conditioned by modern media to associate ancient shamans with purity, innocence, righteousness, spirituality and wisdom.
Also thats basically the most textbook, case-closed instance of cultural appropriation I’ve ever heard: John Woo Woo is dressing up in another culture’s dress and adopting their mannerisms despite not being from or substantially connected to that culture, and he is doing so purely as a marketing technique to sell you useless bullshit within his own internalized capitalist paradigm.
If the commercial on TV has an actor wearing a doctor’s outfit, does this imply the untested supplement you are being sold has any actual medically beneficial effects whatsoever?
Or did you just fall for a marketing gimmick?
In closing: There’s science, and psuedo-science, ie, charlatans adopting some of the garb or mannerisms or vocabulary of science, but which does not actually follow the core concepts of empirical testing, falsifiability, often directly contradicts actual known science, and generally acts as a wolf in sheeps clothing, for personal profit.
To close this with what I was originally going to open this with:
It is not that healing crystals might work because the LHC has yet to discover how they work.
It is that many, many empirical, scientific studies, published and peer reviewed, have repeatedly and unequivocally found that they do not work, that they have no effect beyond placebo.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 months ago
So far as I know he didn’t - or to a large degree, couldn’t - go farther back than the Greeks. I wonder what he would have made of a shamanistic understanding of “I am”. It would have had to have fit in there somewhere, or else change his opinion.
Theories change, but metaphysics doesn’t. Biology changes, and not just the theories of biology. The field itself changes. Astronomy changes, because both of them are human inventions.
Metaphysics doesn’t change (even though the favorite theories do). Is metaphysics a human invention? Well that’s a metaphysical question, isn’t it. Do Shamans know the answer?
Yes, and unlike Biology or the hypotheses being developed at the LHC, none of them can be tested or proved. We will never “know” - know for sure - if even one part of any of them is true.
Isn’t it interesting, though, just to consider what the basis for any and all things to be might . . . be?
And in so doing, isn’t it the case that the impressive results of the LHC must be understood to explain only a minute part of the infinite reality that - so far as we know - exists? I would say yes.