Science and Magic

Science and Magic

“From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work—not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.”

*—*Richard P. Feynman

A “curiosity engine” made of questions can lead in counterintuitive directions. Scientists use intuition and associations to generate ideas, then examine whether those ideas withstand testing.

Isaac Newton was a devout Anglican and an alchemist and saw his work as heavily influenced both by the occult and his belief in a supernatural power governing the universe he sought to understand. His interests in alchemy and theology coexisted with his mathematical and physical work.

Long before Feynman won his Nobel Prize, physiologist Charles Richet won his for his work on anaphylaxis . . . but on his list of beloved problems were questions about psychic phenomena and how human beings could experience premonitions of things to come. Pierre Curie, physicist and husband of Marie Curie, was fascinated by mediums. Nineteenth-century German chemist August Kekulé said he had a breakthrough in visualizing the structure of benzene when he dreamed of a snake eating its own tail. Jack Parsons was a founding member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and invented a kind of solid rocket fuel. He was also a follower of infamous occultist Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, and claimed that he had once summoned the devil himself, who then fashioned the perfect woman in the form of artist and muse Marjorie Cameron.

None of this is to make any claims about the legitimacy of these particular avenues of inquiry. Scientists, being human, have asked questions to which the answer is a resounding no, and they have made strange, faulty, or even backward connections and associations in their hunger for truth. And that’s as it should be! An unexpected association can resemble artistic creation more than “real science” conducted in a laboratory. Inspiration and that magical “Aha!” moment can come from unexpected quarters; testing determines what the idea can explain.

An idea can seem bizarre without being false, and a familiar idea can still be wrong. Openness helps generate possibilities, but it does not make every proposed method of knowing scientific. Calling an idea “unscientific” should depend on how its claims can be examined, rather than on how strange it sounds.

Feynman once said, “Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.” Don’t be afraid to pull on one thread and see what happens . . .

Consider a claim about fascia: “emotions can be stored in the body”. Tissues may “remember” injury in the sense that their structure and mechanical behavior change. That use of memory does not establish emotional storage or consciousness in those tissues. A useful investigation would define the proposed mechanism and ask what evidence could distinguish it from other explanations.