Scientific Method and Occult Practices

[CheskiChips]

Precursor: Please don't allow this topic to turn into a thread discussing "Which is correct, science or religion."

The question isn't the validity of the discoveries of science. It's the well defined procedures for making arguments that are considered acceptable.

Occult literally means "knowledge of the hidden", this is exactly the endeavors of science. What drives scientific experiment is pre-existing knowledge and on rare occassion complete accidental discovery. The means scientists come to conclusions by analyzing the world around them, whether it by understanding the physical components intensely or by analyzing result patterns from well defined experiments.

Ancient Egyptians are said to have done the exact same thing, the difference was the proccess. As far as I know, we don't know the exact procedure for making valid arguments in their time. However the idea of embalming is some evidence that they must have had some way of knowledge. Since there was no other way for them test the longevity of the process. Still Egyptian science is considered occultism.

This is obviously only one example, but for the sake of expediency it's apt.

Is the difference between the two our percieved view of accuracy in modern day? Is the difference the applicability? What's changed that can distinguish one from the other?

 

[Avatar]

Precursor: Please don't allow this topic to turn into a thread discussing "Which is correct, science or religion."

Science is not antagonist to religion, the problem nowadays is that religions use outdated science, by about 2000 years outdated science.
Interesting thread topic!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

The most fundamental canonical theory of science is that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be understood and predicted by logically deriving theories from empirical observations of its present and past behavior. All the principles of the scientific method--experimentation, testing, peer review, the Rule of Laplace, Occam's Razor, etc.--are derived from that one theory. We've spent 500 years intensively testing and peer-reviewing that one fundamental theory and it has never come close to being falsified. With each generation of scientists, more of the mysteries of the natural universe yield to science.

The Egyptians had not developed this theory. They believed in an illogical, unobservable supernatural universe, inhabited by creatures who capriciously used their powers to perturb the behavior of the natural universe and to specifically interfere in the lives of humans. Without a fundamental world view that challenges the belief in things for which there is no empirical evidence, science cannot be practiced in any recognizable way. The Egyptians were good engineers, geographers, etc., but they could not be good scientists because their philosophy was antithetical to science.

Remember that the basic meaning of "occult" is "hidden." Occultism is, literally, a methodology for studying the behavior of the universe that starts out by giving up, by accepting as inevitable that some things will remain undisclosed. Occultism stands in opposition to science, a methodology based on the premise that eventually we'll figure everything out.

 

[Avatar]

The Egyptians were good engineers, geographers, etc., but they could not be good scientists because their philosophy was antithetical to science.

There's a bit of contradiction here, Fraggle. You have to have a rather good science in order to have good engineering and build buildings which have stood for 5000 years, as well as design a precise calendar (more precise than the one we use today, by the way), etc.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

There's a bit of contradiction here, Fraggle. You have to have a rather good science in order to have good engineering. . . .

No you don't. Engineers use some of the principles of science but not the total scientific method. They're content to use techniques that have a measurable failure rate. No scientific theory can have a single counterexample. Engineers are primarily concerned with getting things to work with an acceptable failure rate; scientists are primarily concerned with how and why things work the way they do. Big difference.

. . . . and build buildings which have stood for 5000 years. . . .

Gosh do you think the fact that their primary building material was stone may have had something to do with that? The early civilizations were still, technically, in the Stone Age until they invented the technology of metallurgy several thousand years later. Even once they had bronze, and later iron, they continued to build their biggest buildings out of stone because they hadn't invented any better technology for supporting large buildings. If you ask any contemporary architect or civil engineer what the customer requirements are for the lifespan of his projects he'll tell you very few of them need to last even one century. For one thing it's far more expensive to build them that way than to tear them down and build new ones using newer technology, and for another civilizations keep advancing and they tear buildings down just to replace them with bigger ones that would not have been cost-effective to build for the original project.

. . . . as well as design a precise calendar (more precise than the one we use today, by the way), etc.

Huh? We have atomic clocks that measure the length of a year down to the vibration period of a cesium atom. I'm pretty sure that's a lot more accurate than the Egyptians and Maya had. One of the advances in engineering over the past few generations has been the application of the twin concepts of precision and accuracy. Most of us don't have to bother with expensive cesium clocks in our work because the Gregorian calendar and a digital watch provide all the precision and accuracy we need.

 

[CheskiChips]

For example Fraggle, what if someone discovers something that is the equivalent of the 'new' Calculus? Could not this put the primitive thoughts to rest? The school of pythagoras is considered occultism rather than mathematics. I think it's the arrogant nature of humans to claim "we figured it out". However; the amazing techonological boom in recent years could be evidence to support we perhaps have.

 

[Avatar]

Good points, Fraggle, I agree.

 

[Simon Anders]

Is the difference between the two our percieved view of accuracy in modern day? Is the difference the applicability? What's changed that can distinguish one from the other?

I believe some of the early scientists were also alchemists and astrologers, etc. They considered what we would call their scientific methodologies to be one approach to knowledge acquisition.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

The school of pythagoras is considered occultism rather than mathematics.

Where did you get that from? I can't find any reference to it. Pythagoras is said to have had an interest in the occult arcana of earlier civilizations, he had some wacky ideas about how to administer a school, and some of the weirdo societies of later eras pay homage to him, such as the Masons and Rosicrucians. But I don't find anyone accusing him of occult practices. He brought some of the fundamental principles of mathematics to light, which is the direct opposite of occultism. He thought these things were knowable. The premise of occultism is that certain things will always remain in the dark for humans.

 

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

No human knows whether what we call the universe is a closed system & it's unlikely to be proven either way unless someone on the outside proves it to us.