disenchantment
Jan. 30th, 2005 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
percivalI find that I am severely disenchanted with New Age and theories of Energy Medicine. I've two classics of the field out from the library, Donna Eden's Energy Medicine and Richard Gerber's Vibrational Medicine - and yet I can't bring myself to read them. It's strange - a couple of months ago I would have devoured those books. I seem to become more literal-minded and sciency, more down-to-earth. I don't doubt that energy medicine works, because I've felt it work. It's just that I don't believe in the pseudo-science that is marshalled to explain it. For example, what put me off Gerber's book was the introduction, where he explicitly aligned Vibrational Medicine with Einsteinian and Quantum physics. That jarred with me.
Einsteinian and Quantum physics may be modern, but they're as yet irreconciled. Physicists would love to have a Theory of Everything, but even though there are candidates (string theory and loop theory), there's no universally agreed on link yet. It's true that Einstein showed the relation between energy and matter, and Quantum physics show that the state of a particle depends on the mode it's observed in. But crucially, Einstein's theory explains the big world, whereas Quantum physics explains what happens in worlds that are beyond microscropically small. For a nice explanation of this difference, see Michael Shermer's column in the current issue of Scientific American. How that relates to a person's energy, soul, transmitting energy from person to person is still absolutely unclear. And the very last people to help clarify it are New age gurus who serve up half-digested popular science as explanations. True, Michael Shermer, being the arch-skeptic he is, is bound to find something to criticise with energy work. However, I think it's salutary to have people like him around to point out the holes in your argument, and to advance the suggestion that the emperor could do at least with some underwear.
It's all very well if you're a quantum physicist assuring me that the tools of your trade can be used to explain Reiki, but I want to at least see a reference to a peer-reviewed paper where you back these claims up. What New Age books seem to be ripe with are arguments from authority. Now, in some fields, that's how knowledge has been accumulated up until now: herbalism and my own field of aromatherapy are good cases in point. There's very little aromatherapy research, and all a student can do is get as many books as possible and compare and contrast the various uses an oil is said to be good for. Then, you're left to work with your own experience. Experience is certainly valuable - I attribute a recent breakthrough largely to the hormone-balancing herbs and energy treatments I've been getting. But I like my experience backed up with experimental work. That's what attracts me so much to Structural Integration: it has a solid foundation in human anatomy, unlike aromatherapy, which is more of an art than a science.
I've yet to read James Oschman's book on Energy Medicine, and I was somewhat underwhelmed by Candace Pert's autobiography, Molecules of Emotion. I'd have preferred a book that surveys psychoneuroimmunology with a wider scope. Just the anatomy, physiology, immunology, endocrinology of the human body is fascinating enough in itself. These books are out there, and those are the works I'll turn to next - besides getting more into my medicine textbooks.
Einsteinian and Quantum physics may be modern, but they're as yet irreconciled. Physicists would love to have a Theory of Everything, but even though there are candidates (string theory and loop theory), there's no universally agreed on link yet. It's true that Einstein showed the relation between energy and matter, and Quantum physics show that the state of a particle depends on the mode it's observed in. But crucially, Einstein's theory explains the big world, whereas Quantum physics explains what happens in worlds that are beyond microscropically small. For a nice explanation of this difference, see Michael Shermer's column in the current issue of Scientific American. How that relates to a person's energy, soul, transmitting energy from person to person is still absolutely unclear. And the very last people to help clarify it are New age gurus who serve up half-digested popular science as explanations. True, Michael Shermer, being the arch-skeptic he is, is bound to find something to criticise with energy work. However, I think it's salutary to have people like him around to point out the holes in your argument, and to advance the suggestion that the emperor could do at least with some underwear.
It's all very well if you're a quantum physicist assuring me that the tools of your trade can be used to explain Reiki, but I want to at least see a reference to a peer-reviewed paper where you back these claims up. What New Age books seem to be ripe with are arguments from authority. Now, in some fields, that's how knowledge has been accumulated up until now: herbalism and my own field of aromatherapy are good cases in point. There's very little aromatherapy research, and all a student can do is get as many books as possible and compare and contrast the various uses an oil is said to be good for. Then, you're left to work with your own experience. Experience is certainly valuable - I attribute a recent breakthrough largely to the hormone-balancing herbs and energy treatments I've been getting. But I like my experience backed up with experimental work. That's what attracts me so much to Structural Integration: it has a solid foundation in human anatomy, unlike aromatherapy, which is more of an art than a science.
I've yet to read James Oschman's book on Energy Medicine, and I was somewhat underwhelmed by Candace Pert's autobiography, Molecules of Emotion. I'd have preferred a book that surveys psychoneuroimmunology with a wider scope. Just the anatomy, physiology, immunology, endocrinology of the human body is fascinating enough in itself. These books are out there, and those are the works I'll turn to next - besides getting more into my medicine textbooks.
