At first I thought of naming this post as 'Cause of The Big Bang Found' and wanted to expand that the real cause of the Big Bang is 'Temporal Lobe Epillepsy'! (meaning the Creator is due to it). But then I realised it would be trivialising the work of many who are pursuing their work in all earnestness and sincerity.
Recent investigations by neuroscientists have found indications to suggest that temporal lobe activity in the brain could be the reason for 'spiritual experiences' that people are supposed to experience. They find that there is great variation in such activity in temporal lobes in various people and can range from non-sensitive to highly sensitive. The more sensitive individuals are likely to be more prone to spiritual experiences that can range from a feeling of 'some presence' to actual hallucinatory visions.
Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran, a famous neuroscientist of the University of California in San Diego subjected various subjects to galvanic skin response studies and found that people with unusual temporal lobe activity reacted to words suggestive of 'sex' with a lower value and words suggestive of 'religion' with a higher value - which is supposed to be the reverse of what is usually seen in 'normal' people.
A Canadian doctor Dr. Michael Persinger of Laurentian University has subjected a many human subjects to variable intensities of electromagnetic fields and is eager to report his findings.
I give the link below to a very interesting video pertaining to studies conducted in the field of spiritual experiences, electromagnetism and temporal lobe epilepsy.
Please turn on your speakers and click on the link below to watch the video titled 'God on the Brain':
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7991385426492181792&hl=en
This doesn't explain the phenomenon of actual material objects also appearing in conjunction with 'hallucinatory' visual images as it is seen to happen in the case of Smt. Shanthamma of whom I've mentioned in earlier blogs.
xxx
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
A brief digression
As I go about building up this post I want to state at the outset that the purpose of the past five blogs is to strongly suggest the possible existence of the Divine and Intelligence behind many phenomena that scientists are wont to dismiss as happening without purpose. This world view has arisen largely out of the tremendous advancements in biology, geology, physics, and other sciences. We should also not ignore as contributory factors various tragedies of the 20th Century and the immense sufferings that humans underwent throughout the world in the form of wars and internecine strifes. The scale of human suffering seemed incompatible with the existence of the Divine, since He was supposed to infuse meaning into human lifes, whereas Man seemed to have lost all understanding and all meaning of his existence.
At a personal level I felt, however erroneous it now seems, that I was singled out for a great deal of suffering. I now see that I was, to put it mildly, rather too sensitive and to put it in plain terms, I was a rather spoilt child who could not reconcile why there had to be pain. There were many ways in which I was quite comfortable, but my mind always seemed to fixate on the pain. To briefly expand on these matters, it had turned out that due to some financial constraints I was made to jump classes from upper kindergarten to the fifth standard without having been given adequate preparatory coaching before admission to the higher class. My class teacher of the fifth standard had been particularly uncharitable and would mock at me calling me 'small baby' (which no child would like to hear among his peers) and other taunting nicknames. The foundation of my education having been destroyed, I found it extremely difficult to cope with studies and was in constant dread of being thrashed at home and at school. My family being, what is called in India, a joint family, I found things not too satisfactory at home also. While my cousins were all being showered with praises for excelling academically I was considered a sort of unworthy outlier in a statistical population of gifted children.
But then there were many good times too. However contradictory it seemed - that we had financial problems - yet we lived in a spacious bungalow with a large garden (it is rather difficult to explain this matter and needs a lot of elaboration that seems unnecessary). Amongst all my friends I was the only one who had a complete set of cricket equipment, and as boys the whole neighbourhood used to play in our garden. It is even true that as a child of four to seven years I had more toys than my peers. It is also true that I was the only kid among all my peers who would be taken out to fairly good restaurants once in two or three months and treated to the dishes of my choice which I now fondly recollect - Cold chocolate milk shake and assorted cakes and patties. Yet as a child I could not see these happy occasions as of definitive importance and would only obssess on the pain that I had to face. In my defence I clarify that entire weeks would be spent suffering at school and the treats would come only on some rare sundays but then, my friends didn't even have those!
I grew up quite disenchanted with my circumstances and when the opportunity afforded me to get acquainted with literature and smatterings of philosophical works, my mind immediately embraced those works that denied the existence of God. Given to self-pity, I even imagined that my life was as hopeless and meaningless as those of Kafka's heroes. I grew quite cynical and self-centred obsessively pondering on my problems and growing more and more bitter. Matters came to a head when I was ditched by my girlfriend (1983) and there was a complete nervous breakdown associated with thought disorders, psychosis, depression and anxiety.
{Question - which is a preferable expression above and why? - 1. "I was ditched by my girlfriend" 2. "My girlfriend ditched me" (and I'm not talking about active or passive voice, but rather the approach to life) } (Don't say both are preferable to "My girlfriend married me!" or rather "I married my girlfriend")
Despite all my friends' and well-wishers' exhortations I just could not get to react positively to the events of my life. I had got into the mould of seeing only the dark aspects of life and had lost all hopes of a happy future ahead of me.
At a personal level I felt, however erroneous it now seems, that I was singled out for a great deal of suffering. I now see that I was, to put it mildly, rather too sensitive and to put it in plain terms, I was a rather spoilt child who could not reconcile why there had to be pain. There were many ways in which I was quite comfortable, but my mind always seemed to fixate on the pain. To briefly expand on these matters, it had turned out that due to some financial constraints I was made to jump classes from upper kindergarten to the fifth standard without having been given adequate preparatory coaching before admission to the higher class. My class teacher of the fifth standard had been particularly uncharitable and would mock at me calling me 'small baby' (which no child would like to hear among his peers) and other taunting nicknames. The foundation of my education having been destroyed, I found it extremely difficult to cope with studies and was in constant dread of being thrashed at home and at school. My family being, what is called in India, a joint family, I found things not too satisfactory at home also. While my cousins were all being showered with praises for excelling academically I was considered a sort of unworthy outlier in a statistical population of gifted children.
But then there were many good times too. However contradictory it seemed - that we had financial problems - yet we lived in a spacious bungalow with a large garden (it is rather difficult to explain this matter and needs a lot of elaboration that seems unnecessary). Amongst all my friends I was the only one who had a complete set of cricket equipment, and as boys the whole neighbourhood used to play in our garden. It is even true that as a child of four to seven years I had more toys than my peers. It is also true that I was the only kid among all my peers who would be taken out to fairly good restaurants once in two or three months and treated to the dishes of my choice which I now fondly recollect - Cold chocolate milk shake and assorted cakes and patties. Yet as a child I could not see these happy occasions as of definitive importance and would only obssess on the pain that I had to face. In my defence I clarify that entire weeks would be spent suffering at school and the treats would come only on some rare sundays but then, my friends didn't even have those!
I grew up quite disenchanted with my circumstances and when the opportunity afforded me to get acquainted with literature and smatterings of philosophical works, my mind immediately embraced those works that denied the existence of God. Given to self-pity, I even imagined that my life was as hopeless and meaningless as those of Kafka's heroes. I grew quite cynical and self-centred obsessively pondering on my problems and growing more and more bitter. Matters came to a head when I was ditched by my girlfriend (1983) and there was a complete nervous breakdown associated with thought disorders, psychosis, depression and anxiety.
{Question - which is a preferable expression above and why? - 1. "I was ditched by my girlfriend" 2. "My girlfriend ditched me" (and I'm not talking about active or passive voice, but rather the approach to life) } (Don't say both are preferable to "My girlfriend married me!" or rather "I married my girlfriend")
Despite all my friends' and well-wishers' exhortations I just could not get to react positively to the events of my life. I had got into the mould of seeing only the dark aspects of life and had lost all hopes of a happy future ahead of me.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Pendulum Swings ! - 2
Material for this post has been taken extensively from 'The Fossil Record' by Sean D. Pitman
(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)
While the geological and biological evidences are rather overwhelmingly in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution and the geological principle of Uniformitarianism, some of the anomalies in the geologic record are striking:-
Polystrate Trees:
The first among them are 'Polystrate Trees' or petrified trees that extend through multiple strata. Many of them extend vertically through millions of years of sedimentary rock. How can this phenomenon be explained? A common explanation is that these do not represent areas of the standard geologic column but areas of rapid local flooding and sedimentation. Therefore, the layers that these trees pass through do not represent thousands and millions of years. However, a petrified tree (located near Katherine Hill Bay next to Flat Rocks Point, Australia) extends up through many sedimentary layers and through two separated coal seams. The tree itself is twelve feet tall, and was uncovered by a coal mining company. If the two separated coal seams represent long periods of time, how could this tree extend between them both? This is a difficulty for the current understanding of science. Further the layers themselves show no weathering between one layer and the next even though each layer was supposedly the surface of the earth for thousands if not millions of years. To many, these combined mysteries are more easily explained by rapid underwater burial with quickly forming sediments. Many argue that the theory that each fossil bearing layer in the geologic column represents eons of time seems inadequate to explain such problems that are easily explained by quick catastrophic events.
Fossil Orientation
It is quite interesting to note that fossilized trees are not like what one would expect from the normal evolutionary picture of what happened. According to current popular scientific belief many fossilized trees were buried naturally either as they lay fallen on the ground or as they stood while growing. However, what is unique about almost all fossilized trees is that they do not have roots or branches and little bark if any. The ones that have fallen and are lying horizontally also align themselves in the same general direction. Many fossilized seashells and tree leaves too are oriented relative to each other in many parts of the fossil record. The trees in the forests of today do not do orient themselves when they fall. They fall in a fairly random way without a statistical significance in their orientation. This is doesn't seem to be the case with petrified trees. Petrified trees seem to line up. Even the vertical ones seem to have a particular orientation. What could have caused these trees to lose all their roots, branches, and bark and to line up in the same direction as every other tree in that layer? A similar effect was seen during the floods of Mt. St. Helen’s eruptions - they lost all their roots, branches and bark, and were all lined up in the same general direction; even the ones that sank vertically into the lakes. Scientists at the National Petrified Forest in Arizona freely speculate that the petrified trees of that “forest” were “washed” into their current positions judging from the fact that they generally have no branches, roots, or bark. They all appear as though they were in some sort of catastrophe together.
Other Problematic Considerations:
1. The Morrison Formation of the Late Jurassic age in western United States has a profusion of various animal fossils like fossil fish, frogs, lizards, salamanders, crocodiles, pterosaurs, shrew to rat-sized mammals, dinosaur eggs and is one of the richest zones of dinosaur fossils, particularly of the plant-eating species. This Formation has a strange scarcity of plant fossils prompting the question as to how such species of large herbivorous dinosaurs like Apatosaurus that seemed to need three to four tons of vegetation per day could survive in an environment that seem to be bereft of vegetation judging by the scarcity of plant fossils.
2. Coal Seams: According to modern science, coal forms from peat bogs. Over a great many years, the peat becomes thicker and thicker. After being covered by a sedimentary layer, the immense pressure and heat combined with water, changes the organic material chemically into coal. It is thought to take about 6 feet of organic material to make one foot of coal. However, this theory has trouble explaining a few interesting facts.
Coal seams, such as those found in Powder River Basin, Wyoming, US ranging from 150 to 200 feet in depth, point to a rapid coalification process. "These coal seams run remarkably thick and unsullied by other material. Usually, unwanted sediments, such as clay, washes over a deposit before coal seams can get very thick. This leaves scientists with the baffling question of how the seams get so massive and still remain undiluted by influxes of clay and other impurities (such as sulfur etc.) before they thicken." This is quite a mystery considering the fact that a seam of coal 200 feet thick would have taken a layer of organic material over 1,200 feet thick to create it. That is a lot of peat to be in just one area. But, what makes this even more unbelievable is that the Powder River Basin covers an area of over 10,000 square miles. This problem could be solved with the idea of a massive flood deposition of huge quantities of organic material in a very rapid timeframe. Similar deposits of huge amounts of plant material occurred during the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption and flooding by Spirit Lake.
3. Stacked Forests
But there seems to be an overwhelming hurry to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction - to brand every event as due to a catastrophic flooding. This tendency must be avoided and a proper balance of seeing uniformitarian events as they are, and catastrophic events as they are, should be encouraged.
(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)
While the geological and biological evidences are rather overwhelmingly in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution and the geological principle of Uniformitarianism, some of the anomalies in the geologic record are striking:-
Polystrate Trees:
The first among them are 'Polystrate Trees' or petrified trees that extend through multiple strata. Many of them extend vertically through millions of years of sedimentary rock. How can this phenomenon be explained? A common explanation is that these do not represent areas of the standard geologic column but areas of rapid local flooding and sedimentation. Therefore, the layers that these trees pass through do not represent thousands and millions of years. However, a petrified tree (located near Katherine Hill Bay next to Flat Rocks Point, Australia) extends up through many sedimentary layers and through two separated coal seams. The tree itself is twelve feet tall, and was uncovered by a coal mining company. If the two separated coal seams represent long periods of time, how could this tree extend between them both? This is a difficulty for the current understanding of science. Further the layers themselves show no weathering between one layer and the next even though each layer was supposedly the surface of the earth for thousands if not millions of years. To many, these combined mysteries are more easily explained by rapid underwater burial with quickly forming sediments. Many argue that the theory that each fossil bearing layer in the geologic column represents eons of time seems inadequate to explain such problems that are easily explained by quick catastrophic events.
Fossil Orientation
It is quite interesting to note that fossilized trees are not like what one would expect from the normal evolutionary picture of what happened. According to current popular scientific belief many fossilized trees were buried naturally either as they lay fallen on the ground or as they stood while growing. However, what is unique about almost all fossilized trees is that they do not have roots or branches and little bark if any. The ones that have fallen and are lying horizontally also align themselves in the same general direction. Many fossilized seashells and tree leaves too are oriented relative to each other in many parts of the fossil record. The trees in the forests of today do not do orient themselves when they fall. They fall in a fairly random way without a statistical significance in their orientation. This is doesn't seem to be the case with petrified trees. Petrified trees seem to line up. Even the vertical ones seem to have a particular orientation. What could have caused these trees to lose all their roots, branches, and bark and to line up in the same direction as every other tree in that layer? A similar effect was seen during the floods of Mt. St. Helen’s eruptions - they lost all their roots, branches and bark, and were all lined up in the same general direction; even the ones that sank vertically into the lakes. Scientists at the National Petrified Forest in Arizona freely speculate that the petrified trees of that “forest” were “washed” into their current positions judging from the fact that they generally have no branches, roots, or bark. They all appear as though they were in some sort of catastrophe together.
Other Problematic Considerations:
1. The Morrison Formation of the Late Jurassic age in western United States has a profusion of various animal fossils like fossil fish, frogs, lizards, salamanders, crocodiles, pterosaurs, shrew to rat-sized mammals, dinosaur eggs and is one of the richest zones of dinosaur fossils, particularly of the plant-eating species. This Formation has a strange scarcity of plant fossils prompting the question as to how such species of large herbivorous dinosaurs like Apatosaurus that seemed to need three to four tons of vegetation per day could survive in an environment that seem to be bereft of vegetation judging by the scarcity of plant fossils.
2. Coal Seams: According to modern science, coal forms from peat bogs. Over a great many years, the peat becomes thicker and thicker. After being covered by a sedimentary layer, the immense pressure and heat combined with water, changes the organic material chemically into coal. It is thought to take about 6 feet of organic material to make one foot of coal. However, this theory has trouble explaining a few interesting facts.
Coal seams, such as those found in Powder River Basin, Wyoming, US ranging from 150 to 200 feet in depth, point to a rapid coalification process. "These coal seams run remarkably thick and unsullied by other material. Usually, unwanted sediments, such as clay, washes over a deposit before coal seams can get very thick. This leaves scientists with the baffling question of how the seams get so massive and still remain undiluted by influxes of clay and other impurities (such as sulfur etc.) before they thicken." This is quite a mystery considering the fact that a seam of coal 200 feet thick would have taken a layer of organic material over 1,200 feet thick to create it. That is a lot of peat to be in just one area. But, what makes this even more unbelievable is that the Powder River Basin covers an area of over 10,000 square miles. This problem could be solved with the idea of a massive flood deposition of huge quantities of organic material in a very rapid timeframe. Similar deposits of huge amounts of plant material occurred during the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption and flooding by Spirit Lake.
3. Stacked Forests
In different places throughout the world, there can be found layers of “forests” one on top of each other, with their trees, “in the position of growth” (still standing up). It is also said that these forests each have their own layer of “soil”. So it is felt that each of these were forests grew over long periods of time on top of previous forests, each of which was buried by some long ago catastrophe. What is interesting about these places ( Yellowstone National Park where up to 65 different layers can be found with trees in the vertical position) is that the trees are still oriented in their positions with each other. Their “soil” is also found to be water sorted (coarse to fine), and often is found half way up a tree instead of at its base. This organic material also averages only 3 cm in thickness and, for many of the "forest" layers it is missing altogether. In some areas, such as at Mt. Hornaday, as many as 43% of the forest layers have no organic layer at all. The lower layers of Specimen Creek generally do have organic layers (96%), but the upper layers of Specimen Creek have far fewer organic layers. It turns out that the average "forest" without an organic layer is about 24%. It seems rather strange for a forest to grow into full bloom without forming an organic layer. How is this explained?
There are other problems too about these stacked forests of Yellowstone related to sorting of organic layers; sparseness of pine needles even in areas where conifers dominate; absence of fossil pollen; rarity of clay bands whereas abundant unweathered feldspars scattered throughout the Yellowstone organic layers; absence of animal fossils in these layers; these are all problematic areas for uniformitarianism and a long protracted period of earth history.
There are other problems too about these stacked forests of Yellowstone related to sorting of organic layers; sparseness of pine needles even in areas where conifers dominate; absence of fossil pollen; rarity of clay bands whereas abundant unweathered feldspars scattered throughout the Yellowstone organic layers; absence of animal fossils in these layers; these are all problematic areas for uniformitarianism and a long protracted period of earth history.
The Pendulum Swings ! - 1
In my own lifetime I've seen the pendulum of scientific opinion swinging over wide ranges. I remember that some years back, each man was advised to drink over a two litres of water a day. Just recently I read the results of a scientific investigation that cautioned against excessive ingestion of water, and that the body automatically seeks water by feeling thirst whenever water is needed. The study also observed that the needs of water vary from person to person and there is no standardised rule that every person must compulsorily drink a specified quantity of water. Likewise some years ago coconut was considered to be quite a dangerous commodity to consume due to its cholestrol content and my nephew and neice scrupulously avoided it. Again I read recently that coconut is not in fact dangerous, and can be safely eaten. Well ! Scientific opinion can vary over wide ranges.
The situation can however become somewhat dangerous when the Weltanschauung (world view) of a majority of people is guided by opinions that may or may not be fully grounded in reality. The opinions of a majority of 'well-informed' people, who have their world view well grounded in modern science, dismiss the view that there is 'Intelligence' behind the workings of the cosmos. It is generally regarded by most people that all scientists base their opinions on cold logic brewed with healthy empirical evidences and that they do not have personal predelictions to bias their views one way or the other. As I have shown in the previous blogs there have been recorded instances to suggest that this assumption is without basis.
Most educated men have their world view derived mainly from what they have heard of Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution'. While I too strongly affirm the overwhelming evidences in favour of the evolutionary theory which, in addition to biological evidences, drew a lot of strength from a host of geological evidences that were strongly promoted by Charles Lyell, I would also like to bring into people's consideration some of the problems in both the geological record and in the biological evidences.
Firstly, let me put forth evidences in support of evolution of life:
1. If there is a vertical stack of books, it is obvious that (in normal circumstances) the book at the bottom most level must have been placed the earliest and the succeding ones later and later till at the very top the latest book would have been kept. There could be exceptions of course and it could happen that a book could be inserted later somewhere in the middle, bu this is rather exceptional. A similar thing happens when beds of sedimentary rocks are laid down and this establishes a rule of the 'Order of Superposition' where the oldest beds in a normal sequence are the bottom most. In actuality in the field complications can arise due to folding and fracturing of rocks (faulting) when It can happen that an older bed may be found to overlie a younger bed, and in such cases the beds are reversed.
2. It is generally observed that the oldest rocks (established as older both by Order of Superposition and other evidences like radiometric dating) are generally without evidences of life. As one goes up in the geological stack one sees a progression from 'simple life forms' like single celled animals like bacteria, algae, and unicellular organisms and as one goes higher and higher he first finds invertebrates, and later vertebrates. The oldest vertebrates encountered are the fishes and later the amphibians and thence the reptiles and later the birds and lastly the mammals.
3. As of today (February 22nd 2012) no mammalian fossils have been found in, say, the rocks of the Devonian Period. And as of today, no human fossils have been found in the rocks of, say, the Eocene.
4. The Geologic Column constructed out of a combination of various evidences that include palaeontological (fossils), radiometric dating, structural evidences and petrological (study of rocks) is so compelling that to my mind there seems to be scarce possibilities of doubt.
To be continued ...
The situation can however become somewhat dangerous when the Weltanschauung (world view) of a majority of people is guided by opinions that may or may not be fully grounded in reality. The opinions of a majority of 'well-informed' people, who have their world view well grounded in modern science, dismiss the view that there is 'Intelligence' behind the workings of the cosmos. It is generally regarded by most people that all scientists base their opinions on cold logic brewed with healthy empirical evidences and that they do not have personal predelictions to bias their views one way or the other. As I have shown in the previous blogs there have been recorded instances to suggest that this assumption is without basis.
Most educated men have their world view derived mainly from what they have heard of Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution'. While I too strongly affirm the overwhelming evidences in favour of the evolutionary theory which, in addition to biological evidences, drew a lot of strength from a host of geological evidences that were strongly promoted by Charles Lyell, I would also like to bring into people's consideration some of the problems in both the geological record and in the biological evidences.
Firstly, let me put forth evidences in support of evolution of life:
1. If there is a vertical stack of books, it is obvious that (in normal circumstances) the book at the bottom most level must have been placed the earliest and the succeding ones later and later till at the very top the latest book would have been kept. There could be exceptions of course and it could happen that a book could be inserted later somewhere in the middle, bu this is rather exceptional. A similar thing happens when beds of sedimentary rocks are laid down and this establishes a rule of the 'Order of Superposition' where the oldest beds in a normal sequence are the bottom most. In actuality in the field complications can arise due to folding and fracturing of rocks (faulting) when It can happen that an older bed may be found to overlie a younger bed, and in such cases the beds are reversed.
2. It is generally observed that the oldest rocks (established as older both by Order of Superposition and other evidences like radiometric dating) are generally without evidences of life. As one goes up in the geological stack one sees a progression from 'simple life forms' like single celled animals like bacteria, algae, and unicellular organisms and as one goes higher and higher he first finds invertebrates, and later vertebrates. The oldest vertebrates encountered are the fishes and later the amphibians and thence the reptiles and later the birds and lastly the mammals.
3. As of today (February 22nd 2012) no mammalian fossils have been found in, say, the rocks of the Devonian Period. And as of today, no human fossils have been found in the rocks of, say, the Eocene.
4. The Geologic Column constructed out of a combination of various evidences that include palaeontological (fossils), radiometric dating, structural evidences and petrological (study of rocks) is so compelling that to my mind there seems to be scarce possibilities of doubt.
To be continued ...
Debates in Science - 2
The material for this post has essentially been taken from J Harlen Bretz And the Great Scabland Debate by Sean D. Pitman.
(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)
The concluding comments have been taken from Wikipedia.
(... Continued from the previous blogpost.)
It was only around 1940 that things began to slowly change for Bretz. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle Washington, many papers were presented in a session entitled, Quaternary Geology of the Pacific, which strongly supported a non-catastrophic origin for the channelled scablands.
Finally, Pardee, the eighth speaker of the session, spoke benignly about the "Ripple Marks in Glacial Lake Missoula." In a low key manner Pardee described the huge "ripple marks" with heights of up to 15 meters and spacings of as much as 150 meters, as due to flooding, as well as his old theory that Lake Missoula was the source of the water that obviously created the unusual current beds found in the Montana prairie region. He went on to suggest that about 2,000 cubic km of water were held in the lake and that the evidence showed that a glacial dam had once blocked off the mouth of this lake. He presented convincing evidence, to include severely scoured constrictions in the lake basin, huge bars of current-transported debris, and giant current ripple marks, which all strongly suggested that the ice dam had been breached in a very dramatic fashion. Pardee went on to propose that the way this occurred was that the ice dam had blocked the water until the water became deep enough to lift up the ice dam and allow the blocked water to rush out with almost unimaginable force so that the lake was completely emptied within just 48 hours. He suggested that the lobe of the Cordilleran Glacier was the actual plug or dam that blocked the Clark Fork River. This ice dam caused the formation of Lake Missoula (4,150 feet above sea level) to reach a depth of about 2,000 feet over some 3,000 square miles. When the ice dam failed, 500 cubic miles of water rushed out of Lake Missoula at 50 to 60 miles per hour (or 9.46 cubic miles per hour), which translates into a 2,000 foot wall of water smashing with Herculean force all the way to the pacific ocean.
(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)
The concluding comments have been taken from Wikipedia.
(... Continued from the previous blogpost.)
It was only around 1940 that things began to slowly change for Bretz. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle Washington, many papers were presented in a session entitled, Quaternary Geology of the Pacific, which strongly supported a non-catastrophic origin for the channelled scablands.
Finally, Pardee, the eighth speaker of the session, spoke benignly about the "Ripple Marks in Glacial Lake Missoula." In a low key manner Pardee described the huge "ripple marks" with heights of up to 15 meters and spacings of as much as 150 meters, as due to flooding, as well as his old theory that Lake Missoula was the source of the water that obviously created the unusual current beds found in the Montana prairie region. He went on to suggest that about 2,000 cubic km of water were held in the lake and that the evidence showed that a glacial dam had once blocked off the mouth of this lake. He presented convincing evidence, to include severely scoured constrictions in the lake basin, huge bars of current-transported debris, and giant current ripple marks, which all strongly suggested that the ice dam had been breached in a very dramatic fashion. Pardee went on to propose that the way this occurred was that the ice dam had blocked the water until the water became deep enough to lift up the ice dam and allow the blocked water to rush out with almost unimaginable force so that the lake was completely emptied within just 48 hours. He suggested that the lobe of the Cordilleran Glacier was the actual plug or dam that blocked the Clark Fork River. This ice dam caused the formation of Lake Missoula (4,150 feet above sea level) to reach a depth of about 2,000 feet over some 3,000 square miles. When the ice dam failed, 500 cubic miles of water rushed out of Lake Missoula at 50 to 60 miles per hour (or 9.46 cubic miles per hour), which translates into a 2,000 foot wall of water smashing with Herculean force all the way to the pacific ocean.
Today it is believed that this huge flood of water rushed across Idaho's northern Rathdrum Prairie and into eastern Washington where it divided into three huge flows, each up to 600 feet deep traveling at 45 miles per hour. To understand a bit of this magnitude, this flow was ten times more massive than the flow of all the rivers in the entire world today. As this flood raged across the Spokane Valley and out across the loess-covered basalt plateau, it carved out the 20-mile-wide Cheney-Palouse Tract, the 14-mile-wide Crab Creek Channel, and the 50-mile-long Grand Coulee as well as numerous cross or "braided" channels.
Pardee's evidence for the origin of massive amounts of flood waters was, of course, just what Bretz needed. This evidence was just enough proof for Bretz to confirm the source for and cause of the watery cataclysm that he knew must be there somewhere. All the rest fell into place since all the information to back up the effects of such a cataclysm had already been ready and waiting for many years.
In 1952 Bretz made yet another field trip to the scablands and returned with even more evidence to include detailed maps, aerial photographs, and sedimentological information. In his subsequent 1956 paper, Bretz concluded that the most convincing evidence for a cataclysmic flood proved to be the presence of giant current ripples on bar surfaces. These ripples clearly showed that bars up to 30 meters high were completely inundated by phenomenal flows of water. Numerous examples of giant current ripples were found on the same bars that Flint had interpreted as normal river terraces. As it turns out, Pardee's recognition of the giant current ripples of Lake Missoula was followed by Bretz's documentation of 15 more scabland ripple fields and then by Baker's and Nummedal's identification of 100 more rippled areas. Such features could only have been produced by the flow of very deep water at velocities of truly enormous catastrophic proportions. This was the beginning of early acceptance and painful recognition of the validity of Bretz's position by geologists.
Bretz's remarkable work was built painstakingly over many years, but he had to fight great opposition for many decades for its final acceptance. Finally, in 1979, the geological establishment publicly acknowledged Bretz's work by awarding him the prestigious Penrose Medal - the most prestigious honor in the field of geology. Bretz was in his late 90s, and had been holding the line for more than 50 years before finally realizing general acceptance of his "insane" catastrophic model for the formation of the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington State.
Uniformitarianism was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism, which states that the distant past "consisted of epochs of paroxysmal and catastrophic action interposed between periods of comparative tranquility" Especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most geologists took this interpretation to mean that catastrophic events are not at all important in geologic time. An important result of the Scabland debate discussed above and others was the re-clarification that, while the same principles operate in geologic time, catastrophic events that are infrequent on human time-scales can have important consequences in geologic history. Derek Ager has noted that “geologists do not deny uniformitarianism in its true sense, that is to say, of interpreting the past by means of the processes that are seen going on at the present day, so long as we remember that the periodic catastrophe is one of those processes. Those periodic catastrophes make more showing in the stratigraphical record than we have hitherto assumed.”
Even Charles Lyell thought that ordinary geological processes would cause Niagara Falls to move upstream to Lake Erie within 10,000 years, leading to catastrophic flooding of a large part of North America.
Unlike Lyell, modern geologists unfortunately do not apply uniformitarianism in the same way. They question if rates of processes were uniform through time and only those values measured during the history of geology are to be accepted. "The present may not be a long enough key to penetrate the deep lock of the past" (Ager, Derek V., 1993). Geologic processes may have been active at different rates in the past that humans have not observed. “By force of popularity, uniformity of rate has persisted to our present day. For more than a century, Lyell’s rhetoric conflating axiom with hypotheses has descended in unmodified form. Many geologists have been stifled by the belief that proper methodology includes an a priori commitment to gradual change, and by a preference for explaining large-scale phenomena as the concatenation of innumerable tiny changes.”
The current consensus is that Earth's history is a slow, gradual process punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants. In practice it is reduced from Lyell's conflation to simply the two philosophical assumptions. This is also known as the principle of geological actualism, which states that all past geological action was like all present geological action.
Even Charles Lyell thought that ordinary geological processes would cause Niagara Falls to move upstream to Lake Erie within 10,000 years, leading to catastrophic flooding of a large part of North America.
Unlike Lyell, modern geologists unfortunately do not apply uniformitarianism in the same way. They question if rates of processes were uniform through time and only those values measured during the history of geology are to be accepted. "The present may not be a long enough key to penetrate the deep lock of the past" (Ager, Derek V., 1993). Geologic processes may have been active at different rates in the past that humans have not observed. “By force of popularity, uniformity of rate has persisted to our present day. For more than a century, Lyell’s rhetoric conflating axiom with hypotheses has descended in unmodified form. Many geologists have been stifled by the belief that proper methodology includes an a priori commitment to gradual change, and by a preference for explaining large-scale phenomena as the concatenation of innumerable tiny changes.”
The current consensus is that Earth's history is a slow, gradual process punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants. In practice it is reduced from Lyell's conflation to simply the two philosophical assumptions. This is also known as the principle of geological actualism, which states that all past geological action was like all present geological action.
The Occult Phenomena & the Sciences - 1
Material for this post has been extensively drawn from the Wikipedia.
Any scientist who cares to take a first step in science and before doing science has to affirm in his own mental convictions the validity and existence of two methodological assumptions.
They are:
1. Uniformity of law across space and time: Natural laws are constant across space and time.
2.Uniformity of process across space and time.
The axiom of uniformity of law across time and space is necessary in order for scientists to extrapolate inductive inference into the unobservable past or even as predicatble tools for the future. As James Hutton wrote: “If the stone, for example, which fell today, were to rise again tomorrow, there would be an end of natural philosophy [i.e., science], our principles would fail, and we would no longer investigate the rules of nature from our observations.” The constancy of natural laws must be assumed. A phenomenon that occurs 'at this instant' is already a past event the next instant! Making inferences about the past and predicting the behaviour of the Universe in the future is wrapped up in the difference between studying the observable present and the unobservable past and future. In the observable present, induction can be regarded as self-corrective. That is to say, erroneous beliefs about the observable world can be proven wrong and corrected by other observations. This is Popper's principle of FALSIFIABILITY.
However, processes are observable only at any given instant by their very nature. Therefore, in order to come to conclusions about the validity of the observed event both for the past and its predictability for the future, we must assume the invariance of nature's laws.
The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws amounts to a warrant for inductive inference which, as Francis Bacon showed nearly 400 years ago, is the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations. Since the assumption is itself vindicated by induction, it can in no way “prove” the validity of induction. G.G. Simpson in the year 1963 wrote "Uniformity is an unprovable postulate justified, or indeed required, on two grounds. First, nothing (?) in our incomplete but extensive knowledge of history disagrees with it. Second, only with this postulate is a rational interpretation of history possible, and we are justified in seeking—as scientists we must seek—such a rational interpretation".
As regards uniformity of processes across space and time - it implies that if a past phenomenon can be understood as the result of a process now acting in time and space, do not invent an extinct or unknown cause as its explanation. We should try to explain events by causes now in operation without inventing extra, fancy, or unknown causes, however plausible in logic, if available processes suffice. This is known as the scientific principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor.
"Strict uniformitarianism may often be a guarantee against pseudo-scientific phantasies and loose conjectures, but it makes one easily forget that the principle of uniformity is not a law, not a rule established after comparison of facts, but a methodological principle, preceding the observation of facts ..." (Hooykaas, R. 1963) It is the logical principle of parsimony of causes and of economy of scientific notions.
This is quite a useful tool actually since "... a limit is set to conjecture, for there is only one way in which two things are equal, but there are an infinity of ways in which they could be different." (Hooykaas)
Stephen J. Gould simplified the issue, noting that Lyell's “uniformity of process” was also an assumption: “As such, it is another a priori methodological assumption shared by all scientists and not a statement about the empirical world".
The dangers of hasty scientific assumptions and mistakenly set ways of thinking that hindered the proper understanding of natural processes can be appreciated by considering the 'Scablands Debate' of Washingon State, USA. This will be dealt with in the next blog, but here I will breifly mention that there were two strands of thought in geology in the nineteenth century : The 'Theory of Uniformitarianism' and the 'Theory of Catastrophism'. By the 20th Century the former had gained widespread acceptance and had colonised the subconscious of most geologists.
These will be dealt with in the next blog posts.
Any scientist who cares to take a first step in science and before doing science has to affirm in his own mental convictions the validity and existence of two methodological assumptions.
They are:
1. Uniformity of law across space and time: Natural laws are constant across space and time.
2.Uniformity of process across space and time.
The axiom of uniformity of law across time and space is necessary in order for scientists to extrapolate inductive inference into the unobservable past or even as predicatble tools for the future. As James Hutton wrote: “If the stone, for example, which fell today, were to rise again tomorrow, there would be an end of natural philosophy [i.e., science], our principles would fail, and we would no longer investigate the rules of nature from our observations.” The constancy of natural laws must be assumed. A phenomenon that occurs 'at this instant' is already a past event the next instant! Making inferences about the past and predicting the behaviour of the Universe in the future is wrapped up in the difference between studying the observable present and the unobservable past and future. In the observable present, induction can be regarded as self-corrective. That is to say, erroneous beliefs about the observable world can be proven wrong and corrected by other observations. This is Popper's principle of FALSIFIABILITY.
However, processes are observable only at any given instant by their very nature. Therefore, in order to come to conclusions about the validity of the observed event both for the past and its predictability for the future, we must assume the invariance of nature's laws.
The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws amounts to a warrant for inductive inference which, as Francis Bacon showed nearly 400 years ago, is the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations. Since the assumption is itself vindicated by induction, it can in no way “prove” the validity of induction. G.G. Simpson in the year 1963 wrote "Uniformity is an unprovable postulate justified, or indeed required, on two grounds. First, nothing (?) in our incomplete but extensive knowledge of history disagrees with it. Second, only with this postulate is a rational interpretation of history possible, and we are justified in seeking—as scientists we must seek—such a rational interpretation".
As regards uniformity of processes across space and time - it implies that if a past phenomenon can be understood as the result of a process now acting in time and space, do not invent an extinct or unknown cause as its explanation. We should try to explain events by causes now in operation without inventing extra, fancy, or unknown causes, however plausible in logic, if available processes suffice. This is known as the scientific principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor.
"Strict uniformitarianism may often be a guarantee against pseudo-scientific phantasies and loose conjectures, but it makes one easily forget that the principle of uniformity is not a law, not a rule established after comparison of facts, but a methodological principle, preceding the observation of facts ..." (Hooykaas, R. 1963) It is the logical principle of parsimony of causes and of economy of scientific notions.
This is quite a useful tool actually since "... a limit is set to conjecture, for there is only one way in which two things are equal, but there are an infinity of ways in which they could be different." (Hooykaas)
Stephen J. Gould simplified the issue, noting that Lyell's “uniformity of process” was also an assumption: “As such, it is another a priori methodological assumption shared by all scientists and not a statement about the empirical world".
If we understand this much, then there is hope that the possibility of existence of the occult and its amenability for being studied scientifically or in some other manner perhaps involving a slightly different approach, can be considered.
The dangers of hasty scientific assumptions and mistakenly set ways of thinking that hindered the proper understanding of natural processes can be appreciated by considering the 'Scablands Debate' of Washingon State, USA. This will be dealt with in the next blog, but here I will breifly mention that there were two strands of thought in geology in the nineteenth century : The 'Theory of Uniformitarianism' and the 'Theory of Catastrophism'. By the 20th Century the former had gained widespread acceptance and had colonised the subconscious of most geologists.
These will be dealt with in the next blog posts.
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