Response to the thread
"Scientific vs. Belief"
An open letter to those who believe they can "feel" crystal vibrations.
Just picking up on the OP's claim that she can identify "any stone" she is holding without looking at it.
Is that just euhedral crystals of a few common minerals you are familiar with? (i.e. you can tell a quartz crystal from one of galena, or of gypsum?). If so, then that's no more meaningful than me saying "I can recognise any of my friends just by hearing their voices". If however, you are not just talking BS, and truly do mean "any stone", even if it is one of a species you have never seen or handled before, or whether it is in its original crystal form, or it is cut and polished (I'm giving you a very large helping of benefit of the doubt here), then as an open-minded scientist, I think it's worth finding out a bit more.
As I wrote far more about this matter than should be posted in a discussion thread, I've put the rest of my thoughts here in my Mindat blog.
Amongst many other things, you said:
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"Being the analytical bitch that I am . . .
you say that you are scientists, yet you rule out the unproven idea of an "energy" emitting from an element such as a piece of earth. When did the scientific community become so closed minded that we started ruling out theories that are yet to be proven or disproven? . . .
there are people out there that can tell what stone they are holding without looking at it based on that vibration. I have to believe this because I am one of them. . .
frequency vibration (aka. music). "
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I will address each of those points, but not in that order, and propose a method by which you could scientifically prove one of your controversial claims. OK, here goes;
Scientists do not "rule out theories that are yet to be proven or disproven". Amongst the mainstays of the scientific method are that it is based on logic, rationality and rules of evidence, and that it
IS, open-mindedly, constantly challenging its own theories, and investigating many new proposals put forward to explain things which are as-yet unexplained. But "open-minded" is not synonymous with gullible. Although it may be very easy to propose a concept for which there is no rationally convincing evidence (e.g. telepathy, "crystal healing", faster-than-light travel), or to come up with an unlikely idea to try to account for some otherwise unexplained event (e.g. UFOs and crop circles representing alien visits), many such ideas are scientifically non-starters, and although some who have an irrational attitude may choose to believe them (although personally I think they're deluded), in terms of science, such ideas usually fall at the first fence by failing even the most cursory tests and are discarded accordingly.
If an idea appears to consistently explain some phenomenon/property etc, but it has not yet been rigorously tested in all possible applications, it remains simply an idea, or "hypothesis" and is not regarded as a "theory". For an idea to be accepted as a "Scientific Theory" it has to pass stringent tests as to its validity, the most obvious being that there must be evidence beyond reasonable doubt that it accounts for any phenomenon it purports to explain, and that it is consistent with
ALL other scientific theories. If it cannot do that, then the theory is rejected.
However, as it is of course never possible to prove anything absolutely unequivocally, so effectively, every currently accepted theory comes into the category of "yet to be proven", although some are on fairly safe ground (e.g. Plate Tectonics - irony intended!), and most scientists accept ("believe") them. Theories are accepted on sufficient evidence, but fail and are discarded, if evidence is found that disproves them beyond reasonable doubt (e.g. no-one still believes in "phlogiston"). Of course, the corollary of that is that it is that it is equally impossibly to disprove anything absolutely (the old "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" chestnut), so every currently accepted theory also comes into the category of "yet to be disproven".
There are many "off-the wall" ideas/hypotheses which, although they don't fit into the current framework of scientific theories, are nevertheless still under scientific investigation. (Time travel, telepathy, cold fusion, the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence, and anti-gravity technology being just a few examples). There is of course a continuum from those things for which there is no convincing evidence, so are "not yet proven" to exist, but are believed by many fully rational people (e.g. the existence of alien life), to those ideas which are either so bizarre or improbable that few rational people believe them to be possible. As one gets further away from the mainstream, fewer and fewer scientists believe that those unproven hypotheses are likely to be viable. (e.g. Alien life on Venus based on silicon chemistry, or teleportation and homeopathy - "Beam me up, Scotty, but leave those pesky cynical silicates behind, oh, and by the way, prepare some de-ionised water to cure my flu whilst you are at it").
"But I do believe strongy that things of matter do have vibrations, . . ."
True, and those vibrations can be measured (e.g. with an ultra-sonic transducer or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy) but as far as I am aware, the human body is only sensitive to vibrations within a very narrow range of wave-length (e.g. light from about 400 to 700 nm with our retinas, a bit further into the infra-red with our skin) but is not sensitive to the amplitudes and frequencies of the vibrations of the ions in a crystal lattice.
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frequency vibration (aka. music)."
ROFL! - I suppose one could refer to the works of Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Pavarotti, Yehudi Menhuin, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Eric Clapton etc. as simply "frequency vibrations" of air molecules under human inluence! But on the other hand, what you hear from an angle-grinder, a jet engine, or a rattlesnake's tail, or the effect you feel when a dentist's drill grinds into your teeth, or the damage to your cell nucleii by gamma rays, are also due to vibrations of matter at certain frequencies, but they're certainly not my idea of music!
". . .there are people out there that can tell what stone they are holding without looking at it based on that vibration. I have to believe this because I am one of them . . . "
If you really are the "analytical bitch" you claim to be, and open-minded, then here is my challenge by way of a thought experiment, a demonstration of the way the scientific method works; it is in two parts.
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You are shown a covered tray, and told that it holds a mixed collection of 100 euhedral, natural, single crystals of quartz, topaz, beryl, gypsum, kyanite, corundum, cassiterite, spinel, graphite, muscovite, borax, orthoclase, stibnite, galena, and pyrite. There is a randomly different number of crystals of each species, but there is at least one crystal of of each mineral on the tray, and they are of various sizes, but all approximately hand-specimen size. You are blindfolded, and the lid is taken off the tray, and although you have never seen any of those particular specimens before, you are given each one in turn, to identify merely by handling it. To pass the test, you have to name all the specimens correctly at the first attempt.
Fine so far; ambitious maybe, with a high likelyhood of failure, but rationally possible to believe it could be done, although it would require a fair amount of experience with handling minerals to be able to do it infallibly every time. That would be a test of your mineralogical knowledge, your tactile sensitivity, and your ability to judge dimensions of size and mass, and to visualise shapes in an abstract way.
I can believe that you might be able to do it. I might be able to do the same, but it would be nothing to do with "vibrations" or lucky guesses. My identifications (or those of any other experienced mineralogist), would be based on my familiarity with the physical properties of those minerals - their crystal habit, surface texture, striations, etch pits, density, adherence to the skin, cleavage, thermal conductivity, etc. If you were to take this test and succeeded, I believe that would also be due to your knowledge of the properties of those minerals, however subconsciously that knowledge was applied.
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There is a second covered tray in the room. On it are 100 highly polished spheres of various materials and sizes (of similar dimensions to the crystals in the first batch). Some are single phase mineral pieces, including an unspecified number made from singe crystals of each of the mineral species correctly identified in the first test, but also including some other species, some are mixtures of minerals, some are synthetic analogues of natural mineral phases, some are massive mixed phase mineral and rock material (e.g. charoite with tinaksite, corundum in zoisite with amphibole, serpentinised olivine with chromite, granite, basalt, obsidan, etc), and there are also glass, wood, bone, plastic and metal spheres. Some of the latter group of non-mineral materials are solid, others are hollow. (Some of the less dense materials have included weights to prevent guesses according to their density).
You are told that there are another 100 pieces to be identified, but nothing more. You are not told anything about the nature of this second batch of specimens. Not their composition, or whether they are minerals, or homogenous, natural, synthetic, solid or hollow etc. You are then asked to identify them all in the same way as the first batch.
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If you were able to confidently identify every one of them first time, that would be staggering, and certainly worth further investigation, and even if you were only able to separate out and correctly identify all the single crystal spheres, and dismiss the rest as "unknown/non-crystal/synthetic,
then I might begin to believe you were demonstrating an unexplained phenomenon; otherwise I think you are wasting my time and yours by making such claims.
I will make a scientific prediction (call it a hypothesis) that you would be able to find many people who can pass the first test, based on the same knowledge that might give me that ability. But I believe that neither you, nor anyone else, will be able to pass the second part, or even give answers that are consistently more accurate than would be expected by random guesswork. (Allowing for the correlation of your answers with unseen but distinct properties "observable" by touch, such as density and specific heat capacity).
(Or if you do, then use this test to demonstrate your abilities, and go and claim that $1,000,000 prize.)
Pete N.
