“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” ― Nikola Tesla
Perception runs on hardware, but it's software. It's importance is non-physical. Penrose[1] divided the realms of reality into 3: platonic-mathmatical, physical reality and the mind. I think Tesla is also suggesting scientific study of the mind is distinct from physics. I agree too. Perception is bad representation of reality, but it shapes all of the human experience.
Edit: I miss attributed to Mandlebrot originally. Both like tessalation!
Except that the structure of neurons and their physical connections with each other in the brain is very much physical, and we don't have the understanding of those systems on a conceptual 'software' level yet, so observations such as those made in this article are based purely on observation of the physical phenomenon.
Interesting quote. I have often wondered what would happen if there were more studies into the benefits of the placebo effect, it seems it is only studied as a side effect of other studies.
This reminds me of Sheldrake testing the dog who knew when its owner was heading home, and studying "the sense of being stared at," etc. Institute of Noetic Sciences? Or is that too soft a science? No idea, just things that popped up as I read the quote.
First, he noted that some of the tests he did got results that were past random chance. But he said he didn't know why and wouldn't dare trying to make up an explanation.
Then he said something really interesting:
if we don't investigate scientifically those things, only charlatans will, and not only will we never know the truth, but the field will be filled with lies and misunderstanding, ruining the reputation of the topic. Even now, if you try to get a grant to study something like that, you bear the mark of delirium in your community, no matter how serious you are.
Tesla made some interesting breakthroughs to be sure, but he was also a nut-case who fell in love with a pigeon. Not everything he said is some form of holy writ.
Science made the rapid progress it did precisely because it at long last ignored "non-physical phenomena".
It would be some other perceived flaw. People always do this. For example, someone wants to make the environment better and starts working for it. Then he gets to hear 'he drives a car!'. Suddenly he is not credible anymore.
To me, this all or nothing attitude is what makes most humans quite dumb.
Human being operates at three layer. Physical, mental and spiritual. Modern science is focused almost entirely on the physical. While mystics (largely from the eastern traditions) have been focused on mental and spiritual since antiquity. Especially mystics/monks of India have written thousands and thousands of books on these two levels, including systematic and scientific approach to learn, acquire and practice powers/capabilities of the mind and consciousness. [0]
>>> In very remote times in India, thousands of years ago, these facts used to happen even more than they do today. It seems to me that when a country becomes very thickly populated, psychical power deteriorates. Given a vast country thinly inhabited, there will, perhaps, be more of psychical power there. These facts, the Hindus, being analytically minded. took up and investigated. And they came to certain remarkable conclusions; that is, they made a science of it. They found out that all these, though extraordinary, are also natural; there is nothing supernatural. They are under laws just the same as any other physical phenomenon. It is not a freak of nature that a man is born with such powers. They can be systematically studied, practiced, and acquired. This science they call the science of Râja-Yoga. There are thousands of people who cultivate the study of this science, and for the whole nation it has become a part of daily worship.
>>> The conclusion they have reached is that all these extraordinary powers are in the mind of man. This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world.
>>>> Have you ever noticed the phenomenon that is called thought-transference? A man here is thinking something, and that thought is manifested in somebody else, in some other place. With preparations — not by chance — a man wants to send a thought to another mind at a distance, and this other mind knows that a thought is coming, and he receives it exactly as it is sent out. Distance makes no difference. The thought goes and reaches the other man, and he understands it. If your mind were an isolated something here, and my mind were an isolated something there, and there were no connection between the two, how would it be possible for my thought to reach you? In the ordinary cases, it is not my thought that is reaching you direct; but my thought has got to be dissolved into ethereal vibrations and those ethereal vibrations go into your brain, and they have to be resolved again into your own thoughts. Here is a dissolution of thought, and there is a resolution of thought. It is a roundabout process. But in telepathy, there is no such thing; it is direct.
>>> This shows that there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. The mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean; and on account of this continuity, we can convey our thoughts directly to one another.