http://scienceandspiritmag.com/magazine/issues/premiere-issue/you-dont-believe-this-crap-do-you
You Don’t Believe this crap, Do You?
Getting serious about epistemology, the philosophy of science, and spirituality.
By Richard Sheff, MD
I’m a scientist and a skeptic.
I’ve studied philosophy at Oxford, the sciences at Ivy League universities, and medicine at the oldest medical school in America. I’ve deeply questioned everything we think we know and how we think we know it.
After more than four decades in the ardent pursuit of truth, I’ve come to the surprising conclusion that the world is a far more wondrous and mysterious place than most of today’s scientists are telling us.
But this was not always the case. The words that form the title of this series of articles passed my lips in 1982 when, as a second year resident in the Brown University family medicine residency program, I encountered two fellow residents who believed in complementary and alternative medicine. In fact, they more than believed in it, and had entrusted the life of one of them to it.
Tony and Hillary (their real names and other details of their story have been changed to protect their privacy) were husband and wife. They had rejoined our residency group after having left the training program
several years earlier. Tony had developed lymphoma, a form of cancer in the blood.
Actually, this had been a recurrence following his initial illness ten years earlier. His cancer had been treated, then with conventional chemotherapy, and had gone into remission. But the lymphoma had recurred during their second year of residency, and they had left the program to find the best treatment for his potentially fatal recurrence.
Unfortunately, the state of medicine at that time held little promise of a cure for his particular form of lymphoma, especially a recurrence. Rather than accepting this likely death sentence, they had scoured the world for potential treatments. Finally, they had settled on an unusual set of alternative treatments: diet, herbs and homeopathy. He had kept strictly to this regimen, and, to the surprise of his physicians, the disease had gone into remission.
I looked at this couple skeptically from the moment I met them. One day, I decided to ask the question.
“You seem extremely bright and well educated—Stanford undergrads, Johns Hopkins medical school—you don’t believe this crap, do you?”
“As a matter of fact we do,” came the unhesitant reply.
“But homeopathy, for goodness sake! Homeopaths take a substance and dilute it one part in 10 to the 10th, one part in 10 to the 20th, or even one part in 10 to the 30th.”
Then, borrowing a phrase I’d heard from my pharmacology professor my first year of medical school, I gave what I believed would be the crushing conclusion of my argument. “Why based on Avogadro’s number we all know there’s almost no chance there’s even one molecule of that substance in the diluted solution. So this must be just quackery.”
I folded my arms in defiant satisfaction. They did not know that I had studied intellectual history and the history of science as an undergraduate and epistemology and philosophy at Oxford. I was on very comfortable ground and sure I would prove them wrong.
Tony and Hillary continued to look bemused. “Your argument appears to make sense,” Hillary replied, “but unfortunately you’ve fallen victim to the sophistry of scientism, not real science.”
“What do you mean scientism?” I responded.
“Scientism can be understood as the use of the trappings of science in support of dogma.” My eyebrows rose at her insinuation that I was somehow blindly supporting dogma, so she went on. “Current medical science understands all substances to be made up of matter and that matter is composed of molecules, specifically 6.02 × 1023 of them per mole.”
“So what’s the problem?” I prodded, with not a small amount of argumentative tone.
“You, as well as most scientists, assume matter, the substance all around us, is only made up of molecules.”
“But that’s because it is.”
“How do you know this with such certainty? Could it be possible that matter is also made up of essences, perhaps understood as a different form of energy, in addition to or as part of molecules?”
“The theory of essences has been disproved by modern science over a century ago when the fundamentals of statistical mechanics, the mathematical study of the motion of molecules, were worked out.”
“Has it? How do you know?”
I thought of all the chemistry and physics courses I’d taken, all the textbooks I’d read, the experiments conducted by the giants of science over the past 400 years. I wanted to count on these as rock solid foundations for everything I believed. After all, I considered myself a scientist and a skeptic. At the time, I believed that science held the answers to our most fundamental questions about what exists.
So I responded, defending the absolute truth of what I knew about the nature of matter. It was composed of molecules, which in turn were composed of atoms, with those in turn being composed of fundamental particles. Our theories predicted how these molecules would interact, and these predictions had been proven true. We were even using electron microscopes to see smaller and smaller particles.
“All of what you say is true,” they responded. “These are the trappings of science—hypotheses, experiments, theories. Yet there is much faith in all you profess to believe.” I bristled at the insinuation that what I knew of science was based on faith.
(continued below)
You Don’t Believe this crap, Do You?
Getting serious about epistemology, the philosophy of science, and spirituality.
By Richard Sheff, MD
I’m a scientist and a skeptic.
I’ve studied philosophy at Oxford, the sciences at Ivy League universities, and medicine at the oldest medical school in America. I’ve deeply questioned everything we think we know and how we think we know it.
After more than four decades in the ardent pursuit of truth, I’ve come to the surprising conclusion that the world is a far more wondrous and mysterious place than most of today’s scientists are telling us.
But this was not always the case. The words that form the title of this series of articles passed my lips in 1982 when, as a second year resident in the Brown University family medicine residency program, I encountered two fellow residents who believed in complementary and alternative medicine. In fact, they more than believed in it, and had entrusted the life of one of them to it.
Tony and Hillary (their real names and other details of their story have been changed to protect their privacy) were husband and wife. They had rejoined our residency group after having left the training program
several years earlier. Tony had developed lymphoma, a form of cancer in the blood.
Actually, this had been a recurrence following his initial illness ten years earlier. His cancer had been treated, then with conventional chemotherapy, and had gone into remission. But the lymphoma had recurred during their second year of residency, and they had left the program to find the best treatment for his potentially fatal recurrence.
Unfortunately, the state of medicine at that time held little promise of a cure for his particular form of lymphoma, especially a recurrence. Rather than accepting this likely death sentence, they had scoured the world for potential treatments. Finally, they had settled on an unusual set of alternative treatments: diet, herbs and homeopathy. He had kept strictly to this regimen, and, to the surprise of his physicians, the disease had gone into remission.
I looked at this couple skeptically from the moment I met them. One day, I decided to ask the question.
“You seem extremely bright and well educated—Stanford undergrads, Johns Hopkins medical school—you don’t believe this crap, do you?”
“As a matter of fact we do,” came the unhesitant reply.
“But homeopathy, for goodness sake! Homeopaths take a substance and dilute it one part in 10 to the 10th, one part in 10 to the 20th, or even one part in 10 to the 30th.”
Then, borrowing a phrase I’d heard from my pharmacology professor my first year of medical school, I gave what I believed would be the crushing conclusion of my argument. “Why based on Avogadro’s number we all know there’s almost no chance there’s even one molecule of that substance in the diluted solution. So this must be just quackery.”
I folded my arms in defiant satisfaction. They did not know that I had studied intellectual history and the history of science as an undergraduate and epistemology and philosophy at Oxford. I was on very comfortable ground and sure I would prove them wrong.
Tony and Hillary continued to look bemused. “Your argument appears to make sense,” Hillary replied, “but unfortunately you’ve fallen victim to the sophistry of scientism, not real science.”
“What do you mean scientism?” I responded.
“Scientism can be understood as the use of the trappings of science in support of dogma.” My eyebrows rose at her insinuation that I was somehow blindly supporting dogma, so she went on. “Current medical science understands all substances to be made up of matter and that matter is composed of molecules, specifically 6.02 × 1023 of them per mole.”
“So what’s the problem?” I prodded, with not a small amount of argumentative tone.
“You, as well as most scientists, assume matter, the substance all around us, is only made up of molecules.”
“But that’s because it is.”
“How do you know this with such certainty? Could it be possible that matter is also made up of essences, perhaps understood as a different form of energy, in addition to or as part of molecules?”
“The theory of essences has been disproved by modern science over a century ago when the fundamentals of statistical mechanics, the mathematical study of the motion of molecules, were worked out.”
“Has it? How do you know?”
I thought of all the chemistry and physics courses I’d taken, all the textbooks I’d read, the experiments conducted by the giants of science over the past 400 years. I wanted to count on these as rock solid foundations for everything I believed. After all, I considered myself a scientist and a skeptic. At the time, I believed that science held the answers to our most fundamental questions about what exists.
So I responded, defending the absolute truth of what I knew about the nature of matter. It was composed of molecules, which in turn were composed of atoms, with those in turn being composed of fundamental particles. Our theories predicted how these molecules would interact, and these predictions had been proven true. We were even using electron microscopes to see smaller and smaller particles.
“All of what you say is true,” they responded. “These are the trappings of science—hypotheses, experiments, theories. Yet there is much faith in all you profess to believe.” I bristled at the insinuation that what I knew of science was based on faith.
(continued below)