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Thread: Healing with Dancing

  1. #141
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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    You're still on my ignore list Barry, but I happened to "view post" on this one:



    You missed out a crucial step:



    What experiment would you perform that could potentially falsify the so-called "theory" that it is possible to transplant an organ?
    Disassemble organ. Move it from Church A to Church B. Reassemble. Try to play it. If it works, it was a success. If it doesn't, mark it down as a failure.

    Now. Here's the clever bit. Repeat for every single organ in the world. If you don't get a single success, you have now proven that it is not possible to transplant an organ (even if it was possible before, it clearly isn't possible now, as you've broken them all)

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    You're still on my ignore list Barry, but I happened to "view post" on this one:
    You missed out a crucial step:
    What experiment would you perform that could potentially falsify the so-called "theory" that it is possible to transplant an organ?
    I'm baffled.

    What you do is try to transplant an organ and see if the patient survives. This was done by surgeons using different protocols on various animals over a period of years; each failure provided information on which improvements could be made to the protocol until a successful protocol was developed. If there had been no successful protocol, then the theory would have been falsified; as the theory turns out to have been correct it was not falsified, but it remained falsifiable.

    In a sense, it cannot now be falsified since it is widely known that people have lived for many years with donated liver, kidneys, eyes, heart, hearth and lungs, and so forth. So perhaps it is no longer a theory, it is a fact. But it was a falsifiable medical theory, and that's the point.

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    Registered User Magic Hans's Avatar
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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    For stuff like this ... proof simply is a misnomer, except in terms of the science for which it was created.

    Religion, and anything of a philosophical nature is simply a choice.

    Choose to believe or don't.

    It's easy to forget that Science, as religion can be perceived is not real. They are both human constructs (or can be viewed that way).

    Both are models created in markedly different ways, created in order to help us to make sense of the world, and be effective in it. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Whether one is 'better' than the other is a judgement, an opinion. [As is everything in this post .... by it's very nature]

    ... neither are 'true' as such. One is simply more 'in vogue' than the other.

    No doubt, at some time in the future, Science may well give way to something else that will then be more 'in vogue'.

    Although, as ever, it generally seems impossible at the time.

    As it happens .... I'm a believer [not in religion, but in auras, meridians, karma, Chi, etc]

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by Magic Hans View Post
    Both are models created in markedly different ways, created in order to help us to make sense of the world, and be effective in it. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Whether one is 'better' than the other is a judgement, an opinion. [As is everything in this post .... by it's very nature]
    Just out of interest, seeing as science has its weaknesses, could someone explain the weaknesses in say the theory of the First Law of Thermodynamics? Are there any similarly incontrovertible alternative therapy theories?

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by SteveK View Post
    Just out of interest, seeing as science has its weaknesses, could someone explain the weaknesses in say the theory of the First Law of Thermodynamics? Are there any similarly incontrovertible alternative therapy theories?


    Thanks chum. I was getting a bit fed up of having to keep pointing out all this relativist nonsense.

    Science and religion are not just two different ways of looking at things; science looks at things and religion and alternative therapies generally avoid looking anywhere, much like Wishful Thinking.

    The only weakness in the laws of thermodynamics is that most people haven't the first idea what they are.

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    The only weakness in the laws of thermodynamics is that most people haven't the first idea what they are.
    I can shed some light on that. They're a pain in the...well, you get the idea.

    Second year of my degree covered the laws. I'd rather be racked.

  7. #147
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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Science and religion are not just two different ways of looking at things; science looks at things and religion and alternative therapies generally avoid looking anywhere, much like Wishful Thinking.
    I would agree that "science" and "religion" are different, and one should not try to ape the other. I don't think "religion" (call it a set of principles and beliefs about how we should live our lives) should collide with science - the problems are that some religions try to pretend they are science.

    For example, I'd have no problems if astrology adherents simply wanted to say "Well, that's my religion, and that's it". It's when they try to label it "science" that it drives me nuts.

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by killingtime View Post
    I guess an structural engineer doesn't go "we can try slapping on more concrete and wait and see if the bridge stays up" (I hope), that is they'll hopefully do the maths as much as doctors might say "we'll put them on this medication and see how they are doing in 3 weeks".
    Structural/civil engineers do plenty of calculations when doing detailed design, working out exactly how much concrete/reinforcing steel is required. However it's not possible to be sure of the precise values for all the variables (quality of material, weight loading, wind loading, quality of construction etc.) so engineers always add a educated guesstimate of the "factor of safety" to cover for the uncertainties; in effect "slapping on more concrete". The trick in engineering is to add sufficient extra spare capacity to guarantee that your structure doesn't fail, but if you add too much spare capacity, your design is inefficient and too expensive. So unfortunately this probably isn't that good an analogy when comparing it to medicine.

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by andystyle View Post
    I can shed some light on that. They're a pain in the...well, you get the idea.

    Second year of my degree covered the laws. I'd rather be racked.
    I had forgotten that there is some UK scientist (from Truth In Science, IIRC, which is a genuinely Orwellian group of people in that they actually espouse 'Truth in the Bible') who says that the second law of thermodynamics actually makes evolution impossible.

    Which goes to show that not all scientists understand the laws, never mind the rest of us gumbies.

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Straycat appears to have proven that interior decoration is a science. Clever.

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    What you do is try to transplant an organ and see if the patient survives.
    It is not possible to falsify a statement that something is possible, no matter how many failures occur. Therefore it was never falsifiable. Compare and contrast water dowsing. The statement "it is possible to detect water with a twig" is not falsifiable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Perhaps it is no longer a theory, it is a fact.
    It is indeed a fact. This is my point: medicine generates facts, not theories. X works, Y doesn't. It is a craft, not a science - like engineering. There are medical theories (eg the germ theory of disease), but they are generated from related sciences (such as microbiology).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

  11. #151
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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by SteveK View Post
    Just out of interest, seeing as science has its weaknesses, could someone explain the weaknesses in say the theory of the First Law of Thermodynamics? Are there any similarly incontrovertible alternative therapy theories?
    Well ... that's not so difficult.

    First law works wonderfully well, in theory, when considering a closed system.

    First thing to do, is to create a closed system, which is, I believe impossible or nearly so.

    And so, as a human construct, it is a very useful tool in dealing with 'hard' (ie non people) systems involving conversion of energy.

    Not too sure how well and effective it might be with soft systems.

    Additionally, it is very easy to take on board intuitively, whereas something like pythagoras looks a little bit odd at first, but becomes very obvious after a few applications.

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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    Straycat appears to have proven that interior decoration is a science. Clever.



    It is not possible to falsify a statement that something is possible, no matter how many failures occur. Therefore it was never falsifiable. Compare and contrast water dowsing. The statement "it is possible to detect water with a twig" is not falsifiable.



    It is indeed a fact. This is my point: medicine generates facts, not theories. X works, Y doesn't. It is a craft, not a science - like engineering. There are medical theories (eg the germ theory of disease), but they are generated from related sciences (such as microbiology).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease
    Before a treatment becomes accepted practice, somebody theorises that the treatment will be effective. Trials ('experiments') confirm whether or not this is the case; if so, great; if not, the theory has been falsified. It isn't an ironclad rule that if something is not falsifiable, it's automatically not science; Popper certainly didn't say so IIRC.

    Now that tectonic plate movement is accepted as the explanation for continental drift, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc, does that mean that plate tectonics is not a science any more? What else could it be?

  13. #153
    Registered User killingtime's Avatar
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    Re: Healing with Dancing

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Before a treatment becomes accepted practice, somebody theorises that the treatment will be effective. Trials ('experiments') confirm whether or not this is the case; if so, great; if not, the theory has been falsified. It isn't an ironclad rule that if something is not falsifiable, it's automatically not science; Popper certainly didn't say so IIRC.
    Dang. I wish I never started this. I don't think, because I don't consider medicine a "science", rather more an "art" that it's not as good as a science in some way. I just believe that it isn't maybe as much of a hard science that principle understanding can be directly applied to.

    Saying that as a computer scientist I thought of it more an engineering course (hell it was in the engineering department) so what do I know ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Magic Hans View Post
    First thing to do, is to create a closed system, which is, I believe impossible or nearly so.

    And so, as a human construct, it is a very useful tool in dealing with 'hard' (ie non people) systems involving conversion of energy.
    Well closed systems can be created to show a direct energy exchange (say with a photon of known energy to hit a sensor) in a vacuum. If we are saying "right now explain all the thermodynamic interactions going on around you" I couldn't but that's not because I don't believe they are going on rather that attempting to model such a thing is beyond our current computational methods (or at least it is for such a trivial task).

    However I'll a little baffled by the "human construct" we label things because those labels are meaningful to us in some way. However just because we don't understand, or believe in, gravity doesn't stop it acting on us. We didn't invent it, we discovered it, tried to understand it, and people use those forces to calculate how much fuel a rocket needs to reach orbit; or how quickly you'll need to release a parachute so as not to become a mess on the floor.

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