On the rationality of divination practices (2021)
helensreflectionsblog.wordpress.com
helensreflectionsblog.wordpress.com
The Shang were quite rational about it. All the results were recorded and analyzed. Ancestors who failed to yield good results would be bribed, punished, or ignored. Good results would encouraged before, and rewarded after, with various sacrifices. The oracle bone texts [1] themselves offer a unique insight, quite unlike anything in the world, kind of like if we had a collection of prayer notes or tarot readings for the President.
Anyway, it occurred to me that all this may have actually, well, worked. The whole process -- the record keeping, extensive reflection on the issue, discussions, subconscious influences on the interpretation, a pragmatic "well does it work?" attitude -- create a system for analysis of issues that, by means entirely other than what they thought, actually worked better than chance, in terms picking the right option.
Turns out most of the farmers use "witchers" -- people with divining rods. Well, not all rods, some use a willow stick, yes, some use a wire coat hanger, and others, well, anything goes.
I asked one of these farmers -- a retired navy officer with a couple of graduate degrees how will it worked (his guy was the wire coat hanger guy). He said, "well, he can never tell me how deep to drill but when he finds a location there's invariably water."
* yes, they are pulling out water that flowed in 20,000 years ago faster than it's being replaced...and the dry parts collapse.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-fi...
True belief is not a requirement or may even get in the way. Divination is simply a procedural generation technique for new ideas and interpretations.
Scientists are just beginning to grasp its power. One may reasonably wonder whether the success of Monte Carlo modeling and natural selection helped to usher in this insight.
Its limitations are as important as its uses.
Similarly, geologists had to carve their field out of universal insistence on catastrophism. Appealing to a catastrophic explanation in geology was akin to appealing to God in physics, or "life force" in biochemistry. It has been a productive esthetic. But catastrophes really do happen sometimes, and are the explanation for, e.g., the eastern Washington state Scablands. It was very hard for geologists to allow that. Thus the K-T bolide strike was very, very hard for them, and the Younger Dryas boundary strike that killed off the mammoths and the Clovis culture is still hard for many.
Historians have had to begin to adjust to results from archaeology, carbon dating, surface luminescence, pollen analysis, and population genetics, where everything used to depend entirely on preserved texts. They still have not internalized big, organized, pre-literate societies, and societies like the Harappans whose entire written corpus is forever lost.
"The easiest method to discredit divination is that if it were real in any context, that context can be described, a procedure can be drawn, and we can make tools to do it."
This argument assumes complete mastery of the universe. There are so many biological and chemical processes we don't have tools to do. We can't raise a baby outside of a mother's womb. We can't make solar flares.
"So why not an app?"
Possibly because it just wouldn't work. There's no reason it has to. Jet engine blades weren't always ceramic. Why not cardboard?