Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
bristol.ac.uk
bristol.ac.uk
Replace bees with flies, and flowers with manure (or plants that seek to attract flies http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm).
Where's the objective beauty?
Have you ever seen a flower like a bee sees it? Bees can see in UV as well as visible. The results are interesting, as it's nothing we would ever see when looking at a flower. Even dandelions are beautiful with UV.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-473897/A-bees...
Worth a watch, if you've got an hour.
It only adds... I don't understand how it subtracts.
Almost as if flowering plants are related to food for both bees and apes....
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/cellphones-contribute-bee-c...
> How then do bees detect electric fields?
Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when they are near the flower?
They probably feel the electric field gradient.
You may have rubbed a balloon on your hair, generating a static charge. You feel no attractive force toward the balloon, but your hair is pulled toward it, and your nerves can detect the changed angles of the hair.
These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human experience that can only be consciously experience by being actively cultivated and the main stream scientific community has bound itself to a set of ideological assumptions (IMHO inhereted from the Christian church) that deny the existence of these dimensions of human experience and so do not respect their cultivation or deem them worthy of study.
This is going to become more of an issue the closer our technological interfaces interact with our senses. These assumptions about what we are, how we communicate, and how we interact with the physical/spiritual world form the base assumptions underlying the future course of our evolution and progress. What happens if by augmenting/modifying one sense we cut ourselves off from another that informs us subconsciously?
Alchemy was actively frowned upon by the church, as was witchcraft of all kinds. People who worked in these traditions were burned at the stake and sentenced to death. Alchemists, like Newton, got their harder science published but not their Alchemical work. Other Alchemists/Magicians got burned to death for their work, like Bruno. There was a very strong disincentive to publish the more spiritual work, and the work that might have related to the convergence of science and the spiritual.
So people who were actively engaged in science were actively engaged in these studies and a.) were censured, b.) weren't able to get them published. c.) were burned at the stake
This was because they didn't fit into the Christian set of assumptions, which were enforced by torture, death and censure. So the texts that form the groundwork for our scientific understanding of the world leave out a whole dimension of the thinking of the people who wrote them, who were either unable to publish that part or afraid for their heads.
Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based).
Everything is faith based unless it's actually rigorously tested. Your assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith in Qi being unreal. Many studies have been done on acupuncture that have shown very real benefits.
If these types of communications are so subtle that we're hardly aware of them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than the placebo effect.
They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to train yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their nonexistence.
People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted by aliens, why should I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?
Calling people who have beliefs that don't fit into your philosophical assumptions about how the world works delusional is both hubristic and counterproductive in that it turns science into something like a religion and defines the boundary conditions of what is and is not allowed to be studied, which actively inhibits our getting a clear view of the world.
This is a feature, not a bug. Scientific understanding depends on quality of the science, not the reputation of the scientist. It also doesn't depend on faith, but on experiments and observations that can be reproduced.
We use this method because it's the most reliable way we know to arrive at answers that give us predictive power about how our world works, rather than just answers that "feel right". An answer that feels right may still be right, but that doesn't make it scientific.
Your assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith in Qi being unreal.
You seem to be interpreting the placebo effect to mean "unreal", but our present scientific understanding is that the placebo effect is real.
To put it another way: Nobody is denying your subjective experience. It's the attribution of that experience to mysterious mechanisms that require faith for observation that is incompatible with scientific understanding, not the experience itself.
This is important when you're suggesting that science excludes some things from study -- what it actually excludes are things that can't be studied scientifically, such as vaguely defined hidden dimensions or energies. It's like trying to hammer nails into air: you have the hammer, the nails, and plenty of air, but no matter how hard you swing, there's nothing for the nail to be driven into.
They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to train yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their nonexistence.
This faith requirement is incompatible with your desire for more study on the subject. Science allows for the answer of "we don't know why this happens", but not the answer of "we know because we believe", as the latter undermines the very meaning of what it means to "know".
For that matter, you're the one making claims here about Qi, so you provide the data. The burden of proof is not on me.
If you're saying that people who think they're talking to God, or have been abducted by aliens might be right, then I have no further desire to try and have a rational discussion with you.
I haven't read it, but there is a history book called The Saviour of Science that's all about the role of Christianity in shaping modern scientific assumptions.
Our minds are quite adept at making connections that don't exist, and at filling in holes where we're missing data. We can fabricate things that fill in those holes, and if everyone sees the same holes, and the same fabrication fills the hole fine enough, it's easy to believe that fabrication is the truth.
One should recognizes the holes, and leave them to be holes until he can prove otherwise.
I can accept that information can be passed between living things in ways we don't currently understand. I would sooner believe a little story on bees identifying flowers through detection of differently charged petals. I am less likely to use this as a reason to believe a whole line of mysticism/vitalism that has it's own doctrine on sexual behavior, claims to treat cancer, impart superhuman strength, and has a history that has changed with political and cultural whims.
Not to say that there is nothing correct or useful coming from QiGong, but that each of those things should be tested and evaluated individually. It's short sighted to accept the entire doctrine because parts of it fit.
Science actually often argues for forces we don't understand. Take a look at gravity, we still don't know why it works, we make up ideas about fields, or gravitons, or spacetime, but these are all just tools to model the behavior. We know more massive objects attract less massive objects, but how are they connected to do that attracting in the first place? Quantum Entanglement is an interesting thing too, is information transmitted at all? What is the meaning of information? Science asks so many questions, like what is space? Do we actually exist in 3 dimensions?
What science tries its hardest to avoid is explaining away the unanswered questions by filling in the holes with answers that just 'fit' without any way to validate the claim.
I'd be surprised if any of these effects were detectible (even to a tiny bee) more than a handspan or two away from a flower, for instance. So at best, two animals standing a few inches from each other might have some subtle extra ability to exchange information... but if you're bigger than a bee, why not just touch?