When scriptural truths are branded by scientists ‘pseudoscience’, how do rationalistic people put faith on them?
[i]Lewis Wolpert, p. 118, The Unnatural Nature of Science.
[ii]Wolpert, pp. 99-100.
3. On the scientific credibility of reincarnation research done by Dr Ian Stevenson as quoted in Searching for Vedic India by Devamrita Swami:
Prestigious scientific periodicals such as the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology publish his findings.
4. On the scientific credibility of Vedic creationism research done by Drutakarma Prabhu (Dr Michael Cremo):
“So has Forbidden Archeology made any contribution at all to the literature on palaeoanthropology? Our answer is a guarded ‘yes’, for two reasons. First, while the authors go in for overkill in terms of swamping the reader with detail . . . much of the historical material they resurrect has not been scrutinized in such detail before. Second, . . . Cremo and Thompson do raise a central problematic regarding the lack of certainty in scientific ‘truth’ claims.” Jo Wodak and David Oldroyd, in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 26(1), 1996, p. 207.
**“Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are to be congratulated on spending eight years producing the only definitive, precise, exhaustive, and complete record of practically all the fossil finds of man, regardless of whether they fit the established scientific theories or not. To say that the research is painstaking is a wild understatement. No other book of this magnitude and calibre exists. It should be compulsory reading for every first year biology, archaeology, and anthropology student–and many others, too.” John Davidson, in International Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, August 1994, p. 28.
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Question by Chaitanya Pulla Prabhu Science is often understood as a system of ideas having a rational basis. When scriptural truths are branded by scientists as pseudoscience, how do rationalistic people put faith in them? For example, reincarnation, astrology, some works of Vedic creations, etc. fall into the pseudoscience category based on Wikipedia data.
Answer Let me first begin by quoting a very respected philosopher of science Larry Ludden and what he says about this sort of categorization. So he quotes if we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason we ought to drop terms like pseudoscience and unscientific from our vocabulary. They are just hollow phrases that do only emotive work for us.
So this is an essay in a book published in 1983 his essay is titled The Demise of the Demarcation Problem in Kohen R.S. and Lorden L. Editors Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Read and Audit, pages 111-127 So let's look at what he is saying he says if we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason that means if we want people to consider us as rational, reasonable then we ought to drop terms like pseudoscience and unscientific why is that? from our vocabulary we should drop them because they only do emotive work for us they are hollow phrases emotive work means that they only create emotions which we can use to brand people or justify ourselves the phrases itself anybody and anyone can be called as pseudoscientific or unscientific and rather than using labels like this labeling is a very low level way of polarizing and paralyzing discussion it is basically a label whether it emerges from a rational discussion or not as soon as a label is put on someone then that person people start viewing that person in a particular way and that polarizes the capacity that person's perspective away from other people's perspective and therefore paralyzes discussion so now why is this this whole essay the demise of the demarcation problem demarcation here refers to how do we decide what is science and what is pseudoscience how do we demarcate between the boundary of science and pseudoscience that is the question and if we look at the history of science various things that were called as pseudoscience are today accepted as mainstream science and things which were considered as mainstream science are today rejected as pseudoscience for example till the time of renaissance astrology was considered to be a very esteemed branch of knowledge of course the word science was not used even by Newton the word science was used first time by certain scientists in the 18th century approximately so Newton considered himself as a natural philosopher natural philosophy that was what he studied and but basically it was an esteemed branch of knowledge and subsequently so astrology was highly respected till the time of renaissance then it lost respect but when Newton proposed the theory of gravity then at that time his idea was branded as mysticism by many of his prominent peers including even Kekul who said that this idea of a force not Kekul by Leibniz who said this idea of a force acting through space was unscientific was filled with, reeking with mysticism and what was the ontological basis of this force and Newton replied I don't know any ontological basis I don't have an explanation and all that I can give is a mathematical formulation for accounting for observed phenomena but as far as its origin and its nature I don't have any explanation and since the time when Newton proposed gravity till the time when Einstein that is more than three centuries later Einstein in the 20th century when he said that gravity is space time a warping of space time caused by the presence of heavy objects in that area of space time till that time the origin and nature of gravity was unknown but even though origin and nature were unknown still gravity was not rejected as pseudoscience so that means science primarily works on prapteksha and anuman so prapteksha is empirical observation and anuman is theoretical a theoretical postulation about its nature and explanation so there was a prapteksha for gravity in terms of that we could see that it was some force which was causing the causing and shaping the motion of objects but its anuman was not very sound but still if it had been rejected as pseudoscience as Leibniz had been branding it then it would then much of the progress that had happened because of the application of laws of gravity to mechanics and then we have transportation and air underground in the air and all the various branches that had developed because of understanding gravity would never have been developed so even recently in the last century itself when the quantum theory was proposed Einstein expressed his strong displeasure and disapproval with the theory by in various ways so one of his ideas that God does not play chance play dice with the universe is the expression of the his disapproval of the way quantum physics works so that means that a theory which is considered to be one of the more biggest breakthrough theories in the world today that was strongly disapproved by one of the most respected scientists of all time so therefore things are not so easy to brand as pseudoscience or science for example there is a science concept called quantum non-locality that means one one subatomic object one object at one place when a force is applied to it or when certain stimulus is applied to it not only does that force that object respond but another object which is at a different place also responds as if that force had been acting on that so non-locality means normally according to science there has to be some kind of contact between the two objects for the effect on one to affect another by objects we are referring here to subatomic objects quantum non-locality is one of the biggest unsolved paradoxes that two two subatomic objects seem to be entangled in such a way that although there is no physical contact between them still action on one produces a result in another now quantum physics is one of the most classic examples of a branch of science which has problems with pratyaksha as well as anuman by pratyaksha we see the object as being made of particles and things whereas according to quantum theory it is made of waves so it's counter-perceptual that means it's not really in agreement with pratyaksha but because the anuman works soundly therefore it is at least in some ways the mathematics of the equations works out well so therefore it is considered to be accepted in mainstream physics but still there are huge areas of ignorance which are there which have really not been answered even with respect to science itself so what is the criteria that should be used for saying that a theory is false I gave one example where there was pratyaksha without anuman that is gravity and another example of anuman without pratyaksha that is quantum physics so these are very big subjects in science and I am giving a preliminary analysis that can be understood by most people but the broad principle here remains that which is to be given priority when science is often not a matter of gospel truth over the centuries so Einstein himself has made contradictory statements about what should be given precedence pratyaksha or anuman so those who give priority to pratyaksha empirical sense perception they are called as empiricists and those who give priority to anuman are called as rationalists so he has made two different statements at one time I am reading out a passage here from the book of Subhadra Maharaj called Substance and Shadow which is also there in Veda base so he is quoting a I think a Lewis Walpert who says the unnatural nature of science and basically Walpert put forward the oft heard argument that scientific theory ultimately counts for nothing if it does not measure up to what can be observed in nature yet Walpert himself approvingly quotes Albert Einstein as saying that a theory is significant not to the degree it is confirmed by facts observed in nature but to the degree it is simple and logical and he quotes Arthur Arrington as saying that observations are not to be given much confidence until they are confirmed by theory so that means here he is saying that science starts off Newton started off by seeing a fruit falling so there was a prateksha and then he tried to make an anuman for the prateksha so that means from empiricism towards rationalism but then as rationalism became more and more intricate as it became grounded in scientific language in scientific jargon and mathematical abstractions it became more and more divorced from prateksha from observation so that now we have a whole universe of quantum physics which has very little to do with prateksha so that means whether something is scientific or not there is really no criteria for deciding it as Arrington quotes over as he is quoting Arrington and even Einstein that that ultimately the strength of a theory is not just that it can be supported by observation in nature but that it is simple and logical so now simple and logical itself are very dicey words which don't have any clear universal definition so there are many theories which are considered mainstream in science which have no root in prateksha their root is only anuman so this friction between empiricism and rationalism between prateksha and anuman is one of the several reasons which makes the demarcation criteria very difficult to pinpoint so now with this background let us move to the specific issues for example reincarnation or the work of Vedic creationists which is branded as pseudoscience by certain people and it is quoted in Wikipedia accordingly so firstly reincarnation is it, is there prateksha is there anuman, let us look at it this way so prateksha there are adequate empirically documented cases of people who remember their past lives and the sheer amount of data that is there and the way it has been documented by Dr. J. N. Stevenson there is very little that can be done to counter that data J. N. Stevenson as we know has documented thousands of cases practically speaking by spending, he spent 40 years of his life and he is not alone in doing this I am currently writing a book on reincarnation as well as making a series of documentaries but I will just quote one or two authorities over here as his work published not only in his own books that have been published by respected universities but it has also been published in prestigious scientific journals like the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and the International Journal of Comparative Sociology and the American Medical Association which is the most prestigious journal in terms of science, influence and tradition officially stated in this journal that Stevenson had painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases in which the evidence for reincarnation is difficult to understand on any other grounds he has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored. So painstakingly and unemotionally that means there is no bias over there there is no shoddy scholarship or research over there a detailed series of cases now if you look at his files the way he has done his research the data runs into thousands of pages there are whole libraries filled with his research reports and his classic book Reincarnation Biology Intersect is a massive tome which runs into several thousands of pages and he has documented evidence at four levels. Firstly there is memory which scientists may say is his which is dubious because memories can be concocted but beyond memories there is recognitions he not only remembers that I was here and I went there but there are recognitions that specifically recognizes certain people and names them and there are so children do that and then beyond that there are several cases where these memories happen among families who don't believe in reincarnation the parents are not at all encouraging or egging them on and further there are birthmarks so its reincarnation biology which is more than 2000 pages 2 volumes accurate correlations of the position of the fatal wound in the previous life and the birthmark or birth defect of the child in the next life so the point here is from the prateksha point of view there is more than adequate documentation that has been done now from the anuman point of view from the theory point of view the concept of soul may not be accepted in mainstream science today but that is something which is as the American Medical Association's statement says there is no other way to by which this data can be explained except reincarnation and Stevenson himself researches and rejects and gives reasons why all alternative explanations have to be rejected so the point here is prateksha as far as its concerned is there is adequate prateksha to support this idea of reincarnation that's why branding it as pseudoscience is just a label which makes people emotionally biased against it.
Many people who actually study Stevenson's work they are impressed by the sheer quality of the work that he has done now what is the criteria by which something can be called as pseudoscience? Karl Popper had proposed something called as falsifiability that if a scientific statement is falsifiable if it can be proven to be false then it can be that theory can be rejected obviously but that is a very simple thing but his point is that science should be able to whenever science proposes a theory it should give the criteria for telling what would make this theory false what are the subsequent experiments what are subsequent observations which if we make that will prove the theory to be false and by the criteria of falsifiability most of the historical sciences would be proven to be false because for example Darwin's theory of evolution now there is no falsifiability test in this theory what will make the theory false there is no criteria that is given for that now Richard Dawkins a famous atheist has said that if you can give fossils which are very very old and which contradict the theory of evolution then that would be a falsifiability criteria but then when such fossils are presented those fossils are dismissed as shoddy evidence so Dr. Michael Karimudutta, Karmaprabhu has written a whole book forward in archaeology which quite exhaustively documents how there have been many fossils which are so old they contradict the theory of evolution so the falsifiability criteria which was given by Karl Popper has been more or less rejected today by mainstream science because by that what science considers mainstream will also get rejected because most of the historical sciences are more like reconstructions than predictions that are falsifiable for example what happened at a particular place in the ancient times according to theory of evolution one species evolved into another so it is basically they try to make a historical reconstruction based on whatever little fragmented pieces of evidence are there but there are various little predictions that are there which can be falsified so falsifiability I have talked about it elaborately in another answer to the question what is the one evidence that will falsify the Vedic teachings on scientific evidence I have talked about this more in that answer if you are interested you can go there but the basic point I am making here is that there is no criteria within science to separate science from pseudoscience and that's why those who use labels like pseudoscience are essentially trying to prejudice their readers as they themselves are prejudiced against certain people whose opinions they don't like now coming specifically to the work of Uttakarma Prabhu which is labeled according to one person who himself is not an archaeologist if you look at the footnotes and everything the person who has called him as a pseudoscientific is not an archaeologist himself so he is not himself a qualified scientist in that way but even if there were rather than just looking at the label what is important is that one looks at the methodology to decide whether it is science or not so essentially if the finding is based on Praptaksha and Anumar then there is no reason to label it as pseudoscience now one of the reasons why creationism is often seen negatively by scientists is because the ideas are derived from scripture whether it is Bible or whether it is the Vedic scriptures so what scientists feel is that those who are doing this kind of research are biased they already have some opinions and they are basically trying to promote their own opinions within the field of science and that is why that is not scientific work but this is a very shallow criteria because everybody has certain beliefs certain opinions if we are to say that those who believe in reincarnation they are biased in favor of reincarnation and so their research is not credible then we could take the same argument around and say that those who don't believe in reincarnation are biased against reincarnation and therefore they, because of their bias are not qualified to do research in reincarnation so what a person's previous beliefs are is not as important as what a person's methodology is everybody has certain beliefs and we just can't avoid the inherent fact that everybody starts research with certain beliefs and if you are going to label people because of certain beliefs then nobody will be able to do any research is it that atheism or skepticism is inherently superior to any other sort of belief even skepticism is a belief system and that is originated in a person's culture in a person's upbringing, in a person's choices as is belief in certain scriptures so rather than rejecting some branch of knowledge just because it comes just some branch of scientific research just because its founding premises come from certain scriptures or certain sources, what is important is what is the methodology that is adopted. So science primarily works on prakteksha and anumana but when there is anumana, when there is inference to be made the source for the inference and when there is prakteksha to be done there is evidence to be observed the focus on what is the evidence to be observed the inspiration for this can come from various sources so the inspiration can come from reading some old books which some people may call as scriptures it can come in a dream as it came to Kekul with respect to benzene structure it can come while watching some science fiction movie it can come while reading some novel it can come from any source so the source is not as important as the method so largely speaking if a particular branch of knowledge is having empirical and rational basis there is prakteksha and there is anumana which is sound then branding it as pseudoscience is wrong so with respect to Dr. Michael Cremo forbidding archeology is largely empirical most of the book gives evidence after evidence of how there is so much data that has been pushed down the carpet because it did not agree with the mainstream scientific paradigm now after that for example here I am quoting there are several reviews there may not be rave reviews of this book in mainstream scientific journals but the very fact that it has been reviewed and it has been appreciated in some ways is indicative for example Joe Vedak and David Aldord in social studies of science so has forbidden archeology made any contributions at all to the literature and paleoanthropology our answer is a guarded yes for two reasons first while the authors go in for overkill in terms of swamping the reader with detail much of the historical material they resurrect has not been scrutinized in such detail before so now overkill in terms of detail means that there is more than adequate protection examination of protection Cremo and Thompson do raise a central problematic regarding the lack of certainty in scientific truth claims so basic lack of certainty means Darwin's theory is considered to be certain by many scientists today but there is so much evidence that contradicts it so basically this is it is appreciating that at least the certain amount of data is definitely there a huge amount of data is there for supporting particular evidence so therefore actually speaking it's not that there is nothing there is no empirical basis for it so now there are several reviews for this which are to be for example now in the international journal of alternative complementary medicine congratulating spending 8 years producing the only definitive precise exhaustive and complete record of practically all the fossil finds of man regardless of whether they fit the established scientific theories or not to say that the research is painstaking is a wild understatement no other book of this magnitude and caliber exists it should be compulsory reading for every first year biology archaeology and anthropology students and many others too so there are several reviews like this which are at least indicating the quality of the research that is being done so now because science today largely equates scientific research with material research with research and study into matter anything that postulates non-material any theory that postulates non-material entities or things on anything non-material basically is sometimes looked upon with disapproval but basically science should go where the evidence leads and where the influence leads so all these reviews are about forbidden archaeology and in fact Dr. Karmapur has written a whole book called forbidden archaeology's impact where there is a very fascinating analysis of the kind of reviews that were made and the kind of objections that were made to it and that book has also been appreciated for being remarkably insightful about the sociology of science about how science internally works and there have been reviews for that also. In human evolution what has essentially been done is two things first of all now once the Darwin's theory of evolution's problems have been pointed out then there is a need for an alternative theory so what is that alternative theory? that is the idea that before we can understand how human beings have evolved we have to understand what is a human being and that human being is according to the current scientific evidence can be said to be matter plus mind plus consciousness and then Dr. Cremo gives extensive evidence for a mind and then substantial evidence for consciousness so the book is structured very systematically and for the mind there is the Princeton University's paranormal research labs reports are there and for the consciousness there are near the experience of the outer body and past life memories which are given and the inexplicability or irreducibility of the phenomenon of consciousness is also analysed so basically there is prapteksha and there is anaman so that's why those who brand certain branches of science as pseudoscience are basically trying to use labels to polarise and paralyse discussions and there are certain people who will be put off by this but if we without getting intimidated by such labels if we focus on presenting the method that has been used then at the very least the intelligent open minded scientific people will recognise that there is scientific worth to it they may not accept this as the scientific theory but at least there is scientific credibility to it and that is why at least we get a foothold within the minds of people who consider themselves to be scientific so therefore, Krishna Prabhupada himself wanted the Krishna conscious truths to be presented in a scientific way and there are devotees, scientists who are doing that and if people get alarmed or disturbed by the pseudoscience label, we have to tell them basically that this label is used by people whose scientific credentials themselves may not be very high and even if it is used the very use of such a label indicates the use of emotions rather than rationality because what has been considered scientific and what has been considered pseudoscientific has no clear demarcation there was never a demarcation 100-200 years ago and there is not a demarcation today so therefore, rather than rejecting something just because of a label, we need to actually study the method and I discussed why the label is problematic in terms of the theory of gravity where Pratyaksha is there but Hanuman is not there the theory of quantum physics where Hanuman is there but Pratyaksha is not there then I discussed about how for those branches which are called as pseudoscience there is adequate Pratyaksha and Hanuman for young Stevenson's work we discussed about how there are thousands of cases that is Pratyaksha with four levels of evidence with past life memories, with recognitions with I didn't go into all of it in detail with behavior and with birthmarks then beyond that we discussed about how there are views of his work in respected journals and then with respect to Vedic creationism again there is exhaustive evidence in terms of Pratyaksha and even the Hanuman that is made just because it comes from a particular source that doesn't make it unscientific we have to look not at the source but at the method and as far as Hanuman is concerned there is adequate Hanuman to support it at least as one scientific theory within the world of science so in this way we can work through the filters and the biases that are created by the label of pseudoscience in fact one of the central postulations of the Karmaprabhu's work is that there is a knowledge filter that means scientists accept certain theories and once certain theories are accepted any evidence that doesn't support the theory any observations that contradict the theory are put aside not because that observation or that evidence is inherently false but just because it doesn't support the theory so essentially this sort of knowledge filter is something which gives that theory an undue clout within the scientific establishment even when there is not much evidence to support it and there is significant evidence to counter it so by understanding this knowledge filter many people's eyes get opened to understand to actually examine the evidence in a more holistic and broad minded way and now the analysis of the knowledge filter has itself been subjected to the knowledge filter by being branded as pseudoscience so in one sense the label pseudoscience is itself an evidence of what the research was meant to prove that there is a labeling and knowledge filtration within the world of science so rather than getting discouraged or repelled by this sort of labeling we should see it as a vindication of the central theory, central argument of the book that there is this knowledge filtration based on labeling which comes from certain unquestioned and unverified criteria by which the demarcation between science and pseudoscience is made Thank you.