Ghosts: Working Notes (Part 7) – a response to Higgypop on Science and Ghost Hunting.

“Always, no sometimes, think it’s me
But you know, I know when it’s a     dream“

The Beatles – Strawberry Fields Forever

Higgypop published a while back an interesting piece on Science and ghost hunting. He calls for an experiential (phenomenalist) approach to ghost hunting not grounded in science (understood here as measuring things and observing them to establish proof) but in just looking at people’s experiences and treating the impact they have as important, valid and meaningful.

To which I have to ask what does he think we’ve been doing since 1882? The Census tradition has always looked at people’s reports of their experiences as central to ghost research; Myers, Gurney, Tyrrell, Green, Haraldsson, McCreery, West, Evans, Laursen, Hunter, Smith, myself and so many others have done just this? We put the experience first, eschewing seeking out the experiences personally and a gnostic approach to try and understand the meaning of these fascinating encounters with the unknown. Ghost researchers are more likely to be found looking at the AHRC (Alister Hardy Research Center for Religious Experience) or Louisa Rhine’s archives as sitting in a lab or mooching around Borley churchyard at midnight.

Now I see Higgypop’s point: he seems to be addressing the “ghosthunters” who work in the vigil tradition that seems to stem back to Elliot o Donnell and in literature Edward Bulwer Lytton etc. Well conducted ghost hunts can indeed tell us something about the nature of the phenomena – I’d recommend Harry Price’s The Most Haunted House in England or the ASSAP training course for how to approach it sensibly and usefully – but most ghosthunts appear to me more like “spiritualism on the hoof” or a New Religious Movement than science.

The problem is we are used to religions like Christianity, with institutions, creeds and dogmas rather than Hinduism – an attempt to impose order on Indian religion by 18th and 19th century scholars – or Wicca outside the coven traditions. We don’t recognise the new ghosthunters as on a spiritual quest for gnosis; not about publishing in journals, research platforms and putting ghosts in scientific context.

Furthermore I think Higgypop himself is confused about religion and science. He implies religion is not based on objective knowledge, though he correctly identifies some of the sources used in religion. I suspect he is avoiding larger issues of epistemology (how we know what is true, the basis for knowledge), probably wisely to avoid losing his audience.

I have no such fear: this is ASSAP. Let’s start with the limits of Science. This might need a bit of thinking about but let’s have a go.

Science is a very successful and useful methodology for making models of reality. Those models are provisional; they change if we learn new stuff. Science is always a process, and never a claim to absolute final truth. Nonetheless there is plenty of Science which seems to work well and which we regard as (provisionally) correct.

Science is however only one way of understanding reality, and it won’t tell you who won the Battle of Waterloo, if your mother or the cute guy down the hall loves you or if God or magic exists. In the last instance it can’t by definition – I’d better explain why or people will complain.

Let’s start by defining empiricism. Empiricism is knowing something based on your senses, and it assumes the universe runs by laws that are logical, knowable and unchanging (a mechanistic universe, running like a well oiled machine). Experimenting is a therefore a great way to study the Universe, and we can share our discoveries and insights and build upon them. Scepticism, the application of doubt via careful testing of truth claims is central to empiricism and the Scientific method.

There is also another tradition, Rationalism. Rationalism says some ideas are obviously true to anyone with a mind and that truth can be reached logically and mathematically in many cases without requiring external knowledge: Descartes and Spinoza are examples of this. Historically Rationallists pointed out the problem with Empiricism: things change in the world, and Nature does not stand still being one. This is one of the reasons that in empiricism the Laws of Nature are constant – if you boil pure water it boils at 100°C. Now if you alter a variable by adding salt or changing the atmospheric pressure it changes – but the law is constant, so you can predict the result.

There is a bigger problem though: if we see a Tasmanian tiger we may reasonably assume they exist at this time. If we observe a hundred black crows we might assume all crows are black. (A single white crow falsifies the claim proving it incorrect). So David Hume in the 18th century pointed out the Problem of Induction: if I know something by experience about the world will it be true tomorrow?

So empiricism says yes: in Science we believe in a neat orderly universe that behaves like a machine never varying. The seasons change on a predictable cycle; global warming can be understood even if the factors involved are insanely complex; the planets revolve in their orbits unless another objects gravity disrupts them.

A mixed empiricist-rationalist approach has given us miraculous knowledge and power as Science grants us technology: but the axioms, the principles on which our Science is based are also understood. Science has clearly defined limits, and scientists also have different philosophies of Science.

Let’s give an example. One of the greatest philosophers of Science is Karl Popper: one day he announced that Evolution is not Science, but History. His argument was simple: if we could reset life on Earth and start again random chance would result in different lifeforms, and the end results would be different. Same as history: if you repeat the experiment you get a different outcome. Evolution can not be replicated (where you check an experiment by running it again to ensure you get the same result). Now Popper later changed his mind by changing his definitions – but this nearly demonstrates the kinds of issues that arise.

Anyway modern Science has limits – it is limited to the observable universe, and this universe only. (We can use Rationalism and mathematics to conjure up other universes but they are theoretical maths not Science). It can not deal with Supernatural entities, because they exist beyond our Universe. Theology deals with these entities, not Science. There is another good reason for this limitation which takes us back to David Hume…

Hume wrote a very famous essay called “On Miracles”. In it he defines a miracle as an arbitrary suspension of a natural law. That’s a really useful definition. So if supernatural magic worked and I was a wand and conjure up castle, that is miraculous — and by definition outside of the scope or purview of Science, which requires smooth mechanistic conformity to the rules. Science will tell us it is impossible – because Science is the study of the laws. If an apple falls on Sir Isaac Newton’s head from a tree overhead he can understand it and formulate a Law of Gravity: if it is lobbed at him as he returns to the house by an invisible Goblin he might manage to study the trajectory but the source will remain unknowable.

So two terms I’ve spent a lot of my life on: paranormal and supernatural. A paranormal goblin might be invisible and hard to catch but if its a physical creature from this universe (maybe freshly arrived from Zeta Reticuli via Hopkinsvillle) it is Paranormal. Its outside of Science but once we catch one and examine it our Science will incorporate it. A Supernatural goblin is magic: it follows no laws of Nature, and acts like one of those infuriating Dr Who villains like the Maestro or Toymaker who just rewrite reality on a whim. Supernatural events are outside of Nature; we can understand them perhaps by Theology or other modes of knowing, but that is too big a subject for today.

If you imagine our Universe as a simulation as Nick Bostrom suggested you end up with very much the worldview of classic Theism – a supernatural entity is potentially omniscient, omnipotent as outside of time and able to alter the programming at will. The laws of Nature become code; the notion of being “saved” takes me back to playing games where you can save your position and go back to it if you die again. If we are code in a simulation we can hope for an afterlife if the programmer saves us and drops us in another simulation; or maybe we are supernatural entities with our senses observing the universe we are incarnate in? Both are possible.

To make our science work we take on board a worldview that negates magic, divine intervention and the supernatural – Methodological Naturalism. We assume those things don’t exist for the purposes of doing Science. (If the rules of nature change supernaturally we won’t know as our science which is the study of the rules would change simultaneously – this is as impossible to test as the hypothesis the universe was created Last Tuesday).

Anyway Methodological Naturalism is easily conflated with Ontological Naturalism – Atheism – as we mistake working assumptions for ultimate truth. Most people don’t seem to worry about the ultimate nature of reality very much, but Higgypop is absolutely correct to point out there are other non-Scientific ways of knowing.

However we are ASSAP- the clue is in the name and we will explore the Paranormal scientifically, and we will amass data and evidence. In fact we can combine this with the experiential approach he calls for, by Qualitative research of the type ghost researchers have worked on since 1888 on the reports of experiences. That is probably more scientific than anything we see on our screens as “ghosthunting”.

I’d better stop now as I have to go exercise before I become a ghost myself. You can read Higgypop’s essay here: https://www.higgypop.com/news/time-to-stop-seeking-scientific-proof/