New Age Thinking
retrieved from "Self Control Not Gun Control" by J Neil Schulman

[From a September 5, 1989 “cafe” discussion on the Connected Education “virtual” campus. —JNS]

One of the things that disturbs me the most about what passes for “new age thinking” is that equations and mathematical descriptions which are valid only within a specific mathematical formulation are constantly being taken out of mathematics and used in natural language, to erroneous effect.

This word “dimension” is one example. It has a specific and defined meaning in geometry and higher maths; in English it can mean “item,” “variable,” “person,” “thought,” “idea,” and a thousand other things which have nothing to do with the original mathematical function of the term.

The “uncertainty principle” is another concept, taken from physics, which is popularly used without respect to its actual mathematical function in describing certain subatomic effects.

Whatever the “uncertainty principle” has to say about the inability of an observer to observe a subatomic event without altering it because of the electromagnetic waves the observer must use to observe the event, it has nothing to do with events and observers in the superatomic world in which we live, in which observers are quite capable of observing events without affecting them.

Tell me how our observation of a newly discovered galaxy affects that galaxy, when the light we are observing left that galaxy so long ago it is an open question whether the galaxy even exists anymore.

Tell me how my watching a baseball game on TV affects the outcome of the game.

Tell me how my looking at the clock on my wall affects how fast it runs…and I’d really like to hear you argue that the light won’t go on in my refrigerator when I open the door just so long as I keep my eyes closed and therefore don’t “observe” it.

These sorts of statements about things only being real according to how other people observe them are not only wrong, they are ridiculous. A corpse that used to be a person is the same corpse, regardless of whether it is discovered by the police. The inability of a net to drag it out of the East River won’t bring the person back to life because there has been no one to observe it.