free debate

May 16, 2011

Transcendent Science: Technobabble at its Finest

Surfing the Internet you will occasionally stumble upon a true gem, a website that makes you stop what you are doing and simply look on with awe. When I doing some research on ancient writing, I found a website that said nothing in more words than I ever could have. This was the website of the Institute of Transcendent Science.

If you travel to the "About ITS" page, you will find some of the finest technobabble I have seen. If you are unfamiliar with the term, technobabble is when someone using scientific language in a incomprehensible way. Here is a good example.
The contemporary Transcendent Analysis has evolved from and is revealed by the study and latest achievements of the sciences of Quantum-physics, Medicine, Psychiatry, Psychology, Philosophy, Theology, Linguistics, Anthropology, System Analysis, Methodology and others. It represents a central core in the emerging science, The Theory About Man - a basic tenet of Transcendent Science, which comprises the next level of development of all the modern branches of science in their multidisciplinary state of cohesion.
Any time you see that many unrelated fields of science brought together at once, alarm bells should go off. Scientists constantly bring in new ideas from related fields. At the same time though there is only so much one person can hope to learn in a lifetime. This is why scientists focus on one area of expertise and try to act as informed citizens in other areas. The other major red flag is the mentioning of "quantum-physics." They even expand on this later on the page.
As it is well known from Quantum Physics, the result of any scientific research platform and observation experiment, depends exclusively on the Observer in that experiment and its relative position and research definition. This means that the world which is being observed by a specific Observer, is quite different from the world, which is not being observed by the same Observer, and may become even “nonexistent” (in terms of the definition for “existence”) when no Observer exists, who could conduct an observation of that world!
Quantum mechanics (or as they are calling it quantum physics) is counterintuitive and confusing. I think even most scientists who work with quantum mechanics on a regular basis would agree with this. Still, that does not mean that you can use it to say anything is true. Without going into a deep explanation of the observer effect, I will just say they are wrong. Things exist all of the time without observers. Your refrigerator may break while no one is home to observe it. It is hard to see how it could break while it is non-existent. In astronomy we can also see events that happened before any observers could have possibly existed in the universe. You will see this misuse of quantum mechanics all over the Internet.

So where does that leave us? Apparently, you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet. I do think this website is good training for anyone learning to spot logical fallacies or if you just want a laugh. There is a sad side to this as well. They are taking people's money by selling their books and promoting irrational thinking. Still. I think the most appropriate response to this is that of Thomas Jefferson. "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them."