Intellectual History Challenge

[Justin Pickard]

Your challenge is to come up with a way in which, by 2005, any of the following could gain either greater recognition or outright acceptance by the contemporary academic establishment:-

- Odic force
- Morphogenetic fields
- Astrology
- Dowsing
- Pyramid power
- Catastrophism
- Ley lines
- Demon Possession
- Homeopathy
- Iridology
- Magnet therapy
- Trepanation
- Tesla's Dynamic Theory of Gravity
- Luminiferous aether
- Jungian synchronicity
- Phrenology
- the Enneagram
- New Chronology
- Welteislehre
- Lamarkism
- Maternal Impression
- Miasma Theory of Disease
- Humour Theory

A discussion of the results and butterflies caused by these different paradigms would be nice.

 

[Smuz]

Well, Stalin backed a pseudo-scientist with Lamarckian theories on the grounds that this "peasant" must know better than biologists. I seem to remember he wasted a substantial amount on pretty useless top-soil retention schemes. So something like a fluke gorwing season in the area might lead to acceptance of said theories in the USSR at large.

 

[Hendryk]

What about feng shui?

Would they have to be accepted by most of the world's academic establishments, or just in the USA? If it's the latter, it should be fairly easy. The POD would be that, in the 19th century, fundamentalist Christians decide that any of the aforementioned concepts is "Biblically correct". By 2005, conservative politicians and Christian lobbies will be bullying the scientific community into making it a legitimate field of research, like "creation science" and "intelligent design" in OTL.

 

[Justin Pickard]

Would they have to be accepted by most of the world's academic establishments, or just in the USA? If it's the latter, it should be fairly easy. The POD would be that, in the 19th century, fundamentalist Christians decide that any of the aforementioned concepts is "Biblically correct". By 2005, conservative politicians and Christian lobbies will be bullying the scientific community into making it a legitimate field of research, like "creation science" and "intelligent design" in OTL.

By most of the world's academic establishments. It's supposed to be a challenge, after all...

 

[Leo Caesius]

Wouldn't a triumphant Third Reich espouse some, if not all, of these things?

The Nazis wholeheartedly backed rather suspicious theories such as the Hollow Earth Theory, the World Ice Theory, and plenty of occult mumbo-jumbo.

I'm sure that other such theories would creep into the works - bad science tends to attract even more bad science. Russian linguists are known the world around for their devotion to Nostratic (a "reconstructed" proto-language for two or more of the world's major language families - generally not accepted by the linguistic establishment outside of Russia and Australia) and Lexicostatistics (aka Glottochronology - an algorithm for determining the POD between two related languages through comparison of basic word lists).

 

[jolo]

Catastrophism - the believe that most of earths features were caused by catastrophic events - lost a lot of credibility after most of what we see on this planet could be explained with rather slow changes. It was also used by creationists to explain all the worlds changes unearthed by archeologists within a 6000 year span, which is another reason for the low acceptance, at least since there are reliable techniques to determine age.

If some of the signs of actual large catastrophes had been unearthed earlier, the discussion might have taken another turn - more like a compromise, in which only the 6000 year theory is dead.

That might even have advantages - like much less time for acceptance of the impact theory to explain the end of the Dinosaurs. But on the other hand, we might err on the catastrophic side with some other features of this planet.

 

[Adamanteus]

Your challenge is to come up with a way in which, by 2005, any of the following could gain either greater recognition or outright acceptance by the contemporary academic establishment:-

- Trepanation

A discussion of the results and butterflies caused by these different paradigms would be nice.

Trepanation is already recognized by the medical community as a legitimate therapy, or rather the drilling of burr holes.

 

[Forum Lurker]

Catastrophism certainly can be done; all you need to do is create a catastrophe. I'd bet that the natives of the Peshawar universe give it a lot of credence.

Nazi Germany would also give Dynamic Gravity preference, since Einstein, being Jewish, can't have been right.

 

[ShawnEndresen]

What? No Velikovsky astronomy? Which is sort of creeping back into respectability as oligarchy theory...

Magnet therapy and homeopathy are easily proven to be true as a matter of statistical analysis. The problem is that no one has advanced a cogent theory as to WHY they work. Shrugging and saying "we don't why, but it's working" is not science.

The Enneagram works as well as any other diagnostic tool in personality theory; that is, it's just fine for the ordinary confused and overstressed person, and fails completely when applied to the genuinely insane.

Several of your cited theories (astrology, Jungian synchronicity, etc) presuppose a created and anthropocentric universe; that's already a majority view, to work these ideas into science requires you to make that idea a supermajority with virtually no meaningful dissent. Maybe if you get rid of Marx...

 

[MarkA]

Well, Stalin backed a pseudo-scientist with Lamarckian theories on the grounds that this "peasant" must know better than biologists. I seem to remember he wasted a substantial amount on pretty useless top-soil retention schemes. So something like a fluke gorwing season in the area might lead to acceptance of said theories in the USSR at large.

Actually Lamarckian evolutionary theory is accepted by the world scientific community. However, it is only accepted as an explanation for the evolution of human societies not biological evolution.

Yet it is not precluded from existing as the biological engine for evolutionary change in the cosmos, only here on earth. For example, it could exist on some other planet where the conditions of life and the nature of the life itself determines it.

 

[benedict XVII]

Magnet therapy and homeopathy are easily proven to be true as a matter of statistical analysis. The problem is that no one has advanced a cogent theory as to WHY they work. Shrugging and saying "we don't why, but it's working" is not science.

There is no start of beginning of glimpse of proof that homeopathy works. All double-blind experiences have failed to prove anything.

 

[Forum Lurker]

The problem lies in the different terminology. "Statistical analysis" almost always means correlation of data, which is most unlikely to be a double-blind experiment.

 

[benedict XVII]

The problem lies in the different terminology. "Statistical analysis" almost always means correlation of data, which is most unlikely to be a double-blind experiment.

And what do you correlate with what?

If the correlations are not different with statistical significance with a couble-blind experiments, then it shows homeopathy is equivalent to placebo. And btw, placebo works!