Gary, list,
My understanding is that "3. The total amount of matter and energy is
conserved" is not a dogma of science and contradicts current physical
theory, which argues that the total energy (including mass) of the
universe increases as the universe expands, and would decrease if the
universe were to contract.
Best, Ben
*On 5/31/2017 6:15 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:*
List,
As an addendum to my forwarded post, here are what Sheldrake claims to
be 10 dogmas of science.
*1. Everything is essentially mechanical.
2. All matter is unconscious.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is conserved.
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at
the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic
material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains.
When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not
“out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at
death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.*
I had earlier written that dogma 9, seems not supported by Peirce's
writings. Although he thought that such matters as telepathy ought be
investigated, he seems not to have been convinced himself that such
phenomena had been experimentally validated.
Perhaps I should have added that while his general anti-materialist
tendencies as well as his views concerning the role of a kind of
Lamarckian inheritance would tend to support 6., that the second part of
that putative dogma is probably not what Sheldrake is emphasizing here
(not to mention that DNA research hadn't begun in Peirce's time).
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
*Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690*
*On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 2:21 PM, Gary Richmond **wrote:*
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