----- Original Message -----
From: "Barrett Dorko" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: SV: Craniosacral Therapy
> The history of medicine can be split into four ages, each with
> characteristic behaviors and practices: Supernaturalism, which extended to
> the time of Hippocrates about 450 B.C., Theory, which extended to the
> 1500s, Original Research, into the late 1800s, and Science and Technology,
> extending into the present. Each of these was an improvement on its
> predecessor and each resulted in lowered death rates from a host of
> maladies. Clearly Craniosacral Therapy along with John Barnes Myofascial
> Release, insofar as they express the theoretical basis of their effect, is
> a return to Supernaturalism.
>
Barrett, I would argue that rather that separating the ages into discrete
categories in this fashion, each age exhibits various aspects of the others.
For example, the 19th century was rife with both "good" scientific
discoveries and "pseudoscientific" ones, sometimes, it seems, in the same
arena or even the same experiment. I am thinking at the moment of the
"discovery" of the androgens in the 1800s, the process of which involved
both solid chemistry and ridiculously fanciful predictions about the
fountain of youth. Ages of scientific discovery also brought us many
charlatans, hucksters, and scam artists, as well as people who meant well
but wandered off spectacularly on the wrong track. I would also hesitate to
use a linear model of progress. Of course I am not arguing that things are
not better now than they have ever been in human history (superstitious
knocking of wood), but rather that "progress" is full of fits and starts,
circularity, forgetfulness, backtracking, and active suppression of ideas.
The question we should be asking is this: what need does supernaturalism,
or "pseudoscience", fulfill for us? What conditions need to be in place for
people to put their trust in ideas which may appear to have no basis in
fact? I would propose two things: the shocking level of innumeracy and
scientific illiteracy of the general population (in Ontario, where I am,
high school students do not have to take science past a grade 10 level), and
the fact that "good" science is often somewhat boring to the media. Who
wants to report on a non-event, or a tiny incremental advance which has
significance in a larger context, but which is not as sexy as a
one-size-fits-all Kure for Kancer(tm)?
Krista
-------------------
York University
S709 Ross
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