Thanks for sharing.
I've been doing a book study this semester with some of my students, of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's Science Set Free. We've been studying a couple chapters a week together for the past 4 weeks. This Monday will be our 5th and final study session.
In the book, he talks about the 'paranormal' actually being quite normal (i.e. the vast majority of people report having experienced such things).
He also argues that our reluctance to scientifically investigate such phenomena is actually hindering genuine scientific progress.
I am a skeptic at heart and chose this book for a book study because I expected to identify with Dr. Sheldrake's skepticism about 'modern science', and the perspective that, truth be told, we actually know far less than we think we do. And, I was not disappointed in that expectation -- we both share that same skepticism.
However, I started reading the book being equally skeptical about Dr. Sheldrake's personal theories and attempts to explain the unexplainable. To my surprise, however, I ended up concluding that most of his theories trying to explain the seemingly inexplicable actually match the observable world around us better than the 'modern scientific' explanations. I'm not saying that his theories are correct, just that he does a better job (imho) of presenting theories and hypotheses that match 'all' observations than anything else I've seen to date.
I agree with you that
some of the things people tend to call "paranormal" now will simply be explained by science within the next 50 years or so
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
I think what often bugs me about "modern science" is that the entire nature of science and scientific inquiry has changed over the past century or so.
Science used to be a field of curiosity and of exploration where the unlikely and impossible was postulated, explored and tested. These days, science seems to have become "fat, old and arrogant" and things are dismissed out of hand if they don't fit already established paradigms. It almost feels as if science has created a bunch of theories and explanations and avoids dealing with any questions that might result in those theories having to be revised or restated. From where I am sitting, that's hardly progress.
The things I always keep firmly in mind tend to be centered on "knowing" vs. "existence." Things like microwaves (the scientific concept, not the appliance!) have been around for eons and didn't just miraculously pop into existence when we were able to detect them. If you could have shown your smartphone to someone in the 18th century they would likely have called it witchcraft or the work of the devil. With that in mind, who is to say that today's supernatural won't be tomorrow's ordinary?
You should read Dr. Sheldrake's book, if you get a chance. His theory of morphic resonance is analogous to 'microwaves', but applies to thoughts, memories, consciousness, and animal heredity -- the theory is an attempt to explain phenomena that don't fit the theories of modern science.
That's not to say that his theories are correct. They are simply the only ones I've heard of that actually attempt to explain the 'inexplicable'. So, in that sense, he is much closer to 'true science' than 99.999% of today's 'scientists'.
Hence the title of his book, Science Set Free. When scientists embrace the seemingly inexplicable with true curiosity, science will be set free from historic dogmas and true discovery will again be possible.
Dr. Sheldrake kinda hints at this in the book, but my personal perspective is that science today is mostly driven by an atheist worldview whereas the science 'of old' was largely driven by a yearning to discover God's hidden truths -- i.e. many of the scientists 'of old' were theists who were actively seeking to understand the world God created, and were thus open to all possibilities (and believed that a humble search would be rewarded by revelations from God). By contrast, many (most, perhaps) scientists today are atheists who dismiss out-of-hand anything that might challenge the materialist worldview -- because doing so might leave open the possibility that a supernatural God is at least plausible -- or simply an arrogant belief that we have the power and intellect within ourselves to discover and understand all there is to know.