Supernatural Science
P11-P16
Land area discovered during the supernatural era and the scientific era.
Henderson, Boobby. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. New York, Villard Books, 2006. pp12.
Our TOK teacher told us that the greatest plague to science - and other fields as well - is dogmatism. Dogmatism fixes people’s mindsets and makes them refuse any opposing evidence. For science, according to my teacher and to this book, a part of its dogmatism is the refusal of supernatural explanations.
There are scientists out there (no citations, I didn’t do individual research) who believe that supernatural explanations exist and wish to conduct experiments to test them. However, they are usually not accepted by the scientific community due to people’s trend to go against supernatural science (or “superscience”, as coined by the book).
See this quote:
That’s not to say it’s not possible - it certainly is possible that prayer aids in healing - but it could very well be that these prayers are being applied in a nonoptimal fashion, thus explaining the lack of evidence for their effectiveness. The truth is we don’t know because current scientific methods and religious sensitivities don’t allow this type of study.”
It is apparent that dogmatism against the supernatural restricts our view of the world. This book, as far as where I’m at (which is, the first 10%), is all about expanding our worldview with more “alternative viewpoints”, in other words, a larger “collection of tools” for scientists.