The forbidden sciences are Ufology, Psychical Research, Utopian Analysis, Toynbeean History and Empirical Metaphysics. Each has at least some work that rigorously follows scientific method, yet is steadfastly ignored by most universities, publishers, and major media.

Scientific method is pure logic and makes no assumptions about reality. The main idea was stated very well by Sherlock Holmes: "How many times have I told you that whenever the alternatives have been ruled out, whatever remains, no matter how improbable must be the truth." The other major requirement is reproducibility. This is often misunderstood. We cannot create a quasar in the lab, nor can we reveal a naked quark. We cannot predict a supernovae. However, among the myriads of galaxies, we can find type 1A supernovae among a few galaxies on any given night.

The scientific part of Ufology is not mysterious lights in the night time sky. It is landed UFOs with occupants on the ground and various kinds of encounters with citizens. See The Great Journey and Is Interstellar Travel Possible?. Here we can rule out secret military aircraft, the UFO psychosis, swamp gas, Venus, apparitions, and the various other alternatives proposed.

The best but not the only scientific work in psychical research has been done by Professor Ian Stevenson, who has provided scientific proof of the reality of reincarnation. See Mind and Soul. This also provides the foundations of the empirical science of metaphysics. Now that we know that reincarnation is real, we also know that the Self is not the brain, but what it is exactly is not certain. Mind as dark matter? Is it Spirit, a combination of mind and soul? Is it the Energy-body seen by HSP?

Toynbeean history is the search for patterns of challenge-and/or-response in history that are reproducible, i.e., repeatable, though not predictable. All other history is mere chronicle, or it is the fruitless search for explanations of events in history. Challenge-and/or-response patterns are not patterns of cause and effect. One cannot use them to explain or predict events in history. Along with the concept of animacy, from psychical research, challenge-and-response gives some empirical content to the empty philosophical concept of free will.

~~~Cebrakon

Oh, I forgot to mention Utopian Analysis. This is the science of civilization, a science of values rather than facts. See A Science of Civilization. It is a development of the moral sciences of Hobbes and Locke, 300 and more years ago. Marx attempted a science of civilization and failed. Even the notorious psi-cop Michael Shermer has had a go at the topic.

All sciences are the searches for solutions to problems of a theoretical sort. To have a science, one must have the equivalent of a fact, a theory, and a test. In the science of civilization, the equivalent of a theory is a social ideal, such as socialism (from each according to ability, to each according to need), and a test (the Soviet Union, England after WW 2 and before Margaret Thatcher, and Cuba). The equivalent of a fact is a normative particular, such as the discovery that socialism is a failure. The fallacy of making value judgements, and of trying to infer values from facts is not committed in a proper science of values, and constitutes the naturalistic fallacy.

Ideals by themselves do not constitute a utopia. We must attempt to build on our ideals, and sometimes societies do that correctly and successfully and sometimes not. Ethics and aesthetics are only a small part of utopian analysis.

"Utopia" is Latin for "nowhere." I use the term for "any successful society, deliberately created, which follows true ideals." The success is never complete. An ideal is a goal never quite attained. The US, the UK and France are all "utopias" since they were deliberately created according to the true ideals of liberte, egalite, and fraternite, even though all three have many problems and failures, particularly failures to live up to their own ideals. I also use the term "utopia" for my own particular proposals of how best to fulfill our ideals. Thus, it makes sense to speak of my utopia, your utopia and his or her utopia.

Just as in every other science, scientific proof requires empirical test in the form of political experiments. Those ideals that survive testing, while all the known alternatives fail, stand as the true and well-established ideals. That by itself does not prove the validity of the traditions and institutions created in order to fulfill those ideals.

~~~Cebrakon

Speaking of utopia, it will come soon. Join us. Become a Utopian Architect & help us shape a utopia for all. Come to the light.

TeraLink Was Here!

I would be happy to do so, Teralink. Do you have a link or some other portal?

~~~Cebrakon

I dont think any of those sciences you mentioned have been ignored. Both UFO and paranormal research are under major focus in a lot of countries. There have been a time when both of those have been on the media too (and still are) but unfortunately the many false cases have caused public and industrial interest to decline rapidly.

Today they are more secretive projects, researched by a multitute of experts and under considerable funding. Nothing will ever make news the same way, as its novelty value is lost and its validity questioned at every turn. Even more because every establishment now has its own agenda and serves different interests.

A utopia of sorts is a comendable notion but humanity only sees progression and evolution through change not stability. Perhaps some day we could achieve a relative balance and exist as a more focused species. However I find that human curiosuty will always gravitate us torwards chaos.

I hope you are right, bio-mage. I suppose the forbidden sciences may eventually make it into academia and big media, and cease to be "forbidden". Big media is already much more open to some of these things than they were 40 or 50 years ago. I am old enough to remember. So far, the best evidence for UFOs as star-traveling humanoids who levitate and teleport across our corner of the galaxy, consists in the landed occupant cases, and I have never seen much interest in that. Not by media, and not even by contemporary Ufologists. The Humanoids is like a lost gold mine.

Another thing we didn't have back then were the psi-cops (CSICOP), who even have a column in Scientific American, in the hands of Michael Shermer. I agree with some of what he writes. However, like Martin Gardner before him, he tosses astrology and stage mentalism into the pot along with the serious psychical research of Prof. Ian Stevenson, and that is depressing.

Incidentally, I too see utopia as a progression, though not necessarily of technology. Technology may have almost reached the end of its rope. We are not going to communicate faster than the speed of light, and I doubt if we will be traveling faster than the speed of sound, as represented by Boeing's Dreamliner. Nor will be going to the stars by technology, not now, not ever. We must take a different path.

~~~Cebrakon

While not ignored, these subjects are ones that, if a conventional scientist is associated with, their percieved credibility is likely to significantly decrease. I'd say they're the taboo studies

Yes, that is what I think too. In fact, I know some examples. Dr. Thelma Moss, of the UCLA neuropsychiatric institute, pursued all sorts of Psi phenomena in her lab, everything from spoon bending, Kirlian photography, psychometry and astral projections. Her friends kept telling her she had better quit or she would lose her job. And that is what happened. She never got another academic job. Yet, in the 1960s and 1970s, she was doing the most original science happening at UCLA. She is the author of The Possibility of the Impossible, though it does not include some of her most fascinating work. Once on local TV in Los Angeles, I saw her referee a contest between a psychologist and a psychometrist. Each would take an article owned by an audience member, and draw conclusions about that person. It was a riot! The psychometrist was on the money. The psychologist gave vague descriptions and failed to get the gender, class or age correctly.

~~~Cebrakon

I really like the idea od 'Forbidden Sciences'....something really cool about that. I say let's bit the apple, and see what happens. Would the Serpent really lie to us???

Cool. We can be in the forefront of the forbidden sciences. Let the textbooks fall into irrelevancy. The Garden of Eden myth has always seemed strange to me. Why would we be forbidden to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? Kind of a cranky old deity that they worshipped in the Old Testament. I say, away with religion, including the reductionist religion of the scientists. We don't need that any more. Not when we have the forbidden sciences that tell us about life after death, immortality, free will, the meaning of life, and good and evil.

~~~Cebrakon

While it's true that he has done some stirling work in this area and investigated many cases that are highly suggestive of reincarnation I would stop short of saying he has provided actual proof of it, as compelling as some of the evidence is.

I will explain why I think he has actually provided scientific proof of the reality of reincarnation. If one studies the last chapter of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, we find that he selects one feature or another of the 20 cases (out of hundreds) he includes in this book, and we see he is able to refute every known alternative to reincarnation, including some from psi research or theosophy. So why "suggestive"? Because he knows scientific method requires reproducibility. And in the 40 years since, there have been many studies which replicate Stevenson's results, including those of Andrija Puharich. Prof. Stevenson himself has provided evidence of reincarnation from cases of "responsive xenoglossy." In a deep hypnotic trance, some people will not only take on a different personality, but speak in a language they don't even know. Consciously. My own Mentor, Bill Coates, a linguist at Kansas State U., participated in a case with Prof. S. in Sri Lanka. This woman was able to carry on a converasation with Prof. Coates in old Swedish, a dead European language.

Prof. Stevenson has stayed out of the limelight, refused to write any popularization of his work, and is unfortunately unknown. I think he is the greatest scientist of the 20th Century, the one who made the most important scientific discovery, reincarnation.

Prof. Stevenson has only written technical monographs and technical articles in scientific journals.

~~~Cebrakon

I've only ever read over views of his work not his actual writings so apologies for any ignorance on my part.

The last good book I read on reincarnation was Past Lives by Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, it has many case studies, including some of Stevensons, as well as looking at alternative explanations for supposed reincarnation evidence. That said it's certainly not out to debunk the idea but treads a fine balance when weighing the evidence for this phenomena, admitting that there are a few cases that it's hard to attribute to anything but reincarnation.

Two things I would like to ask though, I was under the impression that xenoglossy had been cautiously dismissed by most researchers as likely to be due to cryptomnesia. Also how did Stevenson dismiss the idea of other non prosaic explanations such as spirit posession or super psi.

In the same vein as forbidden science here is another site.


Alternative science.

Prof. Stevenson has made a careful study of cryptomnesia, and it always plays back like a record, much like the behavior of some persistent apparitions. That is why it is so important to have "responsive" xenoglossy, i.e., a conversation. That cannot be explained by cryptomnesia. My own mentor helped Prof. Stevenson with a case where the responsive xenoglossy was a dead European language. My mentor, Bill Coates, was a linguist with a speciality in dead European languages and he was able to carry on a conversation with the woman. This happened in Sri Lanka. Think about this. If Bill Coates is one of the few people in the world who would know this language and is able to speak it, how likely is that the present personality, growing up and living in Sri Lanka, would ever be exposed to it?

Reincarnational birthmarks rule out spirit possession and super PSI, or as he puts it, personation plus Psi, since the persistence of personality is one of the most striking parts of these child recall of a former lifetime. What is a reincarnational birthmark? I shall give examples. In my most recent lifetime, I was a Union soldier and was hit by two 50 caliber Minie slugs in the side. I was born with what look like the scars of large caliber bullet holes in my side. There are several examples in 20 Cases. In one, a grown man had his throat slit. He was reincarnated immediately to the same village in India, where the murderers still lived. He accused them of murder, and it even went to court, but it was decided that past life memories were unacceptable. Anyway, he had what looked like the scar left by having his throat slit.

~~~Cebrakon

What is scientific proof, other than ruling out all the alternatives, including some that are themselves paranormal, hypothetical and non-existent? That is what Prof. Stevenson does in the long conclusion chapter of Twenty Cases. This is a technical monograph, with charts and tables, from first to last. Not easy reading. But I suggest you do read it, or rather, study it, if you want to rest easy over the question of whether or not the existence of reincarnation has been discovered. IMHO, it has. Furthermore, I know of no better, more cautious, more rigorous, more thorough scientist than Prof. Stevenson, not in any field of science. Indeed, I shall go ahead and pronounce reincarnation the greatest discovery of the 20th C. and Prof. Stevenson, the greatest scientist. Truth is not decided by majority opinion, you know.

Other psychical researchers have also researched and published young children who talk about a former lifetime as soon as they learn to talk, about 2 or 2.5 years old. So, these studies are reproducible. Stevenson has also proven the reality of reincarnation in a completely different way, by studies of responsive xenoglossy. Those studies have also been repeated by others.

While there have been would-be debunkers, I think they ignore the details.

~~~Cebrakon

Ok I'll amend my words somewhat and say it stops short of proof for the more skeptically minded, I suppose objectively even the merest suggestion of an alternative can place the most compelling evidence in that grey area.

Personally I have always been drawn to the idea of reincarnation as it brings meaning and answers, in a metaphysical sense, regarding some of the big philisophical questions about life. I will try to find some more information about Ian Stevensons work.

How did you go about accessing your own past life memories?

Spectral, we live under the dark cloud of the worldview of reduction, the articles of faith of scientists. Scientists cannot reject those articles of faith about reduction, materialism, and causality and still have a career, or receive any respect in the groves of academe. I think I see signs that reduction may be on the wane among the people, although what we may see is just the complete rejection of science by the common people. That would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I love science, of all kinds. Indeed, my allegiance is to scientific method only, and the philosophical effort to bring the forbidden sciences into the light. But I do agree that "the merest suggestion of an alternative can place the most compelling evidence in that grey area."

It is human nature to pick up the tribal mythology along with the local language, effortlessly. Since this tribal mythology, or worldview, or religion, determines what we take to be possible or impossible, most people will grasp at any straw to avoid having to learn something "impossible". Even very bright people often show that dread "extraordinary stupidity" that Galileo was talking about (see quote below).

Here's my encounter with a past life. I have discovered that in the instant between sleeping and waking, I can sometimes have paranormal experiences. I don't have any control over it. It is not the same as carrying a dream over into waking life, because I can do that too. On one such paranormal occasion I saw my own rotting, gangrenous body on the battlefield. Actually, I just saw my green rotting hand, but I knew I was looking at a dead man, and that dead man was me, and it was the Civil War. Since then, I have avoided movies or specials about the Civil War, or any later war. Modern warfare is just slaughter, just mass murder. Of course, I don't present this as scientific evidence. There are two kinds of knowledge, personal knowledge and public knowledge, and that was personal knowledge.

~~~Cebrakon

Awesome topic I want to be a forbidden science, scientist I will coontribute more to this thread, after I rest my mind for the night
in Light and Love to ALL, Me_Again - here again

All hail Me Again! What, have you been here before? A Jesus Freak once asked me if I had been born again, and I said "Many Times!" Another time I said, "Life is short. It is a good thing we get to come back as often as we like!"

Cebrakon

So would Alchemy be a forbidden science?

That's a good question, Spikester. I've often thought about where to put alchemy and astrology. It has only recently been learned that Sir Isaac Newton spent most of his later years doing alchemy. But it seems he was really doing early chemistry. He wasn't searching for the philosopher's stone. So alchemy is hard to classify. C. G. Jung was interested in alchemy, as a system of symbolic truths.

Astrology has characteristics that remind me of quantum mechanics. The 12 signs of the zodiac don't have anything literally to do with the stars. They mark off different time periods, each of which has a hidden quality that might affect the mind or soul. They actually look like discrete quantum states with two quantum numbers, n and m. n cycles through 0, 1, 2, and m cycles through 0, 1, 2, 3. Anytime one thinks of discrete states and abrupt changes, one is reminded of quantum mechanics. But that doesn't make it true.

I guess I will leave it up to you, Spikester. You can consider them forbidden sciences or not. They are certainly forbidden in the universities. The real question is whether they are truly sciences, or maybe proto-sciences, or maybe not.

~~~Cebrakon

Celabrakon, in your opinion do spontaneous cases of past life recall have more merit than induced ones, ie hypnotic regression. What are your thoughts on things like the persistence of personality/memory and how this relates to past life claims where the individual suffered violent death.

I defer to the expert on everything currently known about reincarnation, Prof. Ian Stevenson. He has divided his research between spontaneous past life recall (in young children, 2 to 5 years old) and responsive xenoglossy, that only appears in a very deep hypnotic trance. Most past life recall of adults makes use of a lighter state of trance, that produces a mixture of memory and fantasy, according to Stevenson. Nonetheless, he thinks there are veridical details in the Bridey Murphy case (See The Search for Bridey Murphy, 2nd edition). Still, we might consider this a case of deep trance, since there was a complete transformation of personality, knowledge and abilities. For instance, under trance, "Bridey Murphy" could dance Irish jigs, some known, some unknown. She knew obscure slang of 1850s county Cork. She knew the names of merchants and lawyers from that time period. Many of the details she gave were only verified from old letters and diaries after the first edition became a global bestseller in 1957. That is why it is necessary to get the second edition, that reports these verifications.

With the children who have spontaneous past life memories, there is a definite carryover of personality, whenever it is possible to test that. And he has many cases like that in his book. It doesn't matter whether one has a violent death or not. I hope I have answered your question, Spectral.

~~~Cebrakon