What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
There is something more than that. There are many beautiful things, but flowers in particular seem to stand out as something that is recognized for their beauty regardless of culture, time or place. In the same way that people the world over, independent of one another, come up with the same conclusions about geometry and mathematics...
But not regardless of species. That both bees and humans find flowers beautiful is coincidence. That humans are similar to other humans in a way that crosses cultures is obvious to most.
Flowers have evolved to look, smell and taste in a way that attracts pollinators, some of whom also happen to see colors and appreciate sweet things much like we do. While we, humans, find many wild flowers attractive because we share some of our preferences with their pollinators, some times [1] it's painfully clear that we're not the target audience. On the other hand, domesticated flowers you can buy as at a flower shop today were bred for centuries specifically to better satisfy human tastes, so it's no wonder we like them so much.
The beauty of flowers to humans is a byproduct of awesome evolving for the eyesight of bees.
Have you ever seen a flower like a bee sees it? Bees can see in UV as well as visible. The results are interesting, as it's nothing we would ever see when looking at a flower. Even dandelions are beautiful with UV.
There's a video of Deutsch giving a lecture which focuses on why flowers are beautiful, following much of the same line of reasoning as in `The Beginning of Infinity'.
Wonder how they managed to measure such weak signals from the flowers. Also not sure if signal is the right term to use, because from the article it seems that no information (in conventional sense)is being transferred. Charged particle q (bumblebee) feels some force (F=q*E1 since we can neglect magnetic field) that is the consequence of static field E1 from flower :) Although it could also be the other way round, i.e. the bumblebee could produce field E2 etc.
Because the force would be vanishingly small compared to the mass of the bumblebee. That's why the article speculates that bumblebees sense the field acting on their hair, which is actually plausible.
Because the attractive force is so small. The net force of the electric field plus gravity is likely very similar to just gravity.
You may have rubbed a balloon on your hair, generating a static charge. You feel no attractive force toward the balloon, but your hair is pulled toward it, and your nerves can detect the changed angles of the hair.
While it is true that hairs can sense small electrostatic forces better, I would not rule out the attractive force on the whole bee, whose mass is quite small. People are not generally aware that electrostatic force is 10^36 times stronger than gravity.
I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms.
These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human experience that can only be consciously experience by being actively cultivated and the main stream scientific community has bound itself to a set of ideological assumptions (IMHO inhereted from the Christian church) that deny the existence of these dimensions of human experience and so do not respect their cultivation or deem them worthy of study.
This is going to become more of an issue the closer our technological interfaces interact with our senses. These assumptions about what we are, how we communicate, and how we interact with the physical/spiritual world form the base assumptions underlying the future course of our evolution and progress. What happens if by augmenting/modifying one sense we cut ourselves off from another that informs us subconsciously?
Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from. Do you think humans communicate with other things through electromagnetic fields? Then tell us of an experiment that shows this. What is the mechanism for this communication? Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based). If these types of communications are so subtle that we're hardly aware of them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than the placebo effect. People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted by aliens, why should I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?
-In many ways, I think Christian assumptions bolster scientific research. Of course, there are the luddites, but I think that the concept that there is a rational, infinite God gives us two bases for research:
1) The universe is rational, and so we can apply strict logical rules to discover it, and
2) we will never run out of things to discover.
"Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from."
I haven't read it, but there is a history book called The Saviour of Science that's all about the role of Christianity in shaping modern scientific assumptions.
"Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from."
Alchemy was actively frowned upon by the church, as was witchcraft of all kinds. People who worked in these traditions were burned at the stake and sentenced to death. Alchemists, like Newton, got their harder science published but not their Alchemical work. Other Alchemists/Magicians got burned to death for their work, like Bruno. There was a very strong disincentive to publish the more spiritual work, and the work that might have related to the convergence of science and the spiritual.
So people who were actively engaged in science were actively engaged in these studies and a.) were censured, b.) weren't able to get them published. c.) were burned at the stake
This was because they didn't fit into the Christian set of assumptions, which were enforced by torture, death and censure. So the texts that form the groundwork for our scientific understanding of the world leave out a whole dimension of the thinking of the people who wrote them, who were either unable to publish that part or afraid for their heads.
Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based).
Everything is faith based unless it's actually rigorously tested. Your assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith in Qi being unreal. Many studies have been done on acupuncture that have shown very real benefits.
If these types of communications are so subtle that we're hardly aware of them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than the placebo effect.
They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to train yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their nonexistence.
People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted by aliens, why should I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?
Calling people who have beliefs that don't fit into your philosophical assumptions about how the world works delusional is both hubristic and counterproductive in that it turns science into something like a religion and defines the boundary conditions of what is and is not allowed to be studied, which actively inhibits our getting a clear view of the world.
...the texts that form the groundwork for our scientific understanding of the world leave out a whole dimension of the thinking of the people who wrote them...
This is a feature, not a bug. Scientific understanding depends on quality of the science, not the reputation of the scientist. It also doesn't depend on faith, but on experiments and observations that can be reproduced.
We use this method because it's the most reliable way we know to arrive at answers that give us predictive power about how our world works, rather than just answers that "feel right". An answer that feels right may still be right, but that doesn't make it scientific.
Your assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith in Qi being unreal.
You seem to be interpreting the placebo effect to mean "unreal", but our present scientific understanding is that the placebo effect is real.
To put it another way: Nobody is denying your subjective experience. It's the attribution of that experience to mysterious mechanisms that require faith for observation that is incompatible with scientific understanding, not the experience itself.
This is important when you're suggesting that science excludes some things from study -- what it actually excludes are things that can't be studied scientifically, such as vaguely defined hidden dimensions or energies. It's like trying to hammer nails into air: you have the hammer, the nails, and plenty of air, but no matter how hard you swing, there's nothing for the nail to be driven into.
They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to train yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their nonexistence.
This faith requirement is incompatible with your desire for more study on the subject. Science allows for the answer of "we don't know why this happens", but not the answer of "we know because we believe", as the latter undermines the very meaning of what it means to "know".
Acupuncture is difficult to study, because how do you administer placebo acupuncture to a control group? Until someone figured it out, you would see these perceived benefits and assume that acupuncture is working. When they eventually figured out that you can administer a placebo by essentially faking a needle entry with a pinch, they found that the placebo worked just as well as the actual acupuncture.
For that matter, you're the one making claims here about Qi, so you provide the data. The burden of proof is not on me.
If you're saying that people who think they're talking to God, or have been abducted by aliens might be right, then I have no further desire to try and have a rational discussion with you.
The issue here, speaking as a physicist, is that the range over which significant information can be transmitted this way is very small, because the strength of the interaction is very weak. (If plants or bees routinely carried large charges, we'd have known it ages ago.)
I'd be surprised if any of these effects were detectible (even to a tiny bee) more than a handspan or two away from a flower, for instance. So at best, two animals standing a few inches from each other might have some subtle extra ability to exchange information... but if you're bigger than a bee, why not just touch?
You just have to be careful when you talk about study. A lot of study into this sort of thing is based on a lot of feelings and subjective intangible information.
Our minds are quite adept at making connections that don't exist, and at filling in holes where we're missing data. We can fabricate things that fill in those holes, and if everyone sees the same holes, and the same fabrication fills the hole fine enough, it's easy to believe that fabrication is the truth.
One should recognizes the holes, and leave them to be holes until he can prove otherwise.
I can accept that information can be passed between living things in ways we don't currently understand. I would sooner believe a little story on bees identifying flowers through detection of differently charged petals. I am less likely to use this as a reason to believe a whole line of mysticism/vitalism that has it's own doctrine on sexual behavior, claims to treat cancer, impart superhuman strength, and has a history that has changed with political and cultural whims.
Not to say that there is nothing correct or useful coming from QiGong, but that each of those things should be tested and evaluated individually. It's short sighted to accept the entire doctrine because parts of it fit.
Science actually often argues for forces we don't understand. Take a look at gravity, we still don't know why it works, we make up ideas about fields, or gravitons, or spacetime, but these are all just tools to model the behavior. We know more massive objects attract less massive objects, but how are they connected to do that attracting in the first place? Quantum Entanglement is an interesting thing too, is information transmitted at all? What is the meaning of information? Science asks so many questions, like what is space? Do we actually exist in 3 dimensions?
What science tries its hardest to avoid is explaining away the unanswered questions by filling in the holes with answers that just 'fit' without any way to validate the claim.
