Michael Larkin
Member
When I refer to ‘science’ I am referring to what is called the scientific method; which is an epistemological methodology and discipline for getting beyond cultural and personal narratives and interpretations etc to the factuality of what is the case.
I am not referring to any particular technological form or technical means that science may take or use at any period in its development. Science, as I mean it, is a way of knowing; an epistemological methodology and discipline. The scientific method yields factual data from experience, with which we can develop and test theory and generate real knowledge and technologies.
Science is more than a narrative; reflect on that next time you are on an aircraft. The aircraft is not staying aloft because of a narrative or because of beliefs. The aircraft is possible because human science, or human knowing and understanding, has understood something real about the factual nature of this world – what we call physics; and that understanding has been used to create a reliable technology of civil aviation.
Of course there are cultural narratives about science that arise; but cultural narratives about science are not science. By science I mean the methodology that produces factual data and reliable knowledge and stuff that works; not the stories people might tell themselves about whatever they imagine science is or isn’t.
So for me science is a special way of dealing with experience that yields factual data….not personal narratives. The scientist endeavours to systematically exclude personal narratives and discipline their knowing and understanding to access facts. Obviously scientists do this imperfectly. Pure science is difficult to do because of our propensity for creating narratives and interpretations and beliefs.
My point all along has been to differentiate between the personal narratives aspects of NDEs and the raw data content of NDEs. I do not mean to belittle the personal narrative aspect of the NDE; not at all; I mean only to point out the scientific possibility of accessing the raw data; and the knowledge and understanding of human consciousness and the afterlife it could yield.
There is no reason why the data of paranormal experiences such as NDEs cannot yield to the scientific method of knowing; to the discipline of excluding personal narrative to access raw data. That data can give us valuable insight into the nature of human mind, and the nature of the other realms.
The main obstacles to a proper scientific study of NDEs come from deniers of NDEs, such as scientific materialists (which is a narrative, not science), and also from believers in NDEs, who insist they are beyond explanation and actually don’t want them investigated scientifically. There are many who will resist scientific investigation of NDEs and consciousness and spirituality etc. because they want to hold onto personal narratives and beliefs about these things.
Science doesn't have narratives? You're kidding me, right? Your faith in the practitioners of science is touching, but not well-supported by evidence. Fact is, scientists, more than many, hang on to outmoded and even disproven narratives like grim death. They hang on to neo-Darwinism, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and absurd cosmological theories, to name but three. For scientists like this, and I think a lot are, they'd happily call a turnip a tortoise if that was agreed by respected authoritative sources. Sorry, but I think many of them are spineless and rather stupid despite their phDs--they could do with growing a pair if you ask me.
NDEs will never be understood using scientific methods, only narrativised. Hardly surprising when the actual experience itself is narrativised by experiencers. Everything is a narrative: what you've written is your own personal narrative; my response is a narrative, too. The world is choc-a-block with narratives. Like I said, it's amazing that some of the narratives manage to model and produce such useful devices as aeroplanes and satnavs.