Science and the Supernatural

GuanYin

As halloween approaches, I figured this might be topical..

Alot of things that were once classed as the supernatural have, in recent times been explained by science.

You only have to read Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" to get the basic premise of what I mean.

I was just thinking about things that fall into the preternatural (things we don't have an explanation for now, but believe we will in the future) and the supernatural catagories and how alot of people apply these terms to things in different ways (ghosts, vampires, UFO's etc etc).

So can science explain away most things and will all the ghosts and goblins be killed off by science in the near future?

Oh, and just for self indulgence, here is an essay I wrote years back on how science may explain the origin of vampirism. Its not great, but it has some good examples of what I mean.

Capt'n Midnight

Don't forget that back in dem days ye men were not as healthy or as well fed as nowadays. Higher levels of mental ill health caused by food poisining, syphilis etc.

Alkaloids in ergot are extremely toxic to humans and livestock
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/ipd2402?opendocument
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1037.htm

Also many effects of Vampirsm are related to normal decay - gases bloating corposes ("oh he looks well fed"), skin and nails do not grow after death - but skin shrinks so looks longer and stubble appears. - also break down of blood can give a red colour after being pale as a corpse for a while. Also gas in a corpose can make noises / gurgles - more signs of life - and sometimes the last meal would be pushed into the mouth ("he's been eating")


http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi258.htm
... during Bosch's life the disease called St. Anthony's Fire was rampant. Today we know that St. Anthony's Fire was caused by a form of grain ergot. The symptoms included fiery pain and gangrene that required amputations. Furthermore, since ergot baked in bread dough forms LSD, the disease also led to terrifying hallucinations.

Dooom

my personal idea about ghosts is that there's a load of different parallel/mirror dimensions and the like. and when we see a ghost its actually someone in one of those other dimensions that appears because the dimension wall opens slightly and hence the projection of that person can be seen in another dimension. and when a ghost for eg. walks through a wall in our dimension, its actually someone just walking down a street or whatever and when they disappear thats when the dimension wall closes again. and when a ghost screams or whatever, its actually because the person who's projected into this dimension has been projected in to a certain degree that he/she/it can see us and everything else here. of course this doesnt always happen, it depends on the size of the opening in the dimensional wall etc etc.
of course this leads then to interdimensional travel and the such

well it sounded really philosophical at 4am last night....

Dooom

however i do believe in vampires not sure about lycanthropes...varies for me there in that area. and i certainly do not believe in eskimos!! :f33r:

Syth

There is some evidence for 'mind reading'. Basically they got 2 people, and showed open of them one of 4 pictures and got the other to guess what the other was seeing. After many tests they showed that there was a 30% success rate. Which is more than the 25% explained by chance. It's be a big theory, except noone can explain how it works.

Capt'n Midnight

Ghosts - the ESB killed off most rural ghosts.