There’s many a conflict that rages between observation and theory. What is observed cannot be; what cannot be alas is observed. Sceptics, those supporting theory, dump down on those who contradict theory because they witnessed something to the contrary. “It can’t be therefore it isn’t.” The witness dumps down on the sceptic with the statement, “I know what I saw”. Impasse! Perhaps there is a third option, one where both theory and observation can coexist.
In any sort of legal dispute, if you’re the prosecutor, it’s good to have documents – a paper trail – fingerprints, video camera footage, someone caught red-handed in the act or with the goods, as well as a documented trilogy of available time, substantive motive and ample opportunity against the alleged perpetrator. But sometimes all you have to base your case on is the observation of a witness or witnesses. That’s often been enough, even more than enough, to either convict someone or provide and substantiate that someone with a legal alibi. Eyewitness testimony alone, well it’s not perfect but it’s not something inadmissible in court either.
While documents, including pictographs, rock carvings/paintings, hieroglyphs and related archaeological relics, including human remains; films and photographs too, are all excellent means to document history, an awful lot of what we accept as historical gospel comes from what someone or a group of people have witnessed, especially in the days before sound recordings and film. Then too many a document is nothing more than the recorded word of an eyewitness; an observer(s).
Lastly, you couldn’t last or survive a day without your powers of observation being accurate and reliable. If your vision was unreliable or faulty, could you drive to work? You’d better know a red light when you see one, and exercise superb judgment based of your observations if thinking about overtaking and passing another vehicle. Ditto if you cross a busy street. You’d better be spot-on in your observation if approaching a down staircase. You’d better be able to observe and tell the difference when meeting up with a bear or a deer in the woods if you intend to pet it. Your ability to observe and report accurately (if only to yourself) those observations are absolutely critical to your survival.
You probably tell lots of people every week events that you observed and many people no doubt relate to you things they have witnessed. Nobody bats an eyebrow – nobody questions anyone’s bona fides. Expect of course when its something that expert authorities, professional sceptics included, say cannot be. Then eyebrows get raised.
Issue number one: If 99.99% of what you observe is accurate, believable, a no-brainer in terms of credibility, then why are you all of a sudden an unreliable witness if you observe something others, so-called expert others, dismiss as an impossible anomaly?
Issue number two: So-called, and really-real experts can indeed dismiss an impossible anomaly, witnesses be damned, if it is indeed an impossibility by the science of the day.
Issue number three: We have a contradiction between theory (what the experts say) and observation (what the witness sees)
On the one hand, throughout history, there’s been many an observation of something anomalous and considered downright impossible, according to the sceptics, that’s now part and parcel of the standard norm, like meteorites – stone that fall from the sky. Score points for the observer.
On the other hand, how many observations have been credited as legit though later found to be less than credible. Score points for the sceptic.
Now if someone has a track record of telling tall tales or taking substances that are known to hinder accurate observations and judgments, that’s one thing, but if not, are you prepared to call someone into doubt just because their observation are anomalous according to the state of the world?
For the purposes of this essay, I’ll ignore the philosophical concept inherent in quantum physics that the observer actually creates what is being observed; or in other words, nothing exists or has reality unless it is being observed. Let’s go with the more down to earth philosophy that something has, or has not, a reality regardless of whether it is being scrutinized or not.
Let’s examine a quintuplet listing of those it-can’t-be-therefore-it-isn’t anomalies contradicted by observations of just that, which could easily be expanded by two orders of magnitude, but then this is an essay and not a book-length encyclopaedia.
The realm of the once animate: Ghosts – Even if you haven’t seen a ghost, you probably know of someone who has or lacking that, you can go to your nearest library or the Internet and find ultimately hundreds of thousands of reported observations of ghostly manifestations. Are you prepared to call all these witnesses deluded or liars or under the influence? Now, try to come up with a viable explanation that’s compatible with physics, chemistry and biology that explains the relationship between a dead body and its post-death yet animated counterpart. Good luck!
Apart from the gap between observation and there being no theoretical way for ghosts or phantoms or spirits or wraiths, call them what you will, those remnants of the dead of people recently, or even not so recently, deceased, to exist, there is also the question, why aren’t sighted ghosts, or phantom hitchhikers, etc. naked? I mean it’s the person who died, not what they were wearing, so if a ghost is the essence of a former living person, and clothing doesn’t contribute to the nature of that essence, then ghosts should be seen naked! They’re not, so that’s anomaly number two between theory (should be undressed) and observation (ghosts are decently attired).
The realm of the animate: Botany: Crop Circles – This time there is absolutely no doubting the observational bona fides of the anomaly. Thousands of witness and thousands of photographs and more measurements than you can shake a stick at have been made of (mainly British) crop circles. Sceptics counter that since natural complex geometric crop circles cannot be; and aliens obviously didn’t make them since there are no aliens on or near Planet Earth, then, since not even sceptics can explain away the reality of the circles, it has to be all a human hoax. Sceptics of the sceptics point out that the sheer logistics of human involvement, in total darkness, without mistakes, without leaving traces, without ever being caught, are also as close to theoretically impossible as makes no odds. Observations can’t be disputed; no theory can adequately explain them.
The realm of the animate: Zoology: Loch Ness – Let’s take at face value that numerous witnesses have sighted, some have photographed even filmed some sort of relatively biologically large ‘sea monster’ in Scotland’s Loch Ness. No matter how good the testimony or reliable the witness, no matter the quality of the photograph or the film, can it be so? Unfortunately for us romantic naturalists, the odds that ‘can it be so’ are so low that no sane person would bet a sawbuck on the positive. And so it’s Biology 101 to the fore for a theoretical reality check. You cannot have just a one-off ‘monster’. At the very least you need a male ‘monster’ and a female ’monster’. In fact you need a viable breeding herd of ‘monsters’ in order to keep the lake population of ‘monsters’ an ongoing proposition, since if you had just the one male or the one female and either one was infertile or somehow both failed to get their act together, well it’s by-by birdie or rather Nessie. Unfortunately, if Loch Ness contained a breeding herd of ‘monsters’ then snags would have to rear their ugly head that would argue the contrary. One would be that sightings would be vastly more frequent. Two, sooner or later one of the herd has gotta die, then another, then another. Sooner or later a corpse, fresh or decayed, has got to get washed ashore. If that happens, mystery solved. Thirdly, well there’s the issue of an adequate food supply. Loch Ness could probably feed one ‘monster’, but not a herd of them. Loch Ness is large, but still quite finite in volume. Fish in the open ocean can roam the wide open spaces for a meal; not so in a relatively small fish tank like Loch Ness. So we have another unresolved conflict between observation and theory.
The realm of the inanimate: The Vacuum Energy - This is probably the Mother of All Anomalies! A temperature of absolute zero, that is a state in which there is no available energy, is impossible. That’s because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which is one of those rock solid foundations of quantum physics. So there is always a minimum amount of energy available that pervades the Universe. It’s called the ‘vacuum energy’. Theoretically the vacuum energy should exist with such-and-such a value. The vacuum energy indeed exists (is has been observed and it has been experimentally confirmed) with such-and-such a value. However, you have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy. This discrepancy is the most embarrassing ‘oops’ in all of modern physics and nobody can figure out how to resolve the discrepancy. Oops indeed!
The realm of the cosmos: Quasars - Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren’t all that large (unlike a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away. Quasars, like stars or galaxies, are their own entities and if two or more show very close and special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities (since the Universe is expanding and they are part of the Universe and that expansion). Recessional velocities are measured by an object’s red-shift. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity. However, you apparently have observations of causality connected quasar pairs with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities). The anomaly, in an analogy, is that you can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!
To be continued…
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