Brian Josephson's pathological science critique brings up the sad situation of realizing that even the best minds of science are inadequate to grasp a fundamentally new phenomenon, a paradigm shift. And "new" can go back decades – or, in the case of QM, even further. How long will this one take?
Plato's metaphor of the cave is occasionally used to express this state of affairs - i.e. when science looks at paradigm shifts like LENR, or really anything fundamentally different from what we were taught. The ‘shadow world’ of Plato’s cave may be a most apt metaphor for this situation because we (at least the non-skeptics) may well be trying to grasp certain (4-space) phenomena when all we have to go on in our education, language and experience is rooted 3-space, with its limited horizon and deficient shared vocabulary. All 'science' can grasp now is shadows thrown on a wall. It is hopeless enough to make one go nuts, and anyone who has contemplated 4-space, or even tried to find that missing common denominator in LENR, will admit that it can literally drive one crazy. Certainly it has gotten me most of the way there. Plato's parable of the cave is also metaphor for how ignorance can pass for knowledge in the short term.. No doubt one of the prisoners in the cave became a self-appointed expert who "knew it all," the Park or Randi of the cave, who probably had to hang himself when he finally saw the light of day…. Good riddance. LENR is also kind of like "Lethal Text" - a recurrent theme in science fiction which goes all the way back to "The Book." In Exodus, God's name (or face) is treated as if it was lethal to behold or speak, and was never to be fully written out. And shortly thereafter, Eve’s “apple” served a similar thematic purpose. LENR is also kind of like "Brain itch" or "cognitive itch" which is that disturbing phenomenon of a "song-in-the-head"... in German, it is known as an "ohrwurm" - or earworm. Upon final discovery of truth, one wonders if the 'seeker's' mind is destroyed by the quest, or else can be elevated to a higher plane, like the escapees of Plato's cave… Does risking insanity to grasp unknown truth presage a new kind of neo-spiritual rebirth, in the sense that science and spirituality are ultimately the same? I certainly hope so. Probably depends on another biblical concept – Grace. But not in science-fiction! at least not in most of the stories where Lethal Text is more like the “forbidden-fruit” kind of thing. In Piers Anthony's "Macroscope", an alien message destroys the mind of anyone intelligent enough to understand it. Author Arthur (C. Clarke) used the earworm thing in a short story called "The Ultimate Melody". In Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", the lethal text is transmitted by a computer virus, which gives hackers their just desserts. I wish I had something similar for spammers. The most famous version of this Lethal Text, outside the Bible, probably goes back to the "Sirens' song" of the “Odyssey.” It also plays a role in the remake “A Space Odyssey.” The old Odyssey is classy - in actually giving us the contents of the lethal text, and we can only hope that the final answers in the LENR dilemma will be amenable to letting us pass on the knowledge to a future generation of less-temperamental souls. Apparently the Homeric text isn't so dangerous without the music… which brings up both the “monolith” metaphor in 2001, and the famous musical score. The monolith, cueing in on both Plato and Homer, emits a siren-like acknowledgement when it first sees sunlight. And like the Siren of LENR, it is compelling and mind-bending. None can see it and not be drawn to its lethal Star-Child countenance. Kubrick's music continues the theme in borrowing Strauss' “Thus Spake Zarathustra.'' Inspired by the words of Nietzsche, its five bold notes embody the ascension of man into dimension of gods – 4-space, of course. It is cold, frightening, magnificent, deadly. Like grand music set against the humbling insight of Nietzsche's superman meme. Music itself goes back to mankind's first entry into a wider consciousness than survival - and progresses in sophistication hand-in-hand with the passage of consciousness to a higher level. It is fun to think of the pursuit of free-energy in the same context as attaining that higher spiritual level. From the standpoint of a future sustainable society, the two are approaching tautology. Man, I think its time to fire up the stereo with a little Strauss... at the risk of catching another ohrwurm. Wow. Josephson sure got a few 'circuit's' going… Jones
