3 ms·
Of the seven experiments that Sheldrake describes in his book, the phenomena of dogs (and other pets) knowing when their owners are coming home, has been empiri
by pitchups 14y ago
Of the seven experiments that Sheldrake describes in his book, the phenomena of dogs (and other pets) knowing when their owners are coming home, has been empirically verified in many instances, and anecdotally verified by thousands of pet owners the world over - and at least a couple of friends. It certainly deserves some serious scientific inquiry rather than being dismissed out-of-hand as "ergo jesus" (as per the blog post above) or woo-woo. His other proposed experiment on phantom limbs and the real pain they can cause, on the other hand (no pun intended) has been fully explained and even solved by neuroscientist V. Ramachandran in his book "Phantoms of the Mind".
- upquark 14y agoMy issue with this sort of unexplained phenomena is that people are willing to jump to ridiculous conclusions that invalidate or at least poke a hole through physics/chemistry/biology/all the other layers of scientific knowledge, vs trying to look for explanations within the established framework of knowledge. The amount of scientific knowledge we've accumulated so far is huge. It's been very thoroughly tested through multiple independent experiments, quantitative relationships have been verified to ridiculous precision. It's just astronomically more likely that a dog sensing their owner's arrival is going to be explained within the framework of established science, and not invalidate every layer of our model of the world from mammal biology to quantum foam.
- aneth4 14y agoNobody is suggestion controverting science established through tests, only questioning ideological presumptions.
- upquark 14y agoA. Plenty of people are suggesting precisely that. B. I was responding to the parent comment about empirically verified dog's-sixth-sense phenomena, and what I think about those.