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In the Middle Ages, all kinds of crazy ideas, rhinoceros horn, enhance efficiency. Then found a way to the concept of separation - This is an attempt to look at it, if there is no work to eliminate it. This method of organization is, of course, went into science. It is a very well-developed, so we are the scientific era. This is the age of science, in fact, we are very difficult to understand how it is not possible to present a witch doctor, does not have the time or they are no real precedent in almost every job. But even today, many people have the time to meet me to discuss the problem before I entered the UFO, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, and to expand the recognition of a new type of Awareness, In particular, and so on. My conclusion is not that the scientific world.           Science That Isn’t Science     During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas—which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked—or very little of it did.   But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOs, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.   Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was.   At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky shore below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.   One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude babe?"   I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I’m, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?"   "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.   I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it," he says. "I feel a kind of dent—is that the pituitary?"   I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!"   They looked at me, horrified—I had blown my cover—and said, "It's reflexology!"   I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.   That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.   But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up... There's a witch doctor remedy that doesn't work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress—lots of theory, but no progress—in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.   … So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.             — Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character), Part 5 - The World of One Physicist                               Indexes/22