Extraordinary claim? "The luminiferous ether is a medium present throughout space"

[Boojatta]

[phantom power]

1. It was a hypothesis that got rejected experimentally.

[Speck Tater]

2. A claim is extraordinary if it appears to have been falisifed, yet is still being claimed.

Some claims that hard core skeptics label as "extraordinary" are not extraordinary at all since they are not contradicted by experiment or theory, but are only contradicted by certain unstated and unquestioned assumptions underlying the philosophical world view of the skeptic.

[edhopper]

3. Could you give

some examples of these nonextraordinary-extraordinary claims.
Thank you

[Speck Tater]

5. Here are a couple...

A French farmer brought a rock to the French Academy and told the scientists that it had fallen from the sky. For years and years the claim that rocks could fall from the sky was ridiculed and called an extraordinary claim that contradicted everything that was know about astronomy. Eventually, astronomers realized that there WERE rocks floating around in space, and that from time to time they DO fall into the atmosphere and either burn up or partially burn before hitting the ground.

At the time the claim was made, the unstated assumption was that rocks in space were impossible. Therefore the claim was called extraordinary not based on on having been falsified, but based on an unstated assumption about the way things are.

The same with continental drift. It was an extraordinary claim, not because it had been falsified, but because it contradicted an unproven, unquestioned assumption that continents don't move around. Then plate t4ectonics was discovered, and we learned that continents actually FLOAT on top of a semi-liquid mantle.

Another example, which HAS NOT YET BEEN SETTLED, is the claim of ESP. There is a lot of tantalizing research, but no real proof, one way or the other. The claim is called extraordinary simply because the unquestioned assumption of materialism is that it is not possible. This assumption is made without explaining WHY it is not possible, only that it violates an unquestioned assumption. ESP may well prove to be false, but until it is established one way or the other, it is an extraordinary claim ONLY if you grant the underlying assumptions of materialism. Well, as a philosophy, materialism has the basic, founding assumption that ONLY matter/energy is real. So naturally, anything which is neither matter nor energy MUST be false. Not provably false, but ASSUMED false by the fundamental axiom of materialism.

Now if any of the other underlying philosophical positions (such as idealism, or dualism) is assumed, the claim of ESP is no longer extraordinary under the assumptions of those philosophies.

[Silent3]

8. Of course, it's not necessarily a bad thing for a claim...

...to be treated as extraordinary, even if that claim is later found to be true and is thereafter no longer considered extraordinary. We learn a lot in the process of finding and establishing evidence to support extraordinary claims.

There are, of course, times when it would have worked out better for humankind to quickly accept a previously extraordinary claim, such as the germ theory of disease. Nevertheless, the idea that tiny invisible creatures are out there attacking people and making them sick was at one time rightly considered an extraordinary claim. Without evidence to back it up, or at a clear program for seeking out and establishing that evidence, the germ theory of disease sounds an awful lot like irrational paranoia, and isn't too different from proposing that diseases are caused by spirits and demons.

The advantage the germ theory has, however, and why it eventually went from extraordinary claim to established fact, is that it's very open to being tested, the microscope had already established the existence of "tiny invisible creatures" when the theory was proposed, and it was possible to envision exactly the kinds of experiments which would support the theory.

[edhopper]

9. I see

you confuse extraordinary with impossible. You use an illustration that is hundreds of years old (before the advent of modern scientific criteria) and an illustration that shows science works. (the claim of continental drift was extraordinary, when evidence in the 50s supported it it was embraced by geologist).
There is sound scientific reason why ESP is counter to what is known about the way the brain interacts with the world. The claim of ESP is extraordinary. It needs extraordinary evidence to support it. There has been ongoing research into ESP for over a 100 years, with no solid evidence to support it. There isn't even a good model of how it is suppose to work. The scientific community awaits such evidence, until then it remains n extraordinary claim.
BTW, science by definition it materialistic.

[Boojatta]

10. "the claim of continental drift was extraordinary"

Can you explain why?

[edhopper]

12. It was not

ordinary. Ipso facto.

[Az]

4. Who are you really?

Paracelsus?

[Random_Australian]

6. "people tend to dislike how oblique you make things - instead of a community discussion these

are odd enough that only you know what is going on and only you learn something. This is as annoying as hell" -extraordinary claim?

[Name removed]

7. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Az]

11. Deleted sub-threads always make me wish I had caught them

I mean what did we miss? Sigh.... oh well.

[Random_Australian]

13. Ha! Exactly the same here. The fact that it came from my post makes is that much

more interesting. :)

Oh well, as well.

[Occam Bandage]

14. "Boojatta will someday post a concrete, meaningful, defensible position."

This, I would say, is perhaps the most extraordinary claim of all.

[B3Nut]

15. And here I thought it was only the stuff inside a Twinkie.

:D