Is That You, God?
Re "The God Experiments" [December]: Amongst those of us who did research with psychedelic drugs in the early '60s before funding dried up, there was common knowledge that ingesting these drugs under conducive circumstances can provide a religious experience. "Circumstances" in this context refers to mind-set and to the contextual environment. The result is that people who expect to have a religious experience and ingest the drug in a setting with familiar religious symbols will frequently have a religious experience that confirms their expectations. I submit that as creatures who strive to understand our experiences, we do so in accordance with our training, education, and cultural teachings. Under this model, one would not be surprised at the discovery of a religious-experience reward center in the brain.
Tom Parsons
Broomfield, Colorado
Science and religion both seek to understand the world by applying certain sets of assumptions. Both are limited by those assumptions. Since God is limitless, it seems rather naive to assume that either system could quantify or define Him. Transcendence, by its very definition, could not be a chemically or electrically induced experience. If we are talking about induced states of mind, it might be better to call them false euphorias instead.
Kirsten Mustain
Wyandotte, Oklahoma
The scientists you report on appear to fall into two camps: those who want to explain the holy and those who want to explain it away. If God is infinite and immortal, it is folly to suppose that a finite activity conducted by finite minds can explain his/her/its workings. If God exists, no amount of theorizing will change that fact, and it is folly to try to explain it away. Perhaps God does not exist. But when has it ever been good science to go into an experiment with a preconceived notion of what the experiment must show? Richard Dawkins laments that biologist Michael Persinger's machine gave him no visions of the transcendent. The implication Dawkins appears to draw is that there is no such thing. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to assume that Persinger's machine is incapable of demonstrating the actuality of those realms?
Jack Butler
Wyandotte, Oklahoma
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the U.K., has pronounced himself the expert on dark matter, yet he has repeatedly failed to mention the true originator of this theory, Fritz Zwicky. During my father's lifetime, the scientific community did not support his theories on dark matter, his methodology using galaxies as gravitational lensing, and the existence of neutron stars. I didn't see Dr. Rees embracing dark-matter theory years ago, when my father was the lone voice of this theory. I did note "Much Ado About Nothing" [from the DISCOVER newsstand-only issue Unseen Universe] by physicist Michael S. Turner. Turner has been insulting to my father's memory in the past, but it appears that my thoughts pierced Turner's conscience in regard to my father, as his article speaks of his work without objectionable commentary.
Barbarina Zwicky
Pasadena, California
Are You on the List?
DISCOVER's All-Time Essential Reading List [December] is notable for both its inclusions and its omissions. Overlooked are Mendel on genetics, Faraday or Maxwell on electromagnetism, Curie on radioactivity, and Planck or Bohr on quantum theory.
Richard Johnson
Williamsburg, Virginia
. . . Loren Eiseley's three books of essays: The Immense Journey, The Night Country, and The Unexpected Universe. Eiseley is the best scientific prose stylist ever.
Dan Schneider
Austin, Texas
. . . Primo Levi, The Periodic Table; Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee; Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way.
Rhea Cohen
Silver Spring, Maryland
. . . De Re Metallica (On Metallic Matters, 1556), Georgius Agricola. The art and science of metallurgy is the father and mother of all science—without it there would be no civilization today. This should have been at the very top of your list. Shame on you!
Charles Dohogne
Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Our Bad
The correct authorship of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, featured on our All-Time Essential Reading List, is Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands.
