Science is Empiricism

I have been looking into a device called a Perkl-Light Energy Spa. Unfortunately the proprietor has a serious dislike of scientists. I don’t know if I can purchase the device from someone who has such disdain for empiricism. I could deal with it if he at least provided some background on how the device works. The implication is that the device likely hasn’t been tested and optimized.

I sent him a note.

I am an electrical engineer and a reiki master.

Your epistemological rant is a little offputting.

Reiki is about being a receiver of sorts, feeling Ki in the Chakras and the aura and situating the hands to help it move. It’s not a talent, it is a human sense that we all have but many ignore. You are surrounded by radio waves every day, but without a radio you can’t detect them. Before radios were developed, radio waves coming in from space met the definition of “Subtle Energies” that the New Agers like to bandy about. Does it make sense to state that radio waves don’t exist?

Science is a method for testing empirical data. If I can’t detect Ki with scientific tools, that doesn’t mean Ki doesn’t exist, it means I need different tools.

As an example, an electronic device called an operational amplifier or OpAmp typically has a minimum frequency of about 0.5 Hz (cycles per second). Low-frequency energies aren’t detectable with OpAmps. If you are measuring a patient’s brainwaves with a tool called an electroencephalogram (EEG) while he is being put under deep anesthesia, it is possible for the brainwaves to become too low to be measured. There isn’t a doctor in the world who would tell you that the anesthetized patient is dead, not sleeping.

One attribute of empirical knowledge is that by taking better and better measurements and improving my hypothesis, I can question authority and expand the horizons of human knowledge.

I tried asking questions in church and was told to leave and not come back. This experience taught me to reject exclusionary dogma, and that is precisely why scientific enquiry appeals to me.

Did the Perkl-Light Energy Spa come into existence in its finished, perfect form, or did you have to engage in a scientific process of testing, modification and retesting?

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