In physics, the basic idea of energy is the capacity of a physical system to do "work." In physics, "work" is defined as the product of a force times the distance through which that force acts. "Energy" is a term to express the power to move things, either potential or actual. New Age spiritualism is all about empowerment. The New Age is about enhancing your energy, tapping into the energy of the universe, manipulating energy so that you can be happy, fulfilled, successful, and lovable, so life can be meaningful, significant, and endless. In short, the New Age is about becoming like God, an omnipotent, eternal being capable of magic, having the power to move things at will.
Of course, New Age energy has nothing to do with mechanics, electricity, or the nuclei of atoms. New Age energy has more to do with things like chi or prana. New Age Energy isn't measurable by any known scientific instrument and is believed to be not only the source of life, but of health as well. There are no ergs, joules, electron-volts, calories, or foot-pounds of New Age energy. This energy is outside the bounds of scientific control or study. Only healers with special powers at "unblocking," "harmonizing," "unifying," "tuning," aligning," "balancing," "channeling," or otherwise manipulating New Age energy, can measure this energy. How? They measure it by feeling it. Energy medicines are based upon variants of the metaphysical theory known as vitalism, a theory that has been dead in the West for over a century. New Age quackery often maintains that the older a theory is the more one should have faith in it.
Few things are more intimidating to the non-scientist than modern physics. Even an educated person has difficulty comprehending the most basic claims made about the entities and possible entities of the sub-atomic world, not to mention the exotic claims about entities and possible entities at the edges of the universe. Even the concepts of "sub-atomic" and "edge of the universe" boggle the mind. Perhaps it is because of the obscurity and inaccessibility of modern physics that many uneducated people scoff at science and find solace in fundamentalist religious interpretations of the origin and nature of the universe.
Another response to the seemingly transcendental nature of concepts in modern physics has been to interpret those concepts in terms of ancient metaphysical doctrines popular for thousands of years in exotic places (to the Western mind) such as India and China. This notion of a "harmony" between ancient metaphysics and modern physics is attractive to those who accept science and reject the Christian sects they were raised in, but still have spiritual longings. Believing in this notion of "harmony" between the ancient East and the modern West has the virtue of allowing one to avoid appearing to be an imbecile who rejects science in order to accept religion. As such, it shares in common at least once trait with "scientific creationism": it re-creates science in its own image for its own purposes. Science is the handmaiden of Religion and Metaphysics, as Philosophy had been for Theology in the Middle Ages.
Acting much like nuclear accelerators on atoms, the New Age theorists smash concepts into bits, only the bits are interfered with in ways Heisenberg never foresaw. We may as well talk about "alternative" physics; for, what they have done to the concepts of modern physics is to refashion them into a metaphysics with its own technology and product line. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the New Age conception of "energy."
In conclusion, 9-year old Emily Rosa tested 21 therapeutic touch (TT) practitioners to see if they could feel her life energy when they could not see its source. The test was very simple and seems to clearly indicate that the subjects could not detect the life energy of the little girl’s hands when placed near theirs. They had a 50% chance of being right in each test, yet they correctly located Emily's hand only 44% of the time in 280 trials. If they can’t detect the energy, how can they manipulate or transfer it? What are they detecting? Dr. Dolores Krieger, one of the creators of TT, has been offered $1,000,000 by James Randi to demonstrate that she, or anyone else for that matter, can detect the human energy field. So far, Dr. Krieger has not been tested.
See also magical thinking and the New Age page of links.
further reading
- Energy Healing: Looking in All the Wrong Places by Robert Todd Carroll
- Reality Check: The Energy Fields of Life by Victor Stenger
- The Gentle Wind Project by Ivan Fraser and Steve Gamble
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