Ah, time for one of my favourite ever articles: QUANTUM BEES! http://discovermagazine.com/1997/nov/quantumhoneybees1263
Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#22What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this.
Almost as if flowering plants are related to food for both bees and apes....
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#23I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms.
These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human experience that can only be consciously experience by being actively cultivated and the main stream scientific community has bound itself to a set of ideological assumptions (IMHO inhereted from the Christian church) that deny the existence of these dimensions of human experience and so do not respect their cultivation or deem them worthy of study.
This is going to become more of an issue the closer our technological interfaces interact with our senses. These assumptions about what we are, how we communicate, and how we interact with the physical/spiritual world form the base assumptions underlying the future course of our evolution and progress. What happens if by augmenting/modifying one sense we cut ourselves off from another that informs us subconsciously?
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coincidence - we like flowers, and admire bees. So we appreciate that bees are attracted to beauty. Replace bees with flies, and flowers with manure (or plants that seek to attract flies http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm ). Where's the objective beauty?
There is something more than that. There are many beautiful things, but flowers in particular seem to stand out as something that is recognized for their beauty regardless of culture, time or place. In the same way that people the world over, independent of one another, come up with the same conclusions about geometry and mathematics...
But not regardless of species. That both bees and humans find flowers beautiful is coincidence. That humans are similar to other humans in a way that crosses cultures is obvious to most.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#25What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on objective beauty...
There's a video of Deutsch giving a lecture which focuses on why flowers are beautiful, following much of the same line of reasoning as in `The Beginning of Infinity'.
Worth a watch, if you've got an hour.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#26I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms. These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human e…
Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from. Do you think humans communicate with other things through electromagnetic fields? Then tell us of an experiment that shows this. What is the mechanism for this communication? Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based). If these types of communications are so subtle that we're hardly aware of them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than the placebo effect. People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted by aliens, why should I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#27I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms. These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human e…
The issue here, speaking as a physicist, is that the range over which significant information can be transmitted this way is very small, because the strength of the interaction is very weak. (If plants or bees routinely carried large charges, we'd have known it ages ago.)
I'd be surprised if any of these effects were detectible (even to a tiny bee) more than a handspan or two away from a flower, for instance. So at best, two animals standing a few inches from each other might have some subtle extra ability to exchange information... but if you're bigger than a bee, why not just touch?
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#28I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms. These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human e…
Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from. Do you think humans communicate with other things through electromagnetic fields? Then tell us of an experiment that shows this. What is the mechanism for this communication? Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based). If these type…
-In many ways, I think Christian assumptions bolster scientific research. Of course, there are the luddites, but I think that the concept that there is a rational, infinite God gives us two bases for research:
1) The universe is rational, and so we can apply strict logical rules to discover it, and
2) we will never run out of things to discover.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#29I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms. These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human e…
Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from. Do you think humans communicate with other things through electromagnetic fields? Then tell us of an experiment that shows this. What is the mechanism for this communication? Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind of faith (placebo based). If these type…
"Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from."
I haven't read it, but there is a history book called The Saviour of Science that's all about the role of Christianity in shaping modern scientific assumptions.
Re: Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover
#30I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of energy transferrence between living organisms. These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human e…
You just have to be careful when you talk about study. A lot of study into this sort of thing is based on a lot of feelings and subjective intangible information.
Our minds are quite adept at making connections that don't exist, and at filling in holes where we're missing data. We can fabricate things that fill in those holes, and if everyone sees the same holes, and the same fabrication fills the hole fine enough, it's easy to believe that fabrication is the truth.
One should recognizes the holes, and leave them to be holes until he can prove otherwise.
I can accept that information can be passed between living things in ways we don't currently understand. I would sooner believe a little story on bees identifying flowers through detection of differently charged petals. I am less likely to use this as a reason to believe a whole line of mysticism/vitalism that has it's own doctrine on sexual behavior, claims to treat cancer, impart superhuman strength, and has a history that has changed with political and cultural whims.
Not to say that there is nothing correct or useful coming from QiGong, but that each of those things should be tested and evaluated individually. It's short sighted to accept the entire doctrine because parts of it fit.
Science actually often argues for forces we don't understand. Take a look at gravity, we still don't know why it works, we make up ideas about fields, or gravitons, or spacetime, but these are all just tools to model the behavior. We know more massive objects attract less massive objects, but how are they connected to do that attracting in the first place? Quantum Entanglement is an interesting thing too, is information transmitted at all? What is the meaning of information? Science asks so many questions, like what is space? Do we actually exist in 3 dimensions?
What science tries its hardest to avoid is explaining away the unanswered questions by filling in the holes with answers that just 'fit' without any way to validate the claim.