How Scientific is Science: (A) Dark Matter or an Occult Science..?!

0.   Introduction

	If I were a physicist I would probably have indigestion by day and by night not be able to sleep at all properly! Why, you may well ask? Because most of the subject matter of their discipline, namely the universe, the majority of their most learned fraternity currently claim is just not visible, indeed, about ninety-five percent is thought to be some sort of dark material. Now, this is no laughing matter! In an attempt to hunt down this elusive chimera a zoo of esoteric particles have been postulated with such species having abbreviated names like MACHOES and WIMPS; coming in varieties of hot and cold and a host of other shapes and complexions like neutrinoes, supersymmetric particles, interstellar dust, brown dwarfs, black holes and even white ones… and in the fifty odd years these animals have been looked for not one such creature to date, fulfilling this prescription, has been pinned down, indeed, not one scientist has been able to tell us what any of this so-called dark matter is! And, the problems in cosmology seem only to multiply because we also now have a problematic ‘dark energy’ in order to explain why the universe appears to be speeding up in its rate of expansion. Sadly, the actual search for this dark matter, in my opinion, one that is starting to look vain and fruitless, has already cost a billion or more dollars!! (1)

	Not for one moment do I begrudge science money for pure research. However, the politics of this process being what it is, a considerable proportion of these monies may well have been better spent elsewhere. At least our options for other avenues of research should be better noticed when they do arise. But, then, one might say that theoretical physics has been more speculative than Medieval Theology and only recently has some empirical rigour been added to this subject through advances in the sophistication and accuracy of our latest ‘viewing’ and measuring equipment. (2)

For just over two decades a lone physicist in Israel, Mordehai Milgrom, has consistently argued in numerous papers that this so-called dark matter is only an artifact of our over-commitment to a Newtonian formula that, with a minor revision, the mere addition of a particular constant, appears to resolve this need for the imputation of approximately (ten to) twenty times more material in this universe than can be ‘seen’ in order to explain what would be otherwise a certain unsettling anomaly at the very centre of our current vision of the universe. Why this minor correction appears to work is for reasons as yet unknown to us. Whether this minor correction is correct or not is not the real point of this paper. In this philosophical essay let me look into this affair which is increasing looking like a scandal to gain what insights we can about official science, the difficulty there is for getting theoreticians to suspend all of their ontological commitments, and, to examine what role there might be for a transcendental phenomenological approach? Basically, let us see what salutary lessons we can learn from this controversy regardless as to whether dark matter exists or does not exist, regardless as to whether this hitherto lone voice is right or is wrong. (3)

In this essay I will first set out the problem and hopefully transmit to my audience or reader the painful problematicity of both this apparent anomaly and the current controversy concerning this particular amendment. I will try to do this without invoking too much scientific detail. Second, I will discuss the nature of the amendment proposed by this physicist Mordehai Milgrom. Third, I would like to explore some of the philosophical implications that might be drawn from an examination of this overall affair. Lastly, I shall summarize and re-examine my conclusions in this regard. (4)

1.   Is Dark Matter More the Problem or the Resolution of a Problem??

	For a theoretical physicist to say that ninety-five percent of the universe is unaccounted for must reflect badly on their discipline. For a few percent to be ‘missing’ may well be an “accident” but for nineteen parts in twenty to be ‘missing’ is tantamount to gross “carelessness”. But, then, not so long ago, most scientists thought they had determined how to compute ninety-nine percent of this material universe’s motion conveniently overlooking the finer detail in most interactions of three or more bodies about each other and the problematic area of the chaotic behaviour of turbulence, etc. Now, we know a little better and find that those figures have more or less reversed themselves and only ‘one percent’ is actually determinable in a classical sense the rest being dealt with by chaotic equations and specific inputs, etc. But, for a physicist to say that we can only ‘see’ one twentieth of the universe, or, to the same effect, that one twentieth of the universe is ‘visible’ and the rest of it is any one’s guess is to invite some doubts as to the integrity of such scholars who cannot even establish the overall nature their discipline! Indeed, that such a pursuit is more of an occult art since what is ‘apparently’ hidden has remained just that! (5)

	How does this problem originate? We have Newton’s Law of Acceleration recast to deal with gravitational interaction that basically states that there is an inverse square relationship in the force of gravity reflected in the masses of the two objects in interaction with each other and the distance they are to each other (treated as pairs of objects). More or less, the power of that force dropping by the inverse square of the distance, e.g., at twice the distance the force between them, all other things being equal, would be one quarter of that previous force. Within this Solar System on a case by case basis, ignoring the other planets, this simple calculation gives a very accurate guide to the speed each planet has with respect to the sun. (6)

	But, measured more accurately a certain anomalous discrepancy was noted (e.g., in the orbit of Mercury) that was only resolved when Einstein proposed a relativistic re-interpretation of this formula. Basically he emended it, or, more correctly, made the Newtonian framework a special case of the relativist oriented calculations, i.e., for a simple quick determination of value use the Newtonian formulation as long as the motions concerned are not travelling near the speed of light and a greater accuracy of determination is not being called for! Newton’s formula for calculation should be seen, therefore, as not something that should be ‘set in concrete’ so to speak – it is only an approximation for bodies travelling at speeds much less than the speed of light, etc. (7)

	Now, when astronomers looked at the motion of interstellar objects revolving around each other, say the stars within a globular cluster or a galaxy, they found that angular momentum appears to be higher than for the visible mass apparent in our visible observations of these systems. Actually, momentum seems to be more constant out to the physically observed limits of each system. To overcome this major discrepancy the mass of the so-called ‘visible’ universe was multiplied by a figure just under twenty and declared to be of some unknown nature that gravitationally interacted with the visible matter but in no other visible manner. Hence the so-call “dark matter resolution” of this problem. But, as noted earlier, pinning down what this dark matter is has become an even more problematic question to such an extent that perhaps we should ask just what is the real problem -this apparent anomaly in angular momentum or this so-called resolution that adopts dark matter. (8)

	Essentially, interstellar objects seem to be whizzing around each other at a speed higher than what can be accounted for in terms of the matter that appears visible to us in those systems. In the use of Newton’s equation as an approximation, with the apparent masses and distances we have to hand, you will find those calculations only ‘appear to work’ when those apparent masses are multiplied by a factor of approximately twenty. This is a consistently broad spectrum anomaly because everywhere we look in the universe, outside the Solar System, this discrepancy seems to maintain the same order of ‘apparent error’. (9)

2.	A Lone Voice Re-Thinks this Problem of the ‘Missing Mass’

Towards the end of 1981 the theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom, attached to the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, decided to re-think this problem of the ‘missing mass’. To this end he proposed a theoretical way of dealing with this anomaly in angular momentum (as noted previously above) in a ‘modification of Newtonian dynamics’, given the initials MOND for short. As he states in a recent interview “ …the mass discrepancy observed in galactic systems is more elegantly explained by modifying Newtonian dynamics than by postulating exotic dark matter.” This “elegant” modification is the addition of an acceleration constant a0, roughly equal to 10-8 centimeters per second, and it kicks in when accelerations are this slow. To put this weak acceleration in a better context one would have to travel just beyond our solar System to actually experience gravitation at this level of weakness. But this low intensity, and less, is exactly the range of conditions that exist between stellar bodies in various types of stellar systems, such as, e.g., galaxies and globular clusters, etc. So, when accelerations are greater than this acceleration constant its effects are not observed, whereas, below that level of intensity, this acceleration constant has the effect of conserving acceleration, i.e, usually observed in the form of angular momentum. As a result the majority of the outer reaches of a stellar system will present an apparently difficult to explain conservation of angular momentum that, under a normal Newtonian interpretation, would theoretically seem to call for an increased mass being present in that system in order to defuse this apparent anomaly. Hence this missing matter, in light of MOND, is really only an artifact of our theoretical commitments and does not exist in cosmological reality! Such a statement, of course, is highly controversial and the definitive showdown between dark matter specialists and MONDites is only a matter of time? Who says that physics is not interesting? Some reputations are going to be made and others broken, hopefully, with some degree of good grace. (10)

3.   What Philosophical Implications Can Be Derived from this Controversy?

	As I noted earlier, the winner of this dispute, along with the validity or invalidity of various theoretical proposals, is not my major concern in this philosophical essay! Quite apart from who is proven to be right and who is proven to be wrong, I believe, a number of salutary observations, or rather generalized reflections with a moral, can be drawn from which we stand to gain whether as scientists or non-scientists. Let me now examine my concerns in this regard. (11)

A current theme running through my recent philosophical research is the necessity for the transcendental phenomenologist, and by implication, all thinking beings, to practice a suspension of all of our ontological commitments in the course of our research and passage through the life-world (along with our neurotic epistemological expectations and stasic existential behavioral routines!). I have argued at length that to do otherwise is to effectively simulate (or re-simulate) a psychosis in that regard where our thinking cannot be hypothetically held in such an impartial manner! Indeed, an effective psychosis whose intensity is proportionally equal to the degree that such a suspension of ontological commitments cannot be put in place or is not being put in place. A scientist, to be worthy of that name, must, at least in principle, be able to suspend all of their ontological commitments! Such a process is not theoretical or scientific death but the very life of the theoretical and source all creative and scientific thinking! All judgments are distorted, therefore, to that degree that they cannot be suspended. Again, I stress here, this suspension is not their paralysis or dismissal merely their creative enquestioning and the creative questioning of all that finds itself supported upon such a presuppositional basis! Undistorted judgment demands this form of bracketing, epoche, suspension... To truly question means we must call into question the complete ‘either/or’ as pertains to the rhetorical subject matter of our examination. To do otherwise, to me, seems more like ‘looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope’. What is seen is both diminished and perceived out of context. This would be my first point, as a reflective observation, that I would like to derive from a philosophical appreciation of this particular controversy although the course of science from an historical perspective is littered with such cul de sacs, etc., as is, I believe, the very course of philosophy itself both Western and Eastern and all other disciplines! (12)

	An interesting philosophical point has been introduced into this controversy and that is the theoretical and practical, or empirical, role of the phenomenological method as defined by theoretical and empirical scientists, namely, the adoption and utilization of a mathematical formula and/or metaphorical model to explain empirical observations without any obvious theoretical underpinning. As a device it is purely pragmatic, for the time being, until such a time as theoreticians can integrate the apparently empirically useful nature of that device into their general theoretical understanding of this hitherto non-integrated facet of their understanding of the universe. I am sure, indeed, one could make a safe bet that both Newton himself and many other scientists on many occasions would have often adopted this same type of approach if only to begin with. Often a scientist ‘only’ has a set of figures to work from when dealing with a similar sort of phenomenon and, in attempting to puzzle out what underlying correlations might be present, would propose a number of formulae in an attempt to find this correlation and the nature of their inter-correlation through the adoption of one relatively more successful formulaic variant? The matter is not that simple, however, as that set of data is gathered because there is some intentional desire to see that type of data as interrelated and interrelated therein theoretically through some particular presupposed scheme or other. Of course, that might be just a simple causal philosophy that notes (that the conditions) of cause and effect are to be expected in that particular frame of reference, e.g., and other simple expectations, etc. I guess one might term this sort of problematic interrelationship between the collection of data and the theoretical reason as to why one is collecting that data as a thematizational process of question-and-answer as occurs in the coming to an understanding, in time, of any matter for empirical examination or reflection. (13)

	For Milgrom and fellow MONDites this phenomenological method seems to be surprisingly successful in determining the angular momentum of a whole range of interstellar systems although appearing only to break down in the presence of rich galactic structures as occurs in the cores of large galactic clusters? Indeed, he predicted a set of figures for faint stellar systems that only recently have been confirmed through the arrival of the Hubble Telescope, and other more accurate and sensitive equipment. Just because this pragmatic device has no current theoretical underpinning is no reason to not use it or to feel disquieted by this fact. I believe much of science floats on foundations not securely tethered to the bank, so to speak, if I can mix my metaphors because all foundations should ultimately be viewed in the same light – as provisional, floating, semi-self-supporting structures that are meant to help us come to an understanding of this world through the power of their inherent metaphor and their inter-systematizational nexus of significance-creation (in a direct simulation/re-simulation of the ‘living’ text). My digression apart, I think this approach is a reasonable one to take as the course of the history of science should show it is in the thinking of the unthinkable that, through trial and error, much of the so called thoretical progress has been made or rather stumbled upon. On the other hand, one also hopes that in the goodness of time theoretical foundations can also be called into being to relatively integrate this pragmatic approach into our rather rambling, disheveled house of scientific thinking. (14)

	A third point or reflective observation I would like to make concerns the institutionalization of science which, like any other human endeavour, revolves around plays of power situated between and within dominating (and dominant) positions and minority positions on this very uneven playing field of the world-stage. No-one has infinite-like access to resources, financial or otherwise (not that this division between the financial and non-financial could be ‘pulled apart’ and so determined independently)! Consequently, there is a competition for those limited resources (thankfully) and processes of resolution in their allocation to some extent (even more thankfully) in their ‘final’ re-distribution. The progress of science, like all other institutionalized disciplines, is no different in this matter and must to all purposes appear more like a series of battles. These days, there may be no blood on the ground but lots of reputations are won and lost. In the process many ego can be hurt and this ‘resistance’ to entertain non-current institutional dogma is sad fact of life that can only have a psychotic-like effect on that institution and how it deals with the world and how the world (will finally) deal with it. Going up or down possible cul de sacs is not the issue! What is at stake is that such possibilities as ‘mere possibilities’ may need to be entertained, and, when a noble voice declares they think such an avenue should be traveled we should have enough good sense to give them a moment of our time and not write them off as outsiders, non-party players, loose canons, eccentrics, insane, unwashed or worse! (15)

	Reflection upon this issue would return us in due course to my first point, that there is a need to suspend all our relevant and potentially relevant ontological commitments. In this controversy it is surprising that this has not occurred earlier since Newtonian dynamics has already had two major exceptions made to its automatic utilization, namely, special relativity and general relativity. (16)

4.	 Conclusion: Is Science More Like an Occult Art?

One must wonder if modern cosmology, and other interrelated forms of theoretical physics, don’t indeed have a lot in common with Medieval Theology of a more speculative twist and other occult arts like a much maligned Astrology, etc? A bit like a small or large dose of reality diluted or adulterated, as the case may be, in a syrupy confection of our own making that might taste nice to those permitted to partake of it but not have too much nutritional powers for all of that. It reminds me of the following type of situation recently witnessed by myself: a young person enters a secondhand bookshop looking for a book of spells and asks the book-keeper if they have any in stock? On the face of it, that type of task (of finding and using a book of spells) would seem to be a pointless pursuit if one is not certain of what guarantee such a book would have as to whether those spells actually work, and one should have some degree of healthy suspicion as to the veracity or potential successfulness of the same. The book might say “guaranteed by the author”, or “as guaranteed by a learnt wisdom imparted by strict traditional means”, or use some other similar formula, how, given this quite natural doubt, is one to evaluate the merit of that type of book? Well one could say “you must try it.” But the ‘problem’ only goes deeper – how do you know if it is the spell that is working or merely the intentional focus to that end on the part of the person casting the spell and that in this light the spell is quite irrelevant. Or, should one blame the non-successfulness of the spell on an inability of the person trying to use it not being able to chant it correctly and/or enact the same properly? Or, that some other ingredient should be present as in traditional spells of a witch? Then, perhaps success is only coincidental or fated and effectively beyond the reach of any spell or similar. For sure, one could be impious here and suggest that a book of spells would be the easiest thing to write and in the process unscrupulously cater for this market of people looking for spells. How could you be proven wrong? Or more worrying, how could you be proved right! (17)

	In this essay I have briefly alluded to what I believe is an existential fact of our existence, a fact of existence that through experience and reflection appears to be a (transcendentally) verifiable understanding of our human condition, namely, that an inability to suspend our ontological commitments (etc.) is to proportionally, and in the same manner, to foster an effective psychosis in our related thinking, ‘speaking’ and practice! Regardless of whether I am right or wrong in this matter, good science, along with any other discipline or manner of being in the world, in this world-of-life, necessitates a suspension of all our relevant ontological commitments (etc.)!! This overall suspension of our beliefs, faith, understanding of the world and each other, ourselves included, is not something we should fear, but, instead, should truly welcome as the returning harvest of value is existentially greater than that ‘given up’! This existential surplus of value only occurring in and through that prior ‘sacrifice’ or suspension – to the extent, as we learn in reflection upon our experience, that a full suspension returns, more often than not, a fuller harvest of significance for us (as phenomenological sense, hermeneutical meaning and existential meaningfulness)! (18)

	In the light of the above, what has just been noted, I would like to make a few remarks on the topic of what I would call the charitable interpretation of systematic and semi-systematic visions of reality – that all visions of reality in some measure actually ‘reflect’ reality to some extent or other. This ‘fact’ helping to explain why some bizarre belief systems have adherents without declaring their advocates as “certifiably insane” by virtue of the fact that certain elements do appear ‘to image’ the world with a degree of value that itself appears to possess a certain degree of existential excess through its ability to resolve certain life-problems that may be or ‘feel’ or find ourselves ‘set-up’ to appear disproportionately important to us for what ever reasons; their sense of consequential relief reinforcing that view of the world regardless of the relative merit compared to other culturally and non-culturally systematic and semi-systematic visions of the world. (19)

	Too often we find competing systems of belief in this world that in our meeting with them, or their proponents, we find ourselves inclined, some times with good reason, sometimes with no rational reason at all, of all too quickly dismissing as having no value or value of any great, positive worth. So the schizophrenic says they are “Jesus Christ;” the pair of Mormons on the street wants to tell us about the ‘vision(s)’ of their founder; the economist on television gives us a dissertation on current fiscal policy versus monetary policy; some scientist in a science journal wants to tell us about ‘global warming’, ‘passive smoking’ or ‘dark matter’, etc., etc., and it would be so easy to just “yea” or “nay” to each of them in turn. Now, I am not advocating an open-ended state of acceptance or indecision, but, the phenomenological (existential) fact that our metaphors as tools for deciphering this world in a rather uncanny way also mirror this ‘world’ (as constituted/re-constituted by-us for-others) often not in a way that is fully understood by themselves, their audience or reader or congregation or transcendental eavesdropper, etc. Let me elabourate on this point… (20)

	Metaphors are tools. They cannot be used to literally depict the world yet in their ‘metaphoring’ they do just that or their ‘psychic’ equivalent! In effect, they help to simulate the world and along with our understanding of it in a manner that transcends our mere ‘seeing it’. We are ‘insighting’ this world-of-life, if I may use this non-felicitous conversion of the noun “insight” into this novel passive present participle, and, in the process, we are “inciting” ourselves and others to see it the way we now see it or want to re-see it or the way we insightfully appear to see it… or just believe the world is that way inclined… and hopefully you will forgive my equally unforgivable and execrable pun in this regard? (21)

	So the schizophrenic tells us they are “Jesus Christ.” Most of us, correctly, would dismiss such an utterance as a nonsense and, for some, as blasphemous. But this person is trying to tell us something, both about themselves and ourselves too. For a start that the schizophrenic feels the need to tell us this ‘fact’ which a part of them knows is not the case (it is common knowledge that if Jesus Christ was a person he lived two thousand years ago in Palestine and died and being dead could not be that same person now without invoking metaphysical like arguments for the continuation of personal identity, etc!). That person is also telling us, if we can read between the lines, that their life is so shattered and lacking in a sense of value that they feel they have to invoke powerful cultural myths and through a process of self-identification, with the same therein, re-value themselves in the process, albeit in a relatively very inauthentic manner (certainly not one sanctioned in the Christian religion from any mainstream traditional point of view). Going deeper into this brief text we might speculate that this person has a loss of abstract metaphorical thinking and suffers from a literalization of the metaphor through their confusing ‘like’ with ‘is’ – perhaps in a pattern of thinking to oneself along these line – “I am suffering, Jesus Christ suffered, I am suffering like Jesus Christ (who also heard the ‘voice’ of God), therefore I must be Jesus Christ” – which, through these incremental shifts of metaphorical identification/mis-identification, is not as illogical as it might seem on a first hearing or thinking about; as wrong as it is and must be in matters of fact. (22)

	This preamble brings me back to the phenomenological method as defined by the scientist, more or less, as a pragmatic, currently non-theoretically integrated device for ‘explaining’ and/or ‘picturing’ the nature of reality. In the light of my digression (and as you might have noted I love to digress) we must wonder to what extent our pragmatic devices are without a metaphorical ‘metaphoring’ of the world, in some back to front, inside out, by default sort of picturing of our world. So, with this tentative qualification one must ask in what manner our phenomenologically constructed pragmatic devices perhaps do reflect the world in some manner or other, perhaps on a very deeply intuitive level of ‘not able to quite put our finger on it’ type of awareness?? This is just a thought on this matter. It may well be that in finding the answer we are on the way to finding the question, just as in reverse, in being able to formulate the question we are already on the way to realizing the answer, or at least the meta-answer as to whether one could be formulated in the first place. That, in essence, perhaps, through this process of ongoing thematization, this is the very way our intentionality is in fact formulated and our path through this world of life prepared…? (23)

	Lastly, I think one has to seriously re-consider the merits of orthodox science as being capable of being able to evaluate its own merit, and, as a result of reflection upon this sad state of affairs, would like to propose that specially trained philosophers should be called in to conduct this sort of philosophical style of appreciation and evaluation? Perhaps philosophers that accept the use of this phenomenological method in both senses of that terms, namely, as a technique that accepts both individually pragmatically useful devices and complex collections of the same (as schemes that measure success, existential richness, appropriateness, propriety, etc., etc.) in a style of philosophy that is also phenomenological in the classical sense as after Husserl et al (as also hopefully entailed in this work of mine for all its faults and unspeakable literary crimes)? But, then, philosophers have had their own scandals to attend to so, perhaps, we need to breed a special class of meta-philosopher so that practitioners of that noble type of discipline, namely as serious ‘philosophers’ can, in turn, be given an accurate score card in this respect and appropriately disciplined when necessary in the light of the same… and then let loose in order to critically deal with the many so-called ‘disciplines’ of this world… be they in science or otherwise…! (24)

	All in all, this topic has ramifications beyond the purely scientific world for its economic realignment of resources will impinge upon us all, directly or indirectly, adversely or non-adversely, whether our learned friends in seeking ‘dark matter’ are either chasing ‘true gold’ or merely being chased by illusory ‘chimeras’… the latter being, effectively, the psychotic-like result of ontological commitments that were not both properly and appropriately suspended!!! (25)
						                    Noël Tointon, Sydney, 26.5.03.

P.S: It is my suspicion that the so-called ‘dark energy’ might also be just as much an “illusory ‘chimera’,” N.
P.P.S: If the scientific use of this 'phenomenological method' is valid then the conservation of angular momentum will have to be theoretically accounted for at the earliest opportunity. My intuition tells me that we might be able to invoke supersymmetric particles or similar in order to account for this apparent phenomenon rather than invoking missing matter (and its attendant problems of how do you account for its smooth distribution, etc.). N.