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Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience pp 249–268Cite as

Scientific Testing of Chi (Qi) Claims

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Part of the book series: Science: Philosophy, History and Education ((SPHE))

Abstract

Feng shui energy is yet to be identified and measured in any reputable laboratory. There have been some embryonic steps towards scientific validation of chi claims. Of special interest were those made by Dr Yan Xin, a former TCM practitioner who had worked in or visited different Chinese and US universities. Despite detailed and staggering claims made by Dr Xin and colleagues, none have ever survived a reputable test. One fallback option for chi theorists who wish to maintain the scientificity of their system and of the chi construct, yet who also acknowledge the reality that chi has never yet been found or measured, is to abandon the referential dimension of chi and to swing over to seeing chi as an intervening variable not a hypothetical construct. The final option for chi theorists who wish to retain the concept, while acknowledging that there is no non-inferential, immediate evidence for it, is to say that chi talk is metaphorical not literal. For the purpose of this book, these fundamental philosophical arguments need just be noted, not solved. Students and teachers can themselves, with time and curricula allowing, follow up the arguments and literature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See www.item-bioenergy.com/infocenter/chinesechiresearch.doc

  2. 2.

    Lu Zuyin was a renowned professor of nuclear physics at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as a physics professor at Tsinghua University. He was responsible for the comprehensive planning of nuclear physics parameter measurements during China’s nuclear tests, and he led the effort of measuring the forces, neutron fields, and gamma fields of atomic bombs in China.

  3. 3.

    All of these, and more, extraordinary things are related by Vicente Ongtenco, a council member of the World Medical Qigong Association, and detailed in Wozniak et al. (2001, pp. 127–132).

  4. 4.

    See www.item-bioenergy.com/infocenter/chinesechiresearch.doc

  5. 5.

    The authors’ institutional affiliations included Harvard University, Mass General Hospital, University of Oklahoma, MIT, and the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

  6. 6.

    Unfortunately Dr Yan seems unable to take further part in such testing. At some time around 2000, he was made a ‘national treasure’ by the Chinese government, and his travel and appearances have been constrained. How much this was a result of doing bad science and how much it was the party’s fear of a mass qigong movement, are unknown.

    See https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/30754-what-became-of-qigong-master-yan-xin/

  7. 7.

    See www.item-bioenergy.com/infocenter/chinesechiresearch.doc

  8. 8.

    The magician (illusionist), James Randi, has rendered a great public service by replicating, exposing, and debunking these sorts of claims (Randi 1987, 1992, 1995).

  9. 9.

    It should be noted that the publisher is ‘a small specialist publisher’.

  10. 10.

    See www.item-bioenergy.com/infocenter/chinesechiresearch.doc

  11. 11.

    For a report on these fraudsters, see Chinese Global Times, 19 August 2013.

  12. 12.

    See at least Bevilacqua (2014b), Coopersmith (2010), Harman (1982), and Sherman (2018).

  13. 13.

    See essays in any anthology on the realism/instrumentalism debate in philosophy of science. For a recent collection, see Agazzi (2017).

  14. 14.

    See at least the 23 chapters in Selin (2003).

  15. 15.

    For philosophical appraisals of educational constructivism, see Matthews (2000, 2012, 2015a, b, Chap. 8) and contributions to Matthews (1998).

  16. 16.

    See, at least, Graham (1989).

  17. 17.

    See at least Boudry et al. (2012), Fishman (2009), Slezak (2012), and Stenger (1990, 2007).

  18. 18.

    The rich philosophical literature on the methodological and ontological presuppositions, if any, of science is reviewed in Fishman and Boudry (2013).

  19. 19.

    See at least Dijksterhuis (1961/1986), Harré (1964), Schofield (1970), and Westfall (1971).

  20. 20.

    In 1974 it was still required reading in the Sydney University honours psychology programme.

  21. 21.

    Bas van Fraassen is one well-known defender of this position (Fraassen 2002).

  22. 22.

    For some of the significant philosophical literature on metaphor in science, see at least contributions to Hintikka (1994) and Machamer (2000). For metaphorical thinking in a larger context, see Ortony (1979).

  23. 23.

    A recent disturbing study of five centuries of ‘crackpot delusion and make-believe’ in the USA is Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland (Andersen 2017). Another study of magic and ‘dark arts’ belief in the USA is Wicker (2005). See also Schimmel’s The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs (Schimmel 2008).

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  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Michael R. Matthews

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Matthews, M.R. (2019). Scientific Testing of Chi (Qi) Claims. In: Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience. Science: Philosophy, History and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18822-1_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18822-1_12

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