Supernatural Science

When we talk about science we usually think of something expainable, something physical that can be measured and studied and/or recreated in a laboratory. When we think of the supernatural we think of something unexplainable, something metaphysical that moves and operates in a realm beyond our senses and beyond anything that can be detected and measured up with mere tools or machines.

And generally that is the way we like to have it. But I personally do get fascinated when science DO try to explain and approach the supernatural, and may even have the mehods and tools to do so. The most clear example of this in fiction that comes to my mind is Ghostbusters. Three scientists are conducting scientific investigations on paranormal activity and in the process they invent scientific tools and methods to approach, track and even apprehend and contain friggin’ ghosts.

Sure, caring around, and firing from, an unlicensed, backpack-sized nuclear accelerator, aka the proton pack, isn’t the most ethical nor the safest way to go around it (did they ever get those licensed?), but hey, it worked! I especially love the Psychokinetic Energy meter, aka the P.K.E meter, a tool that Egon, Ray and Venkman used even before they formed the Ghostbusters, back when they were employed by Columbia University. How it’s able to measure psychokinetic energy I still don’t know, but I like it.

In its secondary canon the P.K.E meter apparantly has three colors that it displays depending on what it detects. Red for ghosts or other spectral beings. Green for paranormal substances, such as ectoplasma. And blue for a cursed artifact. Apparantly it also has a built in copy of Tobins Spiritual Guide, scanning and identifying what is approached, which kind of sounds like a Pokedex but for paranormal things.

The last tool I just like to mention are the Ecto-goggles. The Nightvision headgear, also used to detect ghosts, that we see Ray carry around in the first movie. Again, no idea how it’s able to detect ghosts but I like it. A lot of this stuff may not be entirely, factually correct even within the Ghostbusters universe. But it is progress. It is a succesful attempt by science to understand and engage with the supernatural in that universe. And that is how science do things.

Even if it is something that should be impossible to measure and fully engage with it doesn’t stop science from trying to do so. Heck, even in the real world attempts are made by science to understand and explain paranormal phenomenons. For example, I know this blog article about the Quantum Theory of Ghosts which you can read for yourselfs HERE. Really fascinating stuff I think.

Which is why it feels kind of off to me when you have a setting where there is modern, or perhaps even futuristic tech and scientific theory, that also has magic and other supernatural elements, and science isn’t making any attempt to demystify those elements. Which is what science I feel is supposed to do. It is supposed to demystify the mystical. To make it explainable, factual and as understandable as can be.

That’s how we now understand that thunder and lightning did not come from Thor riding his charriot pulled by two goats, named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, across the clouds, but from a flow of energy that heats the air to around 50 000 degrees Farenheit, causing the air to explode outwards in the form of bolts of lightning. This is why I just can’t feel offended by Qui Gon Jinn talking about the Midi-Chlorians in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

I feel like in a sci-fi universe there should be something like that. And hey, what says that the mystical and the scientific cannot go together. The mystical may not be all that mystical anymore in that case, but it still is what it is and does what it does. The ghosts in Ghostbusters still are what they are and do what they do, only now we can understand how they work after getting proparly Egon’d so to speak.

And hey, I can understand if people rather keep the mystery going because they find it more intriguing, and in a lot of cases I do too. But I do find it just as intriguing when science can make a solid attempt to take the un out of the unknown, the unexplainable, the unmeasurable, and the cool and unique ways and methods it will come up with to do so.

So what are your thoughts then? Do you too like it when science tries to factualize the mystical or do you object to that concept? Have you tried anything like it in your own creative works? Have you invented a P.K.E meter of your own perhaps?

Let me know in the comments. I ain’t afraid of no comments^^

Helixfinger out!