Superstition and Science

Research Essay

Superstition and Science

According to William James in IS LIFE WORTH LIVING "our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea". In fact, we know that the source of the Superstitions is ignorance while Science is all about explanations and predictions of the Universe, however people's ignorance will never end. Many people tends to believe that superstitions exist even though it is not true. There are thousands of superstitions around the world that differs from culture to culture, unfortunately these beliefs affect our daily life. For example in China when your right eye blinks it is bad luck while in Morocco and most of the Arab countries it means that someone related to you is thinking of you. So if Superstition is ignorance, then how can it be related to Science?

A lot of our Superstitions stem from Human Consciousness which leads us to co-create our reality, for instance breaking mirrors will have seven years of bad luck. Where did these beliefs come from? And based on what kind of facts were they made up? Breaking mirrors superstition originates from the Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Africans and Indians. In the Encyclopedia of Superstitions 1949 written by Edwin Radford, Mona A. Radford, people believed mirror trap the one's spirit in it so breaking it will affect the person's soul, "The origin of this belief is that the soul projected out of a person in the shape of his reflection in a mirror may be carried off by the ghost of the departed person, and thus, would not go to paradise". Nowadays we know that mirrors do not trap souls, because mirrors are made of sheets of glass which is coated with metal so it can reflect the person's image.

Nightmares takes place in your mind when disturbing or stressful things happens. And for centuries people have looked into the meaning behind dreaming and Nightmares. Early civilizations thought dreams are messages from Gods, and Nightmares usually were believed to be omens of bad luck. For example when you had a nightmare about falling without ending, many people will believes that it indicate he or she will have many deceptions in the future. So does nightmares have superstitious meanings or are they just reflections of bad events that took place? Psychologist will tell you that you have nightmares because of your insecurity, your fear of letting go, your lack of self-confidence, your fear of failure, or your incapability of coping with a situation afterwards. So once you understand the psychology behind it you will able to prevent nightmare because it is all in your mind.

Nowadays researchers believed that 99% of one's dreams were reflection of past events and the bad dreams are the reflections of your stressful thoughts that happened in the day. One of the theories is that we dream to de-clutter our brains because every day we absorb new information both consciously and unconsciously, dreaming is away to discard information we don't need which helps to keep our brain organized. And some neurobiological scientist believes the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which they think that dreams don’t actually mean anything because its only some random electrical brain impulses which will show some unrelated or images in your sleep.

In conclusion superstition are predictions based on beliefs in our culture and scientific predictions are based on the facts from scientific researches. From the research articles I have read and the examples that I have showed, it shows that superstitions beliefs can be traced back to the origin of first human being. And a lot of them are not related with any scientific basis but they still cannot be removed from our conscience mind. Because these superstition beliefs have been passed done by our ancestor and it has imprinted into our hearts and cultures. Therefore I believe superstition are not related to science.