Noetic science

Noetic science, according to its promoters, is an "exploration into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses", most famously mentioned by Dan Brown in The Lost Symbol.

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Note that noetic "science" and noetic philosophy are distinct. Noetic (from the Greek noetikos, "mental") philosophy is philosophy dealing with the mind, intellect, or consciousness. However, this more often goes under the more obvious name of "theory" or "philosophy of mind" these days. Noetic "science" is closer to the pseudoscience of parapsychology and other such New Age fluff as "expanding your consciousness."

Institute of Noetic Sciences

The Institute of Noetic Sciences is the primary outlet for this form of woo. It was co-founded by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell and billionaire and former Exxon executive Paul N. Temple, who is also associated with the fundamentalist Christian organization The Family,

According to the Institute, the core of Noetic Science is as follows:

“”Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the "inner cosmos" of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the "outer cosmos" of the physical world.[1]

All of which sounds more like other ways of knowing than science.

Unsurprisingly, noetic science has come under criticism from skeptics and actual scientists, and the organization Quackwatch has placed the Institute of Noetic Science on the "questionable organizations" list.[2]

Global Consciousness Project

The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is more or less the PEAR project applied on a global scale. The idea is that random number generators (RNG) run by GCP will be affected by the focused attention of many people or high emotions from a worldwide event (i.e., the alleged "global consciousness"). This essentially boils down to running a whole bunch of RNGs, waiting for a spurious, statistically significant result, and then claiming to have successfully detected a "great disturbance in The Force."[3][4]

The project also has a bias of trying to prove that paranormal experiences are true.

Impact of The Lost Symbol

Following the publication of Dan Brown's book promoting noetic woo the institute has reported a twelve-fold increase in traffic to its web site and an increase in new members,[5] indicating that at least some people take Brown's work seriously.

gollark: It might be better to use some sort of dedicated radio-frequency thing instead of the phone network.
gollark: Destroy time zones. UTC is superior.
gollark: Ah, clearly Google's used their immense computational power to crack it early, excellent.
gollark: If it were easy to factor large numbers like that, modern cryptography would collapse. Hopefully 2020's factors can be bruteforced by the end of January.
gollark: How do you know?

See also

References
  1. What is Noetic Science? Institute of Noetic Science
  2. Quackwatch — Questionable Organizations
  3. Global Consciousness in The Skeptic's Dictionary
  4. GCP: An Independent Analysis of the 11 September 2001 events, Edwin C. May and James P. Spottiswoode
  5. NPR - Woman Reads Dan Brown Novel, Discovers Herself
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