You just have to be careful when you talk about study. A lot of study into this sort of thing is based on a lot of feelings and subjective intangible information.
Our minds are quite adept at making connections that don't exist, and at filling in holes where we're missing data. We can fabricate things that fill in those holes, and if everyone sees the same holes, and the same fabrication fills the hole fine enough, it's easy to believe that fabrication is the truth.
One should recognizes the holes, and leave them to be holes until he can prove otherwise.
I can accept that information can be passed between living things in ways we don't currently understand. I would sooner believe a little story on bees identifying flowers through detection of differently charged petals. I am less likely to use this as a reason to believe a whole line of mysticism/vitalism that has it's own doctrine on sexual behavior, claims to treat cancer, impart superhuman strength, and has a history that has changed with political and cultural whims.
Not to say that there is nothing correct or useful coming from QiGong, but that each of those things should be tested and evaluated individually. It's short sighted to accept the entire doctrine because parts of it fit.
Science actually often argues for forces we don't understand. Take a look at gravity, we still don't know why it works, we make up ideas about fields, or gravitons, or spacetime, but these are all just tools to model the behavior. We know more massive objects attract less massive objects, but how are they connected to do that attracting in the first place? Quantum Entanglement is an interesting thing too, is information transmitted at all? What is the meaning of information? Science asks so many questions, like what is space? Do we actually exist in 3 dimensions?
What science tries its hardest to avoid is explaining away the unanswered questions by filling in the holes with answers that just 'fit' without any way to validate the claim.
Our minds are quite adept at making connections that don't exist, and at filling in holes where we're missing data. We can fabricate things that fill in those holes, and if everyone sees the same holes, and the same fabrication fills the hole fine enough, it's easy to believe that fabrication is the truth.
One should recognizes the holes, and leave them to be holes until he can prove otherwise.
I can accept that information can be passed between living things in ways we don't currently understand. I would sooner believe a little story on bees identifying flowers through detection of differently charged petals. I am less likely to use this as a reason to believe a whole line of mysticism/vitalism that has it's own doctrine on sexual behavior, claims to treat cancer, impart superhuman strength, and has a history that has changed with political and cultural whims.
Not to say that there is nothing correct or useful coming from QiGong, but that each of those things should be tested and evaluated individually. It's short sighted to accept the entire doctrine because parts of it fit.
Science actually often argues for forces we don't understand. Take a look at gravity, we still don't know why it works, we make up ideas about fields, or gravitons, or spacetime, but these are all just tools to model the behavior. We know more massive objects attract less massive objects, but how are they connected to do that attracting in the first place? Quantum Entanglement is an interesting thing too, is information transmitted at all? What is the meaning of information? Science asks so many questions, like what is space? Do we actually exist in 3 dimensions?
What science tries its hardest to avoid is explaining away the unanswered questions by filling in the holes with answers that just 'fit' without any way to validate the claim.