That Dan Brown was a terrible writer with a weakness for the sort of pseudohistorical conspiracy theories usually floated by college sophomores stinking of bongwater, we knew from his previous books. But what makes his latest The Lost Symbol truly annoying, as opposed to merely forgettable, is his use of so-called “noetic science” as a major plot point. Brown being inexplicably popular as he is, there’s already a ripple effect; BookScan indicates that Lynne McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment, which gets a mention in The Lost Symbol, is experiencing a spike in sales.
This is good news for Lynne McTaggart, who is, I’m sure, a lovely person — but bad news for those of us with fully-functional bullshit detectors. If noetics really is the next big thing, then we have reason to dread the water-cooler, these days, those of us who are interested in religion, or science, or both, and who resent the cheapening of both that comes of trying to fuse the two. Here’s Brown’s rundown on noetics — what we used to call “mind over matter,” back in the day:
[Katherine’s research] was a scientific tour de force — a massive collection of experiments that proved human thought was a real and measurable force in the world. Katherine’s experiments demonstrated the effect of human thought on everything from ice crystals to the movement o subatomic particles. The results were conclusive and irrefutable, with the potential to transform skeptics into believers and affect global consciousness on a massive scale.
“We have scientifically proven that the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought. …. The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It’s a hard-core scientific reality… and harnessing it has the potential to transform our world. This is the underlying discovery of Noetic Science.”
(Something about Brown’s prose always sound like he doth protest a wee bit too much.)
Now, Dan Brown knows a good idea when he steals one; the central conceit of The DaVinci Code was lifted wholesale from the conspiracy classic Holy Blood, Holy Grail. A couple of media sensations over the last few years have popularized the pseudo-science of noetics — the movie What the [Bleep] Do We Know!?, and the book The Secret and its spinoffs. It’s via one or both of these that noetic science most likely came onto Dan Brown’s radar. At least, it’s these two that I single out for blame and scorn today. (more…)
I went ahead and used Cloth’s name, but it turns out he was using an alias inspired by Deep Throat, from All the President’s Men. He duped me, but I’m not mad. The way I see it, we both got what we wanted, and neither of us had to look at the other one naked.