Feng Shui taught in our tertiary institution

I was appalled and speechless when I chanced upon this article published in November 2006.

"Using science to learn about Feng Shui" My Paper, 28 Nov 06, (c) 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Limited.

Basically it's singing praises for a "Basic Science of Feng Shui" course offered at Singapore Polytechnic for the past 8 years. I cannot imagine why an educational institute with any credibility will want to be associated with this pseudoscience. I mean how low can you get to teach feng shui?

The feng shui people was of course advertising that their wisdom is good enough to be certified by a national polytechnic.

"first Feng Shui Master to offer training and education in Feng Shui through a nationally accredited tertiary institution."

As if this would give them any credibility.

Please, let us reason. Feng shui is the magical notion that luck, wealth, health and so on can be controlled by moving furniture, wearing a certain colour, carrying an amulet and sleeping in certain direction. It contains astrology, numerology, gemancy. It is by any reasonable definition, a superstitious.

As much as the believers would want you to believe, feng shui is not science. Let's ask a simple question. You claim all these wonderful and mystical knowledge that allows you to manipulate energy and possibly fate, and bring happiness and joy to everyone you meet. So the question is: "What evidences do you have that the world actually works that way?" If you are a reasonable and intelligent person, you would see that feng shui could not be proved. Do be a science, you need to be able to produce consistence and measurable results in controlled experiments. You can't just walk around and say it's true because I say so, and I have a nice suit and a fancy compass. What is happening here is that we are giving the feng shui masters a "magic check". He or she can say anything and give any advices and never be wrong. Who's going to correct them?
It's magic.

And the that's chi. You have to believe in chi if you do feng shui, because you are after all, moving chi around. Some call it energy, some call it vibration, whatever, you got to do chi, or the game's is up. It's the “energy” word that gives the whole thing a flavor of science. "Energy is a scientific thing right? It got to be science if you involve energy." My question is still the same, "so prove it". This mysterious energy that you find in all things (master yoda would make a fine feng shui consultant by the way), could you measure it? Could you detect it in any way? No? Well, then its not science, it's magic. Now many feng shui people would at this point, starts blabbing about how you can't detect this energy but you can see its effect on things...blah blah blah. Ok, next logical question. Can this mysterious energy of yours have any real effect on the physical world? Yes? Well, if it has an effect on the measurable physical world, then why can't we detect it? That's illogical. Oh right, feng shui doesn't need logic, it's magic.

I wanted to list down a couple of logical fallacies on feng shui. Logical fallacies are basically false or incorrect logical principle that makes an augment invalid. (Brorrowed shamlessly from the skeptics' guide to the universe and Practical skepticism)

1. argument from ignorance, we can't prove that it isn't true. We can't prove that feng shui doesn't happen therefore feng shui is real. It's impossible to disprove a negative. There are so many things that can't be disprove, I could be a alien. You can't disprove that.
   
   
2. argument from authority, there's why the suit and funny clothes are important. It's ture because the master says it's true.
   
   
3. argument from personal incredulity, I can't explain or understand this, therefore it's true.
   
   
4. false Continuum, there is a fuzzy line between science and this, therefore they are really the same thing.
   
   
5. Inconsistency, chi effects the world we live in, but we can't see or measure this effect.
   
   
6. "Special pleading, or ad-hoc reasoning This is a subtle fallacy which is often difficult to recognize. In essence, it is the arbitrary introduction of new elements into an argument in order to fix them so that they appear valid. A good example of this is the ad-hoc dismissal of negative test results. For example, one might point out that ESP has never been demonstrated under adequate test conditions, therefore ESP is not a genuine phenomenon. Defenders of ESP have attempted to counter this argument by introducing the arbitrary premise that ESP does not work in the presence of skeptics. This fallacy is often taken to ridiculous extremes, and more and more bizarre ad hoc elements are added to explain experimental failures or logical inconsistencies."
   
   
7. appeal to popularity, many people believe this, therefore it's true.
   
   
8. argument from age, it's got to be good because it is traditional or has been around for a long time.
   
   
9. Equivocation is the use of more than one definition of a word or phrase so that a faulty conclusion is reached. Think energy, chi, energy fields.
   
   
10. Galileo Gambit where the writer compares herself (or whoever she is supporting) to some famous person, noting some alleged similarity. "They didn't believe Galileo, and now they didn't believe me."
    
    
11. Scare tactics, threatened people with some undesirable consequence, ie bad luck.
    

Feng Shui is bunk.

The way I see it, there are people that genuinely believe in feng shui and its magical effects and they really wish to use it to help people. These true believers are sad, but forgivable. But then there are some who sees it as nothing more as a scam to get money from people. It's easy when there is no clear guage to what feng shui is. False hope has always been in demand.

To depress me even more about the state of the world, Motorola patented a Feng Shui measuring phone. [Link]