Where Watching Mistakes Metaphor for Science

Kim Sang-un’s Watching became a bestseller after it appeared in 2011. Its promise was easy to understand. The way you look at yourself can change what you do next.

Even on my first reading, some of the explanations conflicted with what I knew about the experiments the book mentioned. Rereading made me want to see where the evidence ended and the metaphor began.

When the explanation borrows authority from science

The book attaches scientific language to familiar advice about attention and confidence. I think a reader can get something from the advice and still ask what the science has to do with it.

One authority it invokes is Fred Alan Wolf, a writer who connects quantum physics to consciousness.

An author’s background does not by itself establish a claim. The question is what was measured and what conclusion the evidence actually supports.

The examples that bothered me most gave me a place to start.

What Kirlian photography records

The book treats photographs of a glow around a body as images of an energy field. It says the image changes with mood or health.

Kirlian photography records an electrical corona discharge produced under high voltage. Experimental work found that moisture can alter the images. A visible change in a pattern is a long way from measuring what someone feels.

What would a test of the water claim require?

Another story concerns water exposed to kind or harsh words. The book describes changes in ice crystals and in jars of cooked rice as evidence that the words made a difference.

The examples draw on ideas popularized by Masaru Emoto’s The Hidden Messages in Water. To establish an effect, an experiment would have to control conditions and assess the results without the people selecting the pictures or inspecting the jars knowing which sample was which.

What observation means in a double-slit experiment

The book also invokes the double-slit experiment. It treats the “observer effect” as if it showed that the outcome depends on what a person imagines while watching.

Kim extends the analogy to the way a musician thinks about themselves. Someone who sees music as a lasting part of life might approach practice differently from someone planning to stop in a year.

That is a question about motivation and learning. It could be studied through what the musicians do and how they progress. The double-slit experiment does not supply the answer.

The book also describes water held by different people and then used on plants. A difference in growth could have many causes. The story does not separate them in a way that establishes an effect of the person’s feelings.

Similarly, two jars of rice can spoil differently because of contamination, handling or storage. A label does not tell you which conditions actually differed.

In the double-slit experiment, interference appears when the alternatives remain indistinguishable in the experimental setup. A detector that obtains path information changes the conditions under which that interference is observed.

The important distinction is the interaction involved in measurement. The experiment has no need for a person’s intention to make the apparatus work.

The advice underneath the examples

The book repeatedly uses such examples to reach a claim about the influence of thought. I would have found a close account of how a person changes their behavior more persuasive.

People do sometimes respond differently when they see a task differently. That is an interesting enough subject to describe in its own terms.

Borrowing the language of a precise experiment can make an explanation sound settled. A reader then has to undo the confusion before they can return to the advice the book actually wants them to consider.

What I could recognize in the book was an interest in outlook and attention. A question about what I pay attention to stays useful when I can also say what changed in my behavior.

It also presents a passage as Einstein’s view of the soul. I did not find a reliable source for the attribution.

• The passage treats the body as something the soul inhabits briefly.
• It goes on to imagine the soul surviving that brief period.

That idea tells me more about the argument the book is making than about Einstein’s work.

I came away willing to think about how my attention affects my choices. The question I would bring back to the book is what would count as evidence that it did.

Further reading

• Chemono — A critique of Watching’s use of science
• Daniel J — Watching, self-help and pseudoscience

Book details

Watching: God’s Magic

Author

Kim Sang-un

Published

April 12, 2011

ISBN-13

9788935703463

View on YES24

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