The Feng Shui It is an ancient Chinese Taoist practice that promises to improve the well-being of the inhabitants of an environment, by changing the arrangement of furniture elements. For example, a practice that would benefit our psycho-physical balance is sleep with your head facing north. Despite there is no scientific evidence in favor of the effects of Feng Shui, this practice has also spread in the Western world, to the point of arousing the interest of scientists and philosophers. In fact, today Feng Shui is considered a paradigmatic example of pseudoscience because of the characteristics of its principles. Let’s see in detail what this practice consists of and why it cannot be considered a science.
What is Feng Shui and what is its meaning?
The practice of Feng Shui has ancient originsdating back at least 3000 years, when it was practiced in China. Born from the foundations of astronomy and astrologyhas been enriched over time with tools, such as the magnetic compass, and concepts, such as the energy called “Qi”Feng Shui offers a series of rules and methods for finding the ideal positioning of environmental elements which should be able to maximize the “good Qi”, with positive effects on health and luck. The rules and methods of Feng Shui require, in order to be applied, complex calculations and measurements.
Nowadays Feng Shui is mainly used in the field of interior designwith private consultants who claim they can improve an unspecified “energy flow” of an environment explaining how to arrange the furniture. In ancient times however this divinatory practice it was also used to place buildings in propitious places and orient them in the best way with respect to the Earth’s polesto the stars and the winds.
Feng Shui and the problem of demarcation
The practice of Feng Shui has been subject of many studies over the years and at the moment it is considered to all intents and purposes a pseudoscience: no experiment has ever demonstrated observable empirical effects on health. However, over the years Feng Shui has proven to be an excellent case study for the philosophy of science, which has long addressed the “demarcation problem”.
This problem concerns the possibility of demarcating, therefore distinguishing, what is science from what is not. In fact, to affirm that Feng Shui is not a science, but a pseudoscience, does not coincide with affirming that it does not contain any truths or that the recommendations it provides are not good. For example, the Feng Shui principle of always building your home near sources of clear water, when possible, is valid and sensible Despite the practice as a whole has no scientific basis.
The principle that sleeping with our head facing North would improve our health, on the other hand, it has never been verified from an experimental point of view. If, as Feng Shui states, sleeping in other positions would conflict our energies with the earth’s energy fieldundergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) should have devastating effects. Instead, although an MRI generates magnetic fields hundreds of times more intense of the terrestrial one, it is not observed no effect on our health.
But let’s see that what’s missing to Feng Shui, together with the lack of experimental evidence, to be considered a science.
Why Feng Shui is not a science?
There are several reasons why Feng Shui cannot be considered a science: let’s look at them briefly.
Feng Shui does not have predictive abilityin fact it does not foresee effects or phenomena better than what can be done by going haphazardly. Improvements in the health of the inhabitants of houses furnished according to Feng Shui, for example, they do not occur more often than in other homes.
Another fundamental deficiency of Feng Shui concerns its reproducibility. Since it claims to follow universal laws of the cosmos with rigorous methods, Feng Shui applications from different experts to the same environmentshould lead to the same arrangement of the furniture. However, the experts involved in the experiments they didn’t agree on the optimal layout for the same room, invalidating the principles of universality of Feng Shui.
Another fundamental property of scientific disciplines that Feng Shui does not have is the falsifiability. Feng Shui experts in fact do constant use of justifications when their predictions do not come true, they give as reasons explanations that cannot be proven false in any way.
For example when a prediction about the wealth of a person living in a Feng Shui house it doesn’t come trueexperts systematically attribute the failure not to the unfoundedness of Feng Shui, but always to external factors such as negative “karma” of the inhabitant. The “karma” obviously it is not measurable or evidenceable in any way and this makes the justification completely impervious to scientific criticism.
Ultimately, Feng Shui is an ancient traditional practice that may have merits in aesthetic improvement of the environments in which we live and contains common sense architectural principles, but It lacks experimental verification and theoretical characteristics to be considered a real science. At the moment it is therefore considered a pseudoscience.
