> some kind of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.
Something being not scientific doesn't imply it doesn't exist. It may instead just be too hard to observe scientifically, sound too crazy and appear uninteresting to scientists. Nowadays there already is enough credible research in these areas to be confident exotic phenomena actually take place in peoples brains when they report mystical experiences - thanks to techniques like fMRI, EEG, transcranial stimulation etc. People may tend to make epic claims and construct wonky ideologies based on what they feel, but they don't always make the entire story up. UFOs also are known to exist AFAIK - there just is no reason to believe that's alien spaceships, that's just flying objects we failed to identify and explain. We just need more real scientific exploration to decrease need in fairly-tale explanations of the phenomena people observe - hasn't this almost always been the case with everything since the stone age? The very fact people try to discuss "supernatural" phenomena with a scientist suggests presence of the demand for more science in this.
In the context of the talk/article, I think its clear that Feynman is critical here of the "fairly[sic]-tale explanations", and not the idea itself.
I've always understood this talk as amounting to "we claim that our society respects science, but our society seems unwilling to apply the rigor that science demands to sort out fact from fiction. See, for instance, all of these erroneous explanations for observed phenomenon, explanations that do not hold up to rigorous examination".
Something being not scientific doesn't imply it doesn't exist. It may instead just be too hard to observe scientifically, sound too crazy and appear uninteresting to scientists. Nowadays there already is enough credible research in these areas to be confident exotic phenomena actually take place in peoples brains when they report mystical experiences - thanks to techniques like fMRI, EEG, transcranial stimulation etc. People may tend to make epic claims and construct wonky ideologies based on what they feel, but they don't always make the entire story up. UFOs also are known to exist AFAIK - there just is no reason to believe that's alien spaceships, that's just flying objects we failed to identify and explain. We just need more real scientific exploration to decrease need in fairly-tale explanations of the phenomena people observe - hasn't this almost always been the case with everything since the stone age? The very fact people try to discuss "supernatural" phenomena with a scientist suggests presence of the demand for more science in this.