The Law of Attraction - Essay Example

The law of attraction The law of attraction such as those asserted by book The Secret is a nice idea but it is not scientifically proven to work. While the idea was persuasively argued, it cannot be taken as a scientific truth that could be proven to work or guaranteed to produce the desired outcome if one will follow its suggested laws or guidelines. According to the law of attraction, “thoughts become things” and that “thoughts have frequencies”. It suggests that for the law to work, one has to think positively so that positive results will happen. The application of the law enumerated many benefits that include success both in professional and personal lives but also the power to control one’s destiny which many critics had questioned its scientific validity. The main argument of the law of attraction is that thoughts can influence events that can later translate into desired material objects. It hinged its scientific basis on thought as energy and even identified the elements that are responsible for it which are electrons and photons. This assertion however remains to be a claim because it is yet to be scientifically proven that indeed these waves and particles can be controlled as one would will it. At most, the evidence presented to back this claim is largely anecdotal that cannot qualify as a scientific study. Anecdotal evidences are evidences based on anecdotes that do not have enough sample to qualify the subject of inquiry to become a scientific truth. Moreso, its method is also dubious because it is not subjected to the rigor of scientific method where samples or representative/s of population can be manipulated to produce the desired result and therefore inadmissible as a scientific evidence. There may be individual claims of how the law of attraction had wonderfully worked for such individual or made an individual happy and/or successful but this cannot be taken as a scientific truth because there are a lot of things that may have to contributed to this state and that it would be difficult to correlate such state to the laws prescribed by the law of attraction. Its claims cannot be verified, tested nor can be replicated using a predetermined method save for individual or even collective testimonies. Its closest semblance to science is Noetic Science which is not yet accepted by the scientific community to be a real science for the same reason that its claims are difficult to verify (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 2013). Scientific process mandates that any object of study must be observable, whose attributes are measurable to a system of standard point of reference. This makes it possible to quantify result to test a hypothesis that would make it possible to predict the existence of a certain phenomena (Jinks, 1997). In this aspect, the law of attraction failed miserably because it just cannot be quantified to test that indeed its claims are directly caused by the result of the application of the law of attraction. In addition, its claims are just too much such as directly linking the law of attraction to success because there are too many factors that contribute to it and most likely, it is an interplay of this factors that produced success. In disagreeing with the law of attraction of taking it as a scientific truth, it is not tantamount to dismissing to the good things it intends purport. The concepts that it intends to purport are all good and desirable such as positive thinking, enthusiasm, optimistic disposition. Positive thinking can indeed yield positive result and it is much better to lead life with confidence than being a pessimist. It is also better to lead a positive life that is full of enthusiasm and vigor than to live a life of negativity. But in as much as we would liked to directly correlate them with the law of attraction nor would they enable us to directly influence events and circumstances, the protocol of science will just not concur no matter how we would want it because it will fail the requirements of science. These are all wonderful ideas that we would like to work but taking it as a scientific truth can be dangerous. It could give people false hope that by merely following its laws/recommendations would yield the desired result when it could not be proven that it could deliver the results that it promise. To make the law of attraction helpful, its authors might want to rethink its approach. That instead of presenting itself as a scientific truth, it could instead present the law of attraction as what it is - as mere desirables of life that could help individuals live a positive life. To make the claim more credible and less susceptible to critique, they should stop on conveying the idea that its laws could influence events with certainty. To make the law of attraction taken in a more positive light, it could mitigate its claim that instead of claiming it to be hard science, it can instead say that it can help people to have a proactive outlook in life. It should veer away from directly correlating success in life or positive outcome to the law of attraction as its sole determinant because it is not only false, but dangerous as well. There are a lot of things that could contribute to success and positive outcome and assuming that the belief in the law of attraction helped to realize it, it is only one many of the many factors that contributed to the desirable result that its extent cannot even be quantified. If we will trace back the law attraction to one of its proponent’s video, it becomes more apparent that the claims of the law of attraction were just marketing hype to sell the book The Secret (Byrne, 2006). Its intention was more to sell the book more than to enlighten or enable us to realize our aspirations and therefore, we should treat its claims with a grain of salt rather than taking it as a scientific truth. Bookstore did not even have the courtesy to sort the book as a scientific material but rather a spiritual self-help book and therefore, it should be treated only as such. References Byrne, Rhona (2006). The Secret. Atria Books Beyond Words Publishing Institute of Noetic Sciences (2013). What are the Noetic Sciences? Retrieved from http://noetic.org/about/what-are-noetic-sciences/ Jinks, Jerry (1997). THE SCIENCE PROCESSES. Retrieved from http://my.ilstu.edu/~jdpeter/THE%20SCIENCE%20PROCESSES.htm Read More