For decades, scientists have tried to explain the phenomena that go on in every day life. They have attempted to explain how psychics can predict the future and why society is so afraid of the word atheist, when the ideas that such people follow are generally accepted. They
In the novel Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown Michael Shermer tries to uncover these mysteries. In the first section, author and main character Shermer goes undercover as a psychic reader to disprove the methods used by fortune-tellers. He does this because he wants to prove that lines on a hand and pictures on a card cannot tell a person’s future. For example, when he does a cold reading- meaning that he does not have any prior information on the subject- with tarot cards, he completely made up what the …show more content…
He explains, “History is a product of contingencies (what might have been) and necessities (what had to be)…” (393), and counterfactual conditionals help explore what could have been had something not happened. Shermer uses the example of Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” in which a character changes events in the past and how the changes affect the future. By stepping off of a designated path, Mr. Eckles, the main character, kills a butterfly, and, thus, the butterfly effect is born. This idea stands out because it emphasizes how every little action and decision plays into the next and how nothing is actually trivial and useless. The events of the past only happened because they were meant to happen and nothing else was destined. In a sense, Shermer is trying to say that there are no such things as what might have been; only things that had to be. This, however, does not stop people from predicting different effects by changing the cause; of course, doing so is necessary to fully understand the influence and importance of what actually