Scientific Illuminism

Noting that the written record should be intelligibly prepared so that others may benefit from its study (26), Crowley urged readers to examine a sample from an advanced student published in the same issue of The Equinox. He boldly asserted that the more scientific the record is, the better (26). He also cautioned that The A.A. will not take official notice of any experiments which are not thus properly recorded (25). The vision of scientific method that Crowley expressed in The Equinox would certainly have conformed to his own education in scientific research under Ramsay and Collie at London and at Cambridge. For Crowley, scientific illuminism would be characterized by meticulous and objective record keeping of laboratory experiments, a concern about possible sources of error, the broader research community s access to other scientists research results, and the sanctioning of practices by an authorizing body. 

Of course, Crowley is positioning himself and his journal as the repository of the ancient knowledge. (The idea that Crowley was trustworthy must have rankled Golden Dawn members to no end.) But beyond the narcissism so characteristic of Crowley s writing, the efforts by which scientific illuminism attempted to blur the boundaries of science depended on the assertion that ancient occult knowledge could be used with modem scientific mles of experiment, verification, and accurate measurement because it in fact was an extension of the physical sciences. 

Investigations in the field of shoek eompression of solid materials were originally performed for military purposes. Speeimens sueh as armor were subjected to either projectile impact or explosive detonation, and the severity and character of the resulting damage constituted the experimental data (see, e.g., Helie, 1840). Investigations of this type continue today, and although they certainly have their place, they are now considered more as engineering experiments than scientific research, inasmuch as they do little to illuminate the basic physics and material properties which determine the results of shock-compression events. 

When Mitchell first described his chemiosmotic hypothesis in 1961, little evidence existed to support it, and it was met with considerable skepticism by the scientific community. Eventually, however, considerable evidence accumulated to support this model. It is now clear that the electron transport chain generates a proton gradient, and careful measurements have shown that ATP is synthesized when a pH gradient is applied to mitochondria that cannot carry out electron transport. Even more relevant is a simple but crucial experiment reported in 1974 by Efraim Racker and Walther Stoeckenius, which provided specific confirmation of the Mitchell hypothesis. In this experiment, the bovine mitochondrial ATP synthasereconstituted in simple lipid vesicles with bac-teriorhodopsin, a light-driven proton pump from Halobaeterium halobium. As shown in Eigure 21.28, upon illumination, bacteriorhodopsin pumped protons... 

Ultimately, Patterson decided, his refuge lay in facts. I was driven to. . . prove my theoretical points unequivocally with solid experimental data. Instead of collecting reams of sloppy data, he chose problems where a few bedrock values would illuminate broad scientific vistas. His theories and chemical analyses would have to be painstakingly perfect in every detail because his thesis was premised on his laboratory s being right and almost every other trace metal laboratory s being wrong. 

Equipment PCR machine, scintillation counter, tabletop centrifuge, temperature-controlled water baths, equipment for horizontal and vertical electrophoresis, UV-illuminator, phosphor imager, automatic DNA sequencer, vacuum dot-blot manifold (Schleicher and Schuell). PCR 0.5 ml hot-start mbes, aerosol resistant pipette rips, autoclaved Eppendorf tubes (all from Fischer Scientific, Brightwaters, NY) and glassware, diethyl pyrocarbonate (DEPC, Sigma)-treated solutions. 

Another form of this definition [equation (3.6.15)] has sparked much debate in the scientific community [121-124]. In this approach Vapp (or Vbias) is taken as the absolute value of the difference between the potential at the working electrode measured with respect to a reference electrode (Vmeas) and the open circuit potential (Voc) measured with respect to the same reference electrode under identical conditions (in the same electrolyte solution and under the same illumination). In the case of a semiconductor photoanode where oxygen evolution takes place the efficiency is calculated as ... 

The alchemists never succeeded in making gold from base metals, yet their experiments, recorded under a mystical and intentionally obscure terminology, gradually revealed metallic arsenic and antimony. Bismuth was discovered by practical miners. Finally, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the pale light of phosphorus began to illumine the dark secrets of alchemy and to disclose the steady advance of scientific chemistry. 

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