You've probably heard the one about the Idaho high school kid who took the honors at his local science fair for a unique experiment. He canvassed 50 people with a petition to ban "dihydrogen monoxide." Accompanying the petition was a list of facts about this substance, including its incorporation in acid rain, its ability to cause burns in its gaseous state, and the fact that it is found in tumors of cancer patients.

Out of 50 people there were 43 happy to sign the petition, 6 who were undecided, and only 1 who recognized the chemical as water.

Feng Shui's often dubious associations with "energy" are very much in the same vein as the story about the science fair winner and his petition. Just what are practitioners talking about when "Feng Shui" and "energy" are used in the same sentence?

Feng Shui derived from Taoist philosophy, which is primarily concerned with understanding the nature of the universe and harmonious integration of human activity and communities within the terrestrial and cosmic scheme. Taoists developing Feng Shui were the theoretical physicists of the ancient world -- part mystics and part scientists, their keen observations of and hypotheses about nature are the closest thing the ancients had to modern scientific inquiry, surpassing the Greeks by a considerable margin.

So, knowing that Feng Shui has a solid basis in observation and fact should render its practitioners capable of discussing "energy" within a modern scientific framework, right?

Get real.

There are far too many discussions of Feng Shui and so-called "aetheric energy," a gas supposedly pervading the universe. This concept was developed by the Greeks, who also believed that celestial bodies were gigantic crystals made of a fifth incorruptible element, and that women's reproductive organs wandered around their bodies. The ideas of "aether" and the wandering female human reproductive system were hot topics in the Middle Ages and influenced early Western scientific thought.

"Aetheric energy" was regarded as "superfluous" by Einstein in his famous 1905 paper and eventually demolished as even a remote possibility in one scientific experiment after another. Nevertheless, repeated proofs of aether's nonexistence have never entirely dissuaded the most diehard dreamers, though these days it's like believing in the Tooth Fairy. "The material aether does not exist," says physicist and professor Arthur Zajonc in his wonderful book Catching the Light. "It was a hypothetical fiction born of a materialistic imagination."

Then there are those Feng Shui practitioners who insist that Feng Shui deals entirely with metaphysics, either forgetting or admitting ignorance of Feng Shui's scientific roots -- or failing to acknowledge the sometimes metaphysical nature of modern physics.

Feng Shui isn't "beyond physics," to use the literal meaning of metaphysics. In some cases, quantum physics is far more mystical than authentic Feng Shui. Certainly Eugene Wigner's ideas about universal cosmic consciousness, Bohm's quantum potential and even the Casimir Effect offer a great deal of interesting mystical potential.

Energy was one thing to the Greeks and quite another to Taoists -- and, as it turns out, the Taoists were right. Traditional Feng Shui "energy" is the same energy you studied in school, though few practitioners appear willing or able to talk about it that way.

There's nothing aerie-faerie about energy unless we're talking theoretical physics like hyperspace theory or discussing superstring theory (the latter-day version of Kaluza-Klein theory), which sounds like Taoist philosophy and advanced Feng Shui formulas in the language of Star Trek. But more about that in another article.

Facts are facts, and will not disappear on account of your likes.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru

Theoretical physicist Fred Alan Wolf hypothesized in The Eagle's Quest that shamans have an understanding of the universe akin to physicists'. Shamans know that the universe is one huge wave and particle dance -- that everything is "vibrations," like quantum wave functions or vibrations of probability. Shamans' mental construct (paradigm) involves what is called "spirits" which is what physicists call "quantum physics." Shamans even have their version of nonlocality (Edward Lorenz' Butterfly Effect) that any scientist will immediately recognize.

However shamans are mystics, not scientists. They lack a physical and mathematical principle to explain their work.

Feng Shui, by contrast, does have physical and mathematical principles for its hypotheses. Yin Yang Theory, after all, is one of the oldest philosophical and mathematical systems on record and continually astounds those who delve into its properties. Feng Shui relies on Yin Yang Theory and its corollary, the "Five Activities" or Five Element Theory, characterized by Professor Liu Yanchi as systems-level theory.

Feng Shui's methodologies are similar to Western scientific inquiry. Practitioners observe and record, formulate mathematical models of structures, and report findings in both technical and layman's language. Any other sufficiently-skilled practitioner can access and assess the work, which is essential to any truly scientific system.

Any good Feng Shui practitioner can track energy potentialities in a structure over great spans of time if given basic reference points in space-time. (In other words, tell a practitioner the construction date of a structure and its precise orientation, and he or she can calculate its energy potential at any point in the past or future.)

Similarly, a practitioner can track bifurcation points or nodes in a given nonlinear system's phase space and offer potentialities. (That is, a practitioner can take a building's mathematical model and track energy shifts based upon remodeling or other outside interventions -- such as one-, twenty- and sixty-year cycles.)

It may not be couched in the same mathematical formulas and terms a physicist or complexity theorist would use, but it's definitely a scientific explanation of what goes on in a structure over time.

So what's the problem with Feng Shui practitioners' use of the term "energy"? Do we rely too heavily on the shamans' approach?

We'd certainly gain more credibility by siding with the scientists instead of the mystics. After all, to put it bluntly, the basis of Feng Shui is environmental science, physics, and mathematics -- more the theoretical physicist's outlook than the curandero's.

May the Forces Be with You

We all know there are four forces at work in the universe: strong nuclear force (the energy at an atomic level that fuels the stars), weak nuclear force (an atomic-level force that governs certain forms of electromagnetic decay, from dental X-rays to isotopes in power plants), gravity (what binds the galaxy, keeps planets in orbit and enables them to hold an atmosphere), and electromagnetic force (electricity, magnetism, light -- the main force at work at a planetary level, how our planet receives most of its energy from the sun). We know these exist because we use them and are influenced by them throughout our lives.

Electromagnetic waves are produced by rhythmic variations in electrical and magnetic fields and vibrate in a plane at right angles to the direction of flow. Within the electromagnetic spectrum is everything we take for granted in modern life -- everything from generated electricity, television, visible and invisible light, energy that cooks food via radiant heat or microwaves, the power that gives us suntans (and sunburns), photosynthesis, photographs and air currents.

This is the "energy" used by Feng Shui practitioners. Our compasses are tuned to the planetary magnetic field, while Form School methodology enables us to determine other terrestrial "lines of force," to use Faraday's term for fields. Yin Yang Theory gives us the primary wave theory (the ancients' version of S-matrix theory) and the Five Elements explain temporal and systems-level manifestations of electromagnetic wavelengths. Lo-shu and Ho T'u provide us with nonary specifications for phase space/physical modeling in conjunction with the formulas in 9 Star Ki, Shuyan K'ung, Tze Pei and the rest. It's a beautifully integrated system.

Taoists believe that everything is transmutable, which sounds pretty close to the Law of Conservation (that energy can't be created or destroyed, only transformed). "Energy" is concerned with the way molecules are arranged, whether we're talking about kinetic energy or chemical, heat, or electric energy; and work is just a transfer of energy. As the commercial says, "You're soaking in it."

Living beings come out of rocks and go back into rocks.
-- Stephan Harding

Potential energy is stored by an object, whether living or nonliving.

For humans, a potato functions like a battery does for a Walkman. It contains energy that can be converted by the system capable of unlocking the energy and using its calories -- in this case, your digestive tract. Our systems can break down potatoes, etc., into usable energy, while another system -- say, Kim Basinger's character in My Stepmother Is An Alien -- may find the Walkman's batteries far more nutritious and satisfying.

At first glance it seems that Feng Shui's use of electromagnetic energy concerns itself with convection -- after all, some practitioners talk at length about the ability of live plants to conduct Qi around a room.

What the plants are doing is called photosynthesis, and breathable air is a byproduct of this essential function. Without photosynthesis nothing would live on the planet. Universal Qi would still exist, but planetary Qi would not because it is the activity of life.

Practitioners say that plants in a house "store Qi," which is a reference to potential energy (remember the potato -- or, if you prefer, Kim Basinger), but the subject once again is convection when talk turns to windows and air flow.

Cold air is denser and its molecules move more slowly. Warm air's molecules move faster and carry heat around a room, moving more rapidly the hotter they get. Warm air molecules expand, rise, and occupy a larger volume; trapping denser, cooler air into a compact area. That "cold spot" people sometimes feel in houses is our bodies' reaction to this function of convection.

Interestingly, modern Feng Shui case studies lend credence to the ancient texts' theory that this phenomena occurs more frequently in homes determined to have a particular mathematical model and energy potential.

Winds are planet-sized convection currents set in movement by Earth's spin. Ancient sources tell us that planetary Qi is dispersed by wind, so it seems that convection and Qi do not necessarily coexist.

Crystal Persuasion

One of the most common misconceptions about energy concerns the use of crystals. Some people use rough crystals in a truly awful form of Feng Shui that, upon close examination, looks more like a modern cargo cult than any kind of science.

For one thing, just hanging a crystal somewhere in your house isn't going to do anything except give you one more thing to dust.

We all know about crystals' use in piezoelectricity, from sound generators and clocks to oscillators and microprocessors. You have to apply pressure or an electrical charge to a crystal for it to be capable of oscillating and generating voltage -- a crystal radio would be more appropriate for a crystal "cure."

But that brings up another important point: crystals generally operate within low megahertz range, in the bandwidth of ship radios and police scanners, which means your "cure" creates radio interference. Push enough power through a crystal cure and you'll disrupt transmissions for anything in range that uses the same bandwidth.

A patrol car passing by your house would pick up the signal from your "cure" and drop transmissions from its dispatch center. It gives a whole new dimension to a 911 call.

What's more, crystals are subject to mechanical stress that causes rapid aging and frequency fluctuations, rendering all but commercially-grown crystals useless -- which also suggests that natural crystals' efficacy as a homey Feng Shui cure is highly doubtful.

A practitioner could decide to use liquid crystals -- like LCDs in laptop computers, watches and calculators -- but he or she would still need electricity to change the state of liquid crystals. In an LCD, the crystal is sandwiched between transparent electrodes and a small voltage is applied to the regions of the electrodes that should change from clear to dark, from transparent to opaque.

Practitioners interested in crystals and piezoelectricity would do well to get in touch with IEEE or industrial crystal companies for more information.

Electromagnetism and the "Big Five"

The "Five Activities" (as the ancients generally called them) or the Five Elements, as they are generally known today, offer explanations of temporal and systems-level manifestations of electromagnetic wavelengths. Because these are our basis for remedies to homes and environments, let's look at how electromagnetism can be interpreted within Five Element Theory.

Earth
nm According to Han-shu well as Sho Kua and Ta Chuan in the Yi Jing, the Earth Element is a buffering agent -- what we'd call an insulator. Everyone knows that the Earth is used as a ground in electricity. The Earth Element's associative color is yellow, which falls into the pure spectral range of 5770 to 5970 angstroms. If we include orange, the range jumps from 5770 to 6220 angstroms. (Remember, the lower the frequency the longer the wavelength.)

Metal
Metals are great conductors of energy and polished surfaces of metals are wonderfully reflective substances. Chien (6) is the hot, white light of the heavens on a sunny day. Tui (7) is the image of sun reflecting off the surface of a placid lake, both white and metallic all at once -- an image of the synthesis of red, green and blue, the primary colors. It is evocative of the entirely of the visible spectrum for humans.

Water
At once reflective and refractive, water is also involved in evaporation and condensation. This is hinted at in the Yi Jing by "K'an," the Water Element, which is also the Abysmal, the great depth of the unknown. Black, one of the colors associated with K'an, hints that we are at the edge of our visible spectrum at night, when only the rods in our eyes function and our vision is in black and white; or that we are in the absence of light in deep space, where there are no objects for light waves to fall upon. Another color sometimes associated with K'an is violet, the last color visible to humans, which has the shortest wavelengths, 3900 to 4550 angstroms.

Wood
The Wood Element was associated with the Ministry of Agriculture in ancient China -- a terrific mnemonic for vegetative life and potential energy (like the potato), photosynthesis, respiration and transpiration. Its associative color is green, and the pure spectral color falls into a range of 4920 to 5770 angstroms.

Fire
The color of the longest wavelength (6220 to 7700 angstroms) is associated with the Fire Element, which makes sense considering it is identified with noon, the holy direction of south -- from whence comes heat in Chinese thinking. The next color on the spectrum lower than red is infrared, which has its own associations with heat.

Fire Element is concerned with induction (heating metals), radiation (emission of light waves invisible to human eyes) and heat energy, and the combustion process (which releases energy when a chemical is burned in air).

Feng Shui practitioners employ the Five Elements to remedy model-based or self-evident problems. Systematic approaches based upon the old texts, teachings from masters, and our modern understanding of them in the framework of science will make it easier for everyone to make the right decisions on adjustments for the good of all creatures and the planet.

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