Dharma and the hatches

According to the video Dharma were studying five things on the island:

- 1. Psychology (the science of the mind and its behaviours)

- 2. Parapsychology (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology for a discussion and definition of parapsychology. Basically it is to do with paranormal phenomena such as near death experience, ESP, apparitions etc)

- 3. Meteorology (The science of the atmosphere and weather)

- 4. Electromagnetism (The study of magnetic and electric fields and how they interact with each other)

- 5. Zoology (The study of animals)

The hatches we have seen so far somewhat correspond to these fields.

The Swan hatch clearly deals with Electromagnetism

The Hydra hatch was obviously where they studied animals from polar bears to sharks and dolphins - Zoology

It seems that the Pearl may have dealt with Psychology - a double bluff experiment.

We have seen two more hatches, and though one seemed abandoned and the Other used for medical purposes I wonder what their original purposes were ?The Staff where Claire was held we call the Medical hatch, but just because that was how they had it kitted out. It may have served a different purpose originally. Same goes for the Arrow - abandoned now, but who klnows what may have been studied there originally?

If I am correct above then we are left with Meteorology and Parapsychology, then again there might have been more hatches as well.

I don't think we can rely on the accuracy of the map that appeared on the blast door. For several reasons :

- It was drawn by Kelvin who we know was a liar and according to him also by Radzinski whom we know nothing about, maybe he never existed or maybe he was manipulaitng Kelvin the same way he manipulated Desmond.

- The Staff and the Arrow seem to be almost equidistant from the Swan - we know the Arrow was across the island where the Tailies were while the Staff was near enough for both a heavily pregnant Claire to escape from albeit with Danielle's help, and for her and Kate to find in less than a day just a fortnight or so after she gave birth.

- There is no sign of the Hydra on this map and it seems to be an important hatch if it was where they did all their animal research.

Not really a theory I'm afraid, just correlating a few bits and pieces into one coherent post. I wonder what the story was with the pics on the blast door? And which hatches were used for what? Could Walt have been held in a different hatch (perhaps the parapsychology one whether that is one we know about or not) while he was appearing to Shannon? And if there are more than five hatches then what were the rest used for? Any thoughts?

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Great post! Though we know that the Hydra hatch (where Jack is) is on the second island, so it wouldn't be on the blast door map of the island. :]

The hydra isnt on the second isnland its between the 2 islands as far as im aware....The hydra is the hatch thats underwater no?........Sawyer and kate are on the other island and jacks between the 2.....

Very very very good post a_r puts a few things into perspective

the hydra is more than a hatch though...the underwater bit is part of it but the symbol is also evident near the polar bear cages...good point about it being on the second island though and that's why is isn't there.

Now we have eyepatch guy, in another hatch - is he like Kelvin a leftover from Dharma days? And what was he studying? And is it just coincidence that the monster killed Eko just moments after eyepatch guy was discovered? Could it be that he controls it, and once he found his presence discovered he felt threatened and the monster - either acting on his orders, or perhaps just completely in tune with him - lashed out ?The only other person who was killed was the pilot, perhaps the monster held him responsible for crashing the plane?

And where is this other hatch and what is its purpose? There were always six hatches though we knew of only five thigns they were studying - could the monster be the secret subject of the sixth?

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i like the idea that the monster could be the secret subject of the sixth hatch as all the other hatches are studying other things. i think it is a big possibility

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Ive never really considered that maybe the others don't even know about the monster, we have no evidence that they know about it right?

true, they might not, though you would imagine that at least one of them would have seen it seeing as it came to investigate the losties as soon as they crashed...then again, if it killed one or two that it did investigate it might have been blamed on something else like maybe Danielle...we still don't know for sure what connection the Others have with Dharma, just a comment from Juliet about "that was a long time ago, it doesn't matter who we were, just who we are" but that is very vague and could mean a lot of things.

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Was the "Flame" area a hatch or not?