ESP and parapsychology : a critical reevaluation PDF
Preview ESP and parapsychology : a critical reevaluation
E SP ^ ^ H and P A R A PSYCHOLOGY A CRITICAL RE-EVALUATION C.E.M. HANSEL ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation C. E. M. Hansel IS Prometheus Boohs Buffalo, New York 14215 Published by Prometheus Books 1203 Kensington Avenue Buffalo, New York 14215 Copyright © 1980 by Prometheus Books All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-56361 ISBN 0-87975-119-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-87975-120-7 (paper) Printed in the United States of America Contents Preface v PART ONE 1 I The Origins of Psychical Research 3 2 The Subject Matter of Psychical Research 11 3 Examining the Evidence 19 4 Early Investigations 29 5 Accounts of Strange Experiences 43 6 Spiritualism 55 7 Summary to Part One 73 PART TWO 81 8 Salad Days at Duke University 85 9 The Years of Controversy 1934-1940 99 10 The Pearce-Pratt Experiment 111 II The Pratt-Woodruff Experiment 125 12 The Soal-Goldney Experiment 141 13 The Telepathic Welsh Schoolboys 169 14 Psychokinesis 189 15 Group Experiments 199 16 Research Behind the Iron Curtain 205 17 Summary to Part Two 211 iii iv Contents PART THREE 215 18 Testing ESP with a Machine 217 19 Psychical Research at SRI 237 20 Telepathy in Dreams 243 21 The Challenge of Chance 255 22 The Miracle Men 261 23 Uri Geller at SRI 277 24 Mind-Reach 291 25 Summary to Part Three 297 PART FOUR 305 26 Conclusions 307 Suggestions for Further Reading 317 Index 319 Preface In 1966, ESP: A Scientific Evaluation was published with the aim of evaluating research on ESP and other reputedly psychic phenomena. Since then new experi ments have been reported and the feats of men such as Uri Geller have received wide publicity. The aim here is to examine all the experiments and to make a further evaluation in the light of any new features that have emerged. In the earlier book the material was taken in its historical perspective. It was stressed that this is necessary in order to give understanding of the nature of the research and of the claims that have been made. For this reason much of the original material has been retained, since no reason could be found to change what has already been written. New developments have, however, arisen in the case of some of the earlier experiments and these have been updated where necessary. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness again to all those who collab orated with me when I was preparing my earlier book, in particular to Professor Emeritus R. T. Birge and to Mr. Martin Gardner. Thanks are also now due to Mr. Kenneth Heuer, formerly Science Editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, for his expert advice and encouragement. For assistance when preparing this new volume my thanks are due to Dr. E. G. Dingwall, Dr. Trevor H. Hall, and to Dr. Christopher Scott. In addition I would like to thank Mr. Francis Hitchin for the loan of published material. I am also most grateful to Professor Paul Kurtz for making publication possible. Finally, I am indebted to my wife, Gwenllian, who has spent many laborious hours correcting the manuscript and proofs, and who has maintained extensive records and reference material. v PA R T O NE 1 The Origins of Psychical Research 3 The Foundation of the Society for Psychical Research 4 Attitudes toward ESP 5 2 The Subject Matter of Psychical Research 11 Sensory and Extrasensory Perception 11 Measuring Information Gain 13 Transmitting a Message 14 Telepathy 14 Clairvoyance 15 Precognition 16 Psychokinesis 17 Spontaneous Data 17 3 Examining the Evidence 19 The Amount of Evidence 19 The Effects of Error and Trickery 21 Initial Assumptions 22 The Statistical Evaluation of an Experiment 22 Exploratory and Conclusive Methods 24 Conclusive Experiments Before 1965 25 Experiments After 1965 27 1 2 ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation 4 Early Investigations 29 British Research 29 The Smith-Blackbum Experiments 30 Characteristics of Early Experiments 33 Muscular Movements 34 Mental Habits 35 Recording Errors 35 The Brugmans Experiment 35 Some Telepathy Experiments 36 Coover’s Research 39 5 Accounts of Strange Experiences 43 The Apparition Seen by Sir Edmund Hornby 44 Some Other Strange Happenings 47 Causes of “Inexplicable Happenings’ ’ 50 6 Spiritualism 55 Physical Mediums 55 Mental Mediums 64 7 Summary to Part One 73 Margery Crandon 75 1 The Origins of Psychical Research Most persons learn through experience that awareness of objects in the world outside them arises through the use of the senses. Scientific knowledge explains how this comes about—we see an object because light is reflected from it into our eyes—and also makes clear, indirectly, the conditions under which seeing cannot take place—light is necessary for vision; therefore, without it, we cannot see. Personal experience also tells us that our thoughts remain private unless expressed by voice or action. Another person’s thoughts can be guessed, but few would claim to be able to know them as they would if the person were thinking aloud. There are exceptions. On the stage, men appear to see when blindfolded and to read thoughts; but such performances are classified as magic, and it is known that the magician uses tricks that enable him to appear to do what common sense says is impossible. During the past 50 years, however, the public has become aware of reports that abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy have been demonstrated in the laboratory by means of rigorously controlled experiments. These claims are puzzling to many persons who are interested in natural processes and scientific experimentation, for the investigators appear to have established, by means of carefully planned experiments and conventional statistical analyses, the reality of phenomena that conflict with well-established principles. Experimental evidence has been produced for four such processes to date: 1 1. Telepathy, a person’s awareness of another’s thoughts in the absence of any communication through sensory channels. 3 4 ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation 2. Clairvoyance, knowledge acquired of an object or event without the use of the senses. 3. Precognition, knowledge a person may have of another person’s future thoughts (precognitive telepathy) or of future events (precognitive clairvoy ance). 4. Psychokinesis, a person’s ability to influence a physical object or an event, such as the fall of a die, by thinking about it. Since the first three of these processes involve an act of perception or cognition and also because they are, by definition, independent of activity in the sense organs, each is commonly referred to as a kind of extrasensory perception, or ESP. It will be seen that these four terms are restatements in systematic language of beliefs that have long been a part of folklore and superstition. Telepathy is a new name for mind reading; clairvoyance for second sight; precognition for divination or premonition; and psychokinesis is another name for levitation or for the process whereby a man thinks, for example, that he can get good weather for his holiday by praying for it. For this reason, the experiments, if they can be relied on, would imply that much of what has in the past been regarded as superstition must now be included in the domain of natural science. The Foundation of the Society for Psychical Research Preoccupation with these beliefs was responsible for the emergence at the end of the nineteenth century of psychical research, in which the study of ESP and other related phenomena became an organized discipline. At that time, there was a great deal of speculation about the possibility of strange new human powers. Stories of extraordinary happenings that seemed to contravene accepted scientific principles were popular, just as they are today. In the latter half of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, much publicity was given to spiritualist mediums, who supposedly received messages from the dead and whose exploits attracted con siderable scientific interest. But, at that time science displayed a unity in that when a new discipline, such as biology, revealed facts involving new types of processes, they were always consistent with other scientific knowledge. Thus, principles of physics and chem istry operated in the new discoveries of biology. As D’Arcy Thompson (1860- 1948), the Scottish biologist, wrote, “ . . . no physical law, any more than gravity itself, not even among the puzzles of stereo-chemistry, or of physiological surface- action and osmosis, is known to be transgressed by the bodily mechanism.” 1 In the realm of the senses, the eye was found to employ principles known to optics and the ear to contain mechanisms that might be expected from the study of sound. Messages were transmitted along nerve fibers from the sensory organs to
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