Scientists continue to review the phenomenon
Scientists continue to review
the phenomenon
By Shannon Bartlett
Daily Evergreen staff
Patricia Arquette. Cate Blanchett. Whoopi Goldberg.
The connection? All have played characters with a special psychological ability often known as extrasensory perception.
Many people have had a similar feeling to these psychic characters ? they sense something they wouldn?t know otherwise, but can?t explain how or why they know it.
Extrasensory perception is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ?the supposed faculty of perceiving things by means other than the known senses, e.g. by telepathy.?
?Known senses? include sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch, and the senses of balance, temperature, pain and one?s own body.
ESP is said to transcend all nine senses. It?s grouped into a category known as parapsychology with other phenomena such as telepathy, out-of-body experiences and psychokinesis (moving objects with one?s mind). These phenomena are also referred to as ?psi? ? a more neutral term.
There is a debate over whether ESP is a real phenomenon.
Dr. Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a nonprofit organization conducting and sponsoring leading-edge research on all facets of consciousness, believes it is.
?The reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments,? according to his book, ?The Conscious Universe.?
?Instead, we know that these phenomena exist because of new ways of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected over a century by scores of researchers.?
ESP has a very old history, going back to the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece. Throughout history, many cultures have believed some people possessed special powers.
However, Dr. Samantha Swindell, director of the WSU undergraduate program for psychology, who teaches a class on pseudoscience, believes biology may explain past ESP instances.
Swindell says an 18th or 19th Century person may have had a spiritual experience that was unexplainable back then.
?Scientists later look at the religious rants and realize they look pretty similar to a disease like schizophrenia,? she said.
In 1882, trying to separate psi phenomena from spiritualism, the Society for Psychical Research was founded in London. In 1927, Joseph Rhine began work at Duke University and established the term ?extrasensory perception.? His facility became the Rhine Research Center, and is one of the leaders in studying parapsychology.
Though ESP and parapsychology are slowly being considered legitimate science-based topics, many people do not believe they actually exist.
?The most fascinating and frustrating aspect [of my parapsychology study] is the emotionally fierce reactions of people who have decided, based on nothing but prejudice, that the results of parapsychological experiments cannot be what they appear to be,? Radin said.
Swindell, though, cautions against believing studies that have not been replicated or appear too good to be true.
?Often times when you read an account of an experiment, it?s difficult to determine what actually happened,? she said. ?We tend to look for a reason why things happen but you have to be an objective skeptic when looking at the evidence.?
Radin believes this objective skepticism can be useful for people ? but non-objective skepticism isn?t.
?For genuine skeptics, meaning those who doubt but are open-minded, there is a substantial scientific literature that can be studied. Most that do their homework come away ? at minimum ? intrigued and motivated to learn more. For ?pseudoskeptics,? meaning those who take pride in disbelieving rather than doubting, nothing can be done,? he said.
Both parapsychology and general science are constantly evolving, however, and may one day fully come together.
?It?s so difficult to know,? Swindell said of reading parapsychological experiments. ?[Teaching the class] has been a bit of an eye-opener.?
Radin said that if parapsychology was accepted today, the scientific community would have to reevaluate the nature of time, causality and the role of the mind in the physical world.
?These are all very fundamental factors in that they underlie basic assumptions in science and society,? he said.
Source: http://www.dailyevergreen.com/disp_stor ... ryId=17069
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
