Roger D. Nelson is an American scientist and researcher and the director of the

Global Consciousness Project The Global Consciousness Project (GCP, also called the EGG Project) is a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems. The project monitors a geographically di ...

(GCP), an international, multi-laboratory collaboration founded in 1997 which aimed to study

collective consciousness Collective consciousness, collective conscience, or collective conscious (french: conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.''Collins Dictionary of Sociolog ...

. From 1980 to 2002, he was Coordinator of Research at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory at Princeton University. His professional focus was the study of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

and

intention Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the '' ...

and the role of the mind in the physical world. His work integrates

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

and spirituality , including research that is directly focused on numinous communal experiences. Building on years of laboratory experiments studying the effects of human intention on sensitive engineering equipment , Nelson began using random event generator (REG) technology in the field to study effects of special states of group consciousness. This led to the GCP, a globally distributed network of REGs around the world sending data continuously over the Internet to a server in Princeton, NJ. The network is designed to register indications of a hypothesized global consciousness responding to major world events such as 9/11/2001, the beginnings of wars, or New Year's Eve. Nelson's professional degrees are in experimental

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

. Until his retirement in 2002, he served as the coordinator of experimental work in the

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) was a research program at Princeton University that studied parapsychology. Established in 1979 by then Dean of Engineering Robert G. Jahn, PEAR conducted formal studies on two primary subject a ...

(PEAR), directed by

Robert Jahn Robert George Jahn (April 1, 1930 – November 15, 2017) was an American plasma physicist, Professor of Aerospace Science, and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. Jahn was also a founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies ...

in the department of

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

, School of Engineering/Applied Science,

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nelson, Roger D. Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Princeton University faculty American parapsychologists