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Precognition (from the
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported
psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use powers rooted in parapsychology, such as extrasensory perception (ESP), to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance; or who performs acts that a ...
phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future. There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is a real effect, and it is widely considered to be
pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable cl ...
. Precognition violates the principle of causality, that an effect cannot occur before its cause. Precognition has been widely believed in throughout history. Despite the lack of scientific evidence, many people believe it to be real; it is still widely reported and remains a topic of research and discussion within the
parapsychology Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, teleportation, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry (paranormal), psychometry) and other paranormal cla ...
community.


Precognitive phenomena

Precognition is sometimes treated as an example of the wider phenomenon of prescience or foreknowledge, to understand by any means what is likely to happen in the future. It is distinct from premonition, which is a vaguer feeling of some impending disaster. Related activities such as predictive
prophecy In religion, mythology, and fiction, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a ''prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain di ...
and
fortune telling Fortune telling is the spiritual practice of prediction, predicting information about a person's life.J. Gordon Melton, Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115–116. The scope of for ...
have been practised throughout history. Precognitive
dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...
s are the most widely reported occurrences of precognition. Usually, a dream or vision can only be identified as precognitive after the putative event has taken place. When such an event occurs after a dream, it is said to have "broken the dream".


In religion

In
Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...
it is believed that dreams are mostly insignificant while others "have the potential to contain prophetic messages". Others hold that dreams have meaning, and bad dreams require amelioration. According to the
Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek language, Greek ; ; ) is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its incipit, first word, (In the beginning (phrase), 'In the beginning'). Genesis purpor ...
, God granted Joseph precognition through prophetic dreams and the ability to interpret the dreams of others. Precognition has a role in
Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
with dreams believed to be 'mind-created phenomena'. Those dreams which 'warn of impending danger or even prepare us for overwhelming good news" are considered the most important.


History

Throughout history it has been believed that certain individuals have precognitive abilities, or that certain practices can induce such experiences, and these visions have sometimes been associated with important historical events. Despite the lack of scientific evidence, many people still believe in precognition. A poll in 2005 showed 73% of Americans believe in at least one type of paranormal experience, with 41% believing in
extrasensory perception Extrasensory perception (ESP), also known as a sixth sense, or cryptaesthesia, is a claimed paranormal ability pertaining to reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed with the mind. The term was ad ...
.


Antiquity

Since ancient times precognition has been associated with
dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...
s and
trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...
states as well as waking premonitions, giving rise to acts of prophecy and fortune telling.
Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...
s, originally seen as sources of wisdom, became progressively associated with previsions of the future.Inglis (1986), Chapter on "Precognition" Such claims of seeing the future have never been without their sceptical critics.
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
carried out an inquiry into allegedly prophetic dreams in his '' On Divination in Sleep''. He accepted that "it is quite conceivable that some dreams may be tokens and causes f future events but also believed that "most o-called propheticdreams are, however, to be classed as mere
coincidence A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead to b ...
s...". Where
Democritus Democritus (, ; , ''Dēmókritos'', meaning "chosen of the people"; – ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, Thrace, Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an ...
had suggested that emanations from future events could be sent back to the dreamer, Aristotle proposed that it was, rather, the dreamer's sense impressions which reached forward to the event.


17th–19th centuries

The term "precognition" first appeared in the 17th century but did not come into common use among investigators until much later. An early investigation into claims of precognition was published by the missionary Fr. P. Boilat in 1883. He claimed to have put an unspoken question to an African witch-doctor whom he mistrusted. Contrary to his expectations, the witch-doctor gave him the correct answer without ever having heard the question.


Early 20th century

In the early 20th century J. W. Dunne, a British soldier and aeronautics engineer, experienced several dreams which he regarded as precognitive. He developed techniques to record and analyse them, identifying any correspondences between his future experiences and his recorded dreams. He reported his findings in his 1927 book ''
An Experiment with Time ''An Experiment with Time'' is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne (1875–1949) about his precognitive dreams and a theory of time which he later called "Serialism". First published in March 1927 ...
''. In it he alleges that 10% of his dreams appeared to include some element of future experience. He also persuaded some friends to try the experiment on themselves, with mixed results. He noted a strong cognitive bias in which subjects, including himself, were reluctant to ascribe their dream correspondences to precognition and determinedly sought alternative explanations. Dunne concluded that precognitive elements in dreams are common and that many people unknowingly have them.Dunne (1927). He suggested also that dream precognition did not reference future events of all kinds, but specifically the future experiences of the dreamer. He was led to this idea when he found that a dream of a volcanic eruption appeared to foresee not the disaster itself but his subsequent misreading of an inaccurate account in a newspaper. Edith Lyttelton, who became President of the
Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
(SPR), regarded his theory as consistent with her own idea of the superconscious. In 1932 he helped the SPR to conduct a more formal experiment, but he and the Society's lead researcher
Theodore Besterman Theodore Deodatus Nathaniel Besterman (22 November 1904 – 10 November 1976) was a Polish-born British psychical researcher, bibliographer, biographer, and translator. In 1945 he became the first editor of the '' Journal of Documentation''. Fro ...
failed to agree on the significance of the results. Nevertheless, the Philosopher C. D. Broad remarked that, "The only theory known to me which seems worth consideration is that proposed by Mr. Dunne in his Experiment with Time." ''An Experiment with Time'' was widely read and "undoubtedly helped to form something of the imaginative climate of he interwaryears", influencing many writers of both fact and fiction both then and since. According to Flieger, "Dunne's theory was so current and popular a topic that not to understand it was a mark of singularity." Major writers whose work was significantly influenced by his ideas on precognition in dreams and visions include
H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...
, J. B. Priestley and
Olaf Stapledon William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was an English philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction''. New York ...
.Stewart, V.; "J. W. Dunne and literary culture in the 1930s and 1940s", ''Literature and History'', Volume 17, Number 2, Autumn 2008, pp. 62–81, Manchester University Press.
Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
was also later influenced by Dunne. In 1932
Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, and author. On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop flight from New York (state), New York to Paris, a distance of . His aircra ...
's infant son was kidnapped, murdered and buried among trees. Psychologists Henry Murray and D. R. Wheeler used the event to test for dream precognition, by inviting the public to report any dreams of the child. A total of 1,300 dreams were reported. Only five per cent envisioned the child dead and only 4 of the 1,300 envisioned the location of the grave as amongst trees. The first ongoing and organised research program on precognition was instituted by husband-and-wife team
Joseph Banks Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 – February 20, 1980), usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American Botany, botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the ...
and Louisa E. Rhine in the 1930s at
Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
's Parapsychology Laboratory. J. B. Rhine used a method of forced-choice matching in which participants guessed the order of a deck of 25 cards, each five of which bore one of five geometrical symbols. Although his results were positive and gained some academic acceptance, his methods were later shown to be badly flawed and subsequent researchers using more rigorous procedures were unable to reproduce his results. His mathematics was sometimes flawed, the experiments were not double-blinded or even necessarily single-blinded and some of the cards to be guessed were so thin that the symbol could be seen through the backing. Samuel G. Soal, another leading member of the SPR, was described by Rhine as one of his harshest critics, running many similar experiments with wholly negative results. However, from around 1940 he ran forced-choice ESP experiments in which a subject attempted to identify which of five animal pictures a subject in another room was looking at. Their performance on this task was at chance, but when the scores were matched with the card that came ''after'' the target card, three of the thirteen subjects showed a very high hit rate; Rhine now described Soal's work as "a milestone in the field". However analyses of Soal's findings, conducted several years later, concluded that the positive results were more likely the result of deliberate fraud.Hyman (2007). The controversy continued for many years more. In 1978 the statistician and parapsychology researcher Betty Markwick, while seeking to vindicate Soal, discovered that he had tampered with his data. The untainted experimental results showed no evidence of precognition.


Late 20th century

As more modern technology became available, more automated techniques of experimentation were developed that did not rely on hand-scoring of equivalence between targets and guesses, and in which the targets could be more reliably and readily tested at random. In 1969 Helmut Schmidt introduced the use of high-speed random event generators (REG) for precognition testing, and experiments were also conducted at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab. Once again, flaws were found in all of Schmidt's experiments, when the psychologist C. E. M. Hansel found that several necessary precautions were not taken. SF writer Philip K Dick believed that he had precognitive experiences and used the idea in some of his novels, especially as a central plot element in his 1956 science fiction short story " The Minority Report" and in his 1956 novel '' The World Jones Made''. In 1963 the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
television programme ''Monitor'' broadcast an appeal by the writer J.B. Priestley for experiences which challenged our understanding of Time. He received hundreds of letters in reply and believed that many of them described genuine precognitive dreams.Priestley (1964). In 2014 the BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Francis Spufford revisited Priestley's work and its relation to the ideas of J.W. Dunne. In 1965 G. W. Lambert, a former Council member of the SPR, proposed five criteria that needed to be met before an account of a precognitive dream could be regarded as credible: #The dream should be reported to a credible witness before the event. #The time interval between the dream and the event should be short. #The event should be unexpected at the time of the dream. #The description should be of an event destined literally, and not symbolically, to happen. #The details of dream and event should tally. David Ryback, a psychologist in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
, used a questionnaire survey approach to investigate precognitive dreaming in college students during the 1980s. His survey of over 433 participants showed that 290 or 66.9 per cent reported some form of paranormal dream. He rejected many of these reports, but claimed that 8.8 per cent of the population was having actual precognitive dreams.


21st century

In 2011 the psychologist Daryl Bem, a Professor Emeritus at
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
, published findings showing statistical evidence for precognition in the ''
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of social and personality psychology. The edi ...
''. The paper was heavily criticised, and the criticism widened to include the journal itself and the validity of the
peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
process. In 2012, an independent attempt to reproduce Bem's results was published, but it failed to do so. The widespread controversy led to calls for improvements in practice and for more research.


Scientific reception

Claims of precognition are, like any other claims, open to scientific criticism. However, the nature of the criticism must adapt to the nature of the claim.Hyman (2007), page217.


Pseudoscience

Claims of precognition are criticised on three main grounds: *There is no known scientific mechanism which would allow precognition. It breaks temporal causality, in that the precognised event causes an effect in the subject prior to the event itself. *The large body of experimental work has produced no accepted scientific evidence that precognition exists. *The large body of anecdotal evidence can be explained by alternative psychological mechanisms. Consequently, precognition is widely considered to be
pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable cl ...
. Alcock, James. (1981). ''Parapsychology-Science Or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective'' Pergamon Press. pp. 3–6.


Violation of causality

Precognition would violate the principle of antecedence ( causality); that is, that an effect does not happen before its cause. Information passing backwards in time (
retrocausality Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the mos ...
) would need to be carried by physical particles doing the same. Experimental evidence from high-energy physics suggests that this cannot happen. There is therefore no direct justification for precognition from a physics-based approach. Taylor, John. (1980). ''Science and the Supernatural: An Investigation of Paranormal Phenomena Including Psychic Healing, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Precognition by a Distinguished Physicist and Mathematician''. Temple Smith. p. 83. . Precognition would also contradict "most of the neuroscience and psychology literature, from electrophysiology and neuroimaging to temporal effects found in psychophysical research."


Lack of evidence

A great deal of evidence for precognition has been put forward, both as witnessed anecdotes and as experimental results, but none has been accepted as rigorous scientific proof of the phenomenon. Even the most prominent pieces of evidence have been repeatedly rejected due to errors in those experiments as well as follow-on studies contradicting the original evidence. This suggests that the evidence was not valid in the first place.


Alternative explanations

Various known psychological processes have been put forward to explain experiences of apparent precognition. These include: *
Coincidence A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead to b ...
, where apparent instances of precognition in fact arise from the law of truly large numbers. * Self-fulfilling prophecy and unconscious enactment, where people unconsciously bring about events which they have previously imagined. * Unconscious perception, where people unconsciously infer, from data they have unconsciously learned, that a certain event will probably happen in a certain context. When the event occurs, the former knowledge appears to have been acquired without the aid of recognised channels of information. * Retrofitting, which involves the false interpretation of a past record of a dream or vision, in order to match it to a recent event. Retrofitting provides an explanation for the supposed accuracy of
Nostradamus Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinisation of names, Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French Astrology, astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed Oracle, seer, who is best known for his book ''Les Prophéti ...
's vague predictions. For example, quatrain I:60 states "A ruler born near Italy...He's less a prince than a butcher." The phrase "near Italy" can be construed as covering a very broad range of geography, while no details are provided by Nostradamus regarding the era when this ruler will live. Because of this vagueness, and the flexibility of retrofitting, this quatrain has been interpreted by some as referring to
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
, but by others as referring to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and by others still as a reference to
Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
. *False memories, such as identifying paramnesia and memory biases, where the memory of a non-existent precognitive event is formed after the real event has occurred.Hines (2003). Where subjects in a dream experiment have been asked to write down their dreams in a diary, this can prevent selective memory effects such that the dreams no longer seem accurate about the future. *
Déjà vu ''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is the phenomenon of feeling like one has lived through the present situation in the past.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford University Press. pp. 167–1 ...
, where people experience a false feeling that an identical event has occurred previously. Some recent authors have suggested that déjà vu and identifying paramnesia are the same thing. This view is not universally held, with others instead treating them as distinct phenomena.Herman N. Sno (1991);
The deja vu experience: Remembrance of things past?
, ''American Journal of Psychiatry'' 147(12):1587-95. DOI:10.1176/ajp.147.12.1587
Psychological explanations have also been proposed for belief in precognition.
Psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...
s have conducted experiments which are claimed to show that people who feel loss of control in their lives will turn to belief in precognition, because it gives them a sense of regaining control.


See also

* List of topics characterized as pseudoscience * Oneiromancy: Divination using dreams. *
Remote viewing Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. There is no scientific evidence that remote viewing exists, and the topic of remote viewing is generally regarde ...
* Retrocognition: Direct knowledge of past events at which one was not present. *
Third eye The third eye (also called the mind's eye or inner eye) is an invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, supposed to provide perception beyond ordinary sight. In Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna (or brow) chakra. In bot ...
: Organ of mystical vision.


References


Notes


Bibliography

* * Flieger, Verlyn; ''A Question of Time: JRR Tolkien's Road to Faërie'', Kent State University Press, 1997. * * * Inglis, Brian. (1986). ''The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena''. Paladin (Grafton) 1986. (1st Edition Granada 1985) * Priestley, J.B. ''Man and Time''. Aldus 1964, 2nd Edition Bloomsbury 1989. *Wynn, Charles M., and Wiggins, Arthur W. (2001). ''Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins''. Joseph Henry Press.


Further reading

* Chris French. (2012)
"Precognition Studies and the Curse of the Failed Replications"
''The Guardian''. * David Marks. (2000). '' The Psychology of the Psychic'' (2nd Edition). Prometheus Books. {{Parapsychology Paranormal terminology Parapsychology Prophecy Pseudoscience Psychic powers Spiritual faculties