J. B. Priestley and
Olaf Stapledon
William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figure ...
.
[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 (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...
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, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...
's infant son was kidnapped, murdered and buried among trees. Psychologists
Henry Murray
Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist at Harvard University, where from 1959 to 1962 he conducted a series of psychologically damaging and purposefully abusive experiments on minors and underg ...
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 percent 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 botanist who founded parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the '' J ...
and
Louisa E. Rhine in the 1930s at
Duke University'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
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (; 23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982.
Before becoming C ...
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
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 ...
.
Once again, flaws were found in all of Schmidt's experiments, when the psychologist
C. E. M. Hansel
Charles Edward Mark Hansel (12 October 1917 – 28 March 2011) was a British psychologist most notable for his criticism of parapsychological studies.
Early life and education
Hansel was born in 1917 in Bedford, England and attended Bedford ...
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
"The Minority Report" is a 1956 science fiction novella by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in '' Fantastic Universe''. In a future society, three mutants foresee all crime before it occurs. Plugged into a great machine, these " p ...
and in his 1956 novel ''
The World Jones Made''.
In 1963 the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
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 capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
, used a questionnaire survey approach to investigate precognitive dreaming in college students. His survey of over 433 participants showed that 290 or 66.9 percent reported some form of paranormal dream. He rejected many of these reports, but claimed that 8.8 percent of the population was having actual precognitive dreams.
21st century
In 2011 the psychologist
Daryl Bem
Daryl J. Bem (born June 10, 1938) is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at Cornell University. He is the originator of the self-perception theory of attitude formation and change. He has also researched psi phenomena, group decision mak ...
, a Professor Emeritus at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
, 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 revie ...
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 claim ...
.
[ 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
Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the ca ...
), 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 most ...
) 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 physics.
[ 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 therefore 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 t ...
, where apparent instances of precognition in fact arise from the
law of large numbers
In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials sho ...
.
*
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's or group of persons' belief or expectation that said prediction would come true. This suggests that people's beliefs influence their actions. Th ...
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
Retrofitting is the addition of new technology or features to older systems. Retrofits can happen for a number of reasons, for example with big capital expenditures like naval vessels, military equipment or manufacturing plants, businesses or go ...
, 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 Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book '' Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection ...
'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, but by others as referring to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, and by others still as a reference to Hitler.
*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 a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univers ...
, 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 interpretation of how ...
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
*
Inner eye
*
Third eye
The third eye (also called the mind's eye or inner eye) is a mystical invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. In Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna (or brow) chakra. I ...
*
Oneiromancy
Oneiromancy (from the , and ) is a form of divination based upon dreams, and also uses dreams to predict the future. Oneirogen plants may also be used to produce or enhance dream-like states of consciousness. Occasionally, the dreamer feels as if ...
(Veridical dreaming)
*
Retrocognition
*
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
This is a list of topics that have, either currently or in the past, been characterized as pseudoscience by academics or researchers. Detailed discussion of these topics may be found on their main pages. These characterizations were made in th ...
*
Dream
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and 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 5 to 20 minutes, al ...
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
Christopher Charles French (born 1956) is a British psychologist specialising in the psychology of paranormal beliefs and experiences, cognition and emotion. He is the head of the University of London's anomalistic Psychology Research Unit and ...
. (2012)
"Precognition Studies and the Curse of the Failed Replications" ''The Guardian''.
*
David Marks
David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948) is an American guitarist who is best known for being an early member of the Beach Boys. While growing up in Hawthorne, California, Marks was a neighborhood friend of the original band members and was a freq ...
. (2000). ''
The Psychology of the Psychic'' (2nd Edition). Prometheus Books.
{{Parapsychology
Paranormal terminology
Parapsychology
Prediction
Psychic powers
Pseudoscience
Spiritual faculties