Science and Psychic Phenomena

Science and Psychic Phenomena

Author: Chris Carter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-02-22

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1594777055

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A factual and conscientious argument against materialism’s vehement denial of psi phenomena • Explores the scandalous history of parapsychology since the scientific revolution of the 17th century • Provides reproducible evidence from scientific research that telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis are real • Shows that skepticism of psi phenomena is based more on a religion of materialism than on hard science Reports of psychic abilities, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, date back to the beginning of recorded human history in all cultures. Documented, reproducible evidence exists that these abilities are real, yet the mainstream scientific community has vehemently denied the existence of psi phenomena for centuries. The battle over the reality of psi has carried on in scientific academies, courtrooms, scholarly journals, newspapers, and radio stations and has included scandals, wild accusations, ruined reputations, as well as bizarre characters on both sides of the debate. If true evidence exists, why then is the study of psi phenomena--parapsychology--so controversial? And why has the controversy lasted for centuries? Exploring the scandalous history of parapsychology and citing decades of research, Chris Carter shows that, contrary to mainstream belief, replicable evidence of psi phenomena exists. The controversy over parapsychology continues not because ESP and other abilities cannot be verified but because their existence challenges deeply held worldviews more strongly rooted in religious and philosophical beliefs than in hard science. Carter reveals how the doctrine of materialism--in which nothing matters but matter--has become an infallible article of faith for many scientists and philosophers, much like the convictions of religious fundamentalists. Consequently, the possibility of psychic abilities cannot be tolerated because their existence would refute materialism and contradict a deeply ingrained ideology. By outlining the origin of this passionate debate, Carter calls on all open-minded individuals to disregard the church of skepticism and reach their own conclusions by looking at the vast body of evidence.


Science of the Seance

Science of the Seance

Author: Beth A. Robertson

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0774833521

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In the 1920s and ’30s, people gathered in darkened rooms to explore the paranormal through seances. They were motivated by grief, spiritual devotion, or a desire to be entertained. Beth A. Robertson resurrects the story of a small transnational group and their quest for objective knowledge of the supernatural, casting new light on how science, metaphysics, and the senses collided to inform gendered norms in this era. Robertson draws back the curtain to reveal a world inhabited by researchers, spirits, and spiritual mediums. Representing themselves as masters of the senses, untainted by the effeminized subjectivity of the body, psychical researchers in Canada, the UK, and the US believed that they could use machines and empirical methods to transform the seance into a laboratory of the spirits and a transnational empirical project. However, mediums and ghostly subjects could and did challenge their claims to scientific expertise and authority.


Unruly Spirits

Unruly Spirits

Author: M. Brady Brower

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-07

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 025203564X

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Unruly Spirits connects the study of séances, telepathy, telekinesis, materializations, and other parapsychic phenomena in France during the age of Sigmund Freud to an epistemological crisis that would eventually yield the French adoption of psychoanalysis. Skillfully navigating experiments conducted by nineteenth-century French psychical researchers and the wide-ranging debates that surrounded their work, M. Brady Brower situates the institutional development of psychical research at the intersection of popular faith and the emergent discipline of psychology. Brower shows how spiritualist mediums were ignored by French academic scientists for nearly three decades. Only after the ideologues of the Third Republic turned to science to address what they took to be the excess of popular democracy would the marvels of mediumism begin to emerge as legitimate objects of scientific inquiry. Taken up by the most prominent physicists, physiologists, and psychologists of the last decades of the nineteenth century, psychical research would eventually stall in the 1920s as researchers struggled to come to terms with interpersonal phenomena (such as trust and good faith) that could not be measured within the framework of their experimental methods. In characterizing psychical research as something other than a mere echo of popular spirituality or an anomaly among the sciences, Brower argues that the questions surrounding mediums served to sustain the scientific project by forestalling the establishment of a closed and complete system of knowledge. By acknowledging persistent doubt about the intentions of its participants, psychical research would result in the realization of a subjectivity that was essentially indeterminate and would thus clear the way for the French reception of psychoanalysis and the Freudian unconscious and its more comprehensive account of subjective uncertainty.


Science and Psychical Phenomena

Science and Psychical Phenomena

Author: G. N. M. Tyrrell

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-05-29

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1000595730

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First published in 1938, Science and Psychical Phenomena presents a comprehensive overview of diverse field of phenomena which is included under the heading of psychical research. Psychical research does not deal in Spiritualism or ‘Spooks’. It is the scientific investigation of the hidden faculties of Man, and it constitutes the main pathway to the understanding of the Human Individual. Since second half of nineteenth century, unknown to the general public, careful work with new methods has been going on, and the results when properly understood, are as startling as they are important. The present volume summarizes the work and discusses the far-reaching conclusion to which it points. This book is an important historical document for scholars and researchers of religion, psychology, philosophy of mind and psychic studies.


The ESP Enigma

The ESP Enigma

Author: Diane Hennacy Powell

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0802716067

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Integrating concepts from physics, neuroscience, and other disciplines, Dr. Powell offers an insightful and intriguing explanation of ESP, provocatively claiming that the existence of psychic abilities expands the understanding and appreciation of consciousness.


Common Phantoms

Common Phantoms

Author: Alicia Puglionesi

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1503612783

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Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics dismissed these experiences as delusions, a new kind of investigator emerged to seek the science behind such phenomena. With new technologies like the telegraph collapsing the boundaries of time and space, an explanation seemed within reach. As Americans took up psychical experiments in their homes, the boundaries of the mind began to waver. Common Phantoms brings these experiments back to life while modeling a new approach to the history of psychology and the mind sciences. Drawing on previously untapped archives of participant-reported data, Alicia Puglionesi recounts how an eclectic group of investigators tried to capture the most elusive dimensions of human consciousness. A vast though flawed experiment in democratic science, psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to study their experiences on their own terms. Academic psychology would ultimately disown this effort as both a scientific failure and a remnant of magical thinking, but its challenge to the limits of science, the mind, and the soul still reverberates today.


Psychic Phenomena

Psychic Phenomena

Author: Dorothy Bomar Bradley

Publisher: New York : Paperback Library

Published: 1967

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Authentic case histories of floating objects, the power of prayer on plants, telepathy, dreams that predict the future and proof of life after death! This fantastic book holds a golden lode of true, documented stories of the mysteries of precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance. On your journey you'll meet outstanding researchers of psychic phenomena such as Arthur Ford, who sends "messengers" on "errands" into another world. Learn the incredible story of the "tape recorder" which plays back the history of our former lives. Discover the plants that use a unique form of "mind reading" to receive thoughts. All this and much, much more await you on the most thrilling trip of your lifetime--a voyage into the land of the "obstructed universe."