Notes Introductory to a Conference On

NOTES INTRODUCTORY TO A CONFERENCE ON PARAPSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSICS. by A.R.G. Owen. New Horizons Research Foundation October 1987. 1 Introduction. The science of physics takes its name from the Greek word used by Aristotle and his contemporaries to refer to nature, i.e. physis. Down the ages it came to mean nature in its most essential aspects — space, time, force and energy -- the stark skeleton of all reality; all findings in other sciences should conform to the doctrines of physics, which thus became the supreme arbiter of the rational. The development of physics (with chemistry now accepted to be one of its branches) tended to reductionalism in psychology and to the devalutation of points of view that now-a-days we regard as important, which may briefly be included under the term "holism". Just as Walter Pater asserted that all arts aspired to attain to the perfection of music, so many scientific disciplines have aspired to the condition of physics, aiming at a rigorously austere mathematical structure. Meanwhile, however, in parallel with the rise of physics and chemistry and evolutionary biology, there occurred the decline and discredit of superstitious beliefs, occultism, and finally religion itself. No one should mourn this; however the wheel might have turned slightly too far in that those apparent but authenticated exceptions to what is believed to be scientifically possible have tended to be disregarded. In the present century, if various popularizers are to be believed, physics itself, particularly in respect of the quantum theory, has shown "occult" tendencies. Therefore students of the paranormal have tended to grasp at this fact in the hope of gaining some insight into the enigmas of their own subject. From this point of departure therefore some dialogue between parapsychologists and physicists may be of value to the former, at least. But there is a totally different reason for such dialogue. The phenomena of psychical research include strange physical effects as well as purely mental ones. To that extent at least the psychical research worker is both entitled to ask for the advice of the physicist, and under the duty of advising the latter of occurrences in his bailiwick. Thirdly, a yet different reason for dialogue, in considering possible mechanisms for paranormal phenomena, it behooves the parapsychologist to solicit the advice of the physicist so that the latter's experience and findings can play a normative role in parapsychological thinking. Parapsychology has received the sympathy of some psychologists, notably Freud, Jung, William James, and many others subsequently, as well as the bitter hostility of a few such as Hebb and Boring, one of the founders of experimental psychology. Among physicists no outstanding opponent of psychic research comes to mind except Helmholtz who said, rather after the manner of David Hume in respect of miracles, that he would believe no evidence for paranormal phenomena, however abundant; but Helmholtz was just as much a physiologist as a physicist. About twenty years ago I was invited by the research students group (consisting of "doctorendi" post-graduate students working to get their Ph. D's in physics) of the famous Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University to give them a talk on psychokinesis. When I rose to speak I took pleasure inr drawing their attention to the only picture in the seminar room. It was a portrait of John William Strutt, better known as Lord Rayleigh. I was happy to say that besides being one of the earliest Nobel Laureates (1904) and Cavendish Professor of Physics and President of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Baron Rayleigh, O.M. P.C. (Order of Merit, Privy Councillor — the rarest of distinctions in Britain for men of science or letters) had also been the President of the Society for Psychical Research, having served for many years on the Society's Council, his interest in the subject of psychical research being by no means a fleeting one. His participation was not merely nominal, he carried out or assisted in many investigations. He never admitted to a final belief in paranormal phenomena but confessed to having been quite often intensely puzzled by occurrences he had actually himself witnessed. Rayleigh's Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research delivered in 1919 registers this fact and also exhibits himself as a man of moderate emotions, great commonsense, and considerable learning in the history of science, with a feeling for inductive logic and fair-mindedness. Speaking of parapsychological phenomena, Professor Rayleigh said "A real obstacle to a decision (i.e. as 'paranormal' or 'normal') arises from the sporadic character of the phenomena, which cannot be reproduced at pleasure and submitted to systematic experimental control". However unlike many contemporary philosophers (i.e. of the 1980's) Rayleigh goes on to say that, "The difficulty is not limited to questions where occult influences may be involved. This is a point which is often misunderstood, and it may be worth while to illustrate it by examples taken from the history of science". (Presidential Address, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol.30, July 1919). For his illustrations he chooses three problems of existence; (1) that of meteorites, only settled in 1803 by Biot after thirty years of scientific controversy; (2) that of the ignis fatuus, i.e. the will-o-the-wisp, or jack-o-lantern, a phosphorescent light seen (it was claimed) over swamps, but whose occurrence was not scientifically accepted in Rayleigh's day; (3) that of ball lightning. This last is quite interesting because it is only relatively..-recently that it has been accepted as an actual phenomenon. ^Indeed Rayleigh's son, Robert John Strutt, the 4th Baron Rayleigh, another Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London, and also a President of the Society for Psychical Research, in his Presidential Address to the Society in 1937, noted scientific reluctance to look at the problem of ball lightning because its appearances were spontaneous and therefore not susceptible to experimental tests; and observed that the same difficulty arose with many forms of Psi, and that this should not cause incredulity in either case, important as experimental work was wherever it could be carried out.]J Rayleigh's own scientific career which ranged over a great variety of branches of physics (making him, in the present writer's opinion the peer of Helmholtz) may have been partly the effect and partly the cause of his broadmindedness. His theoretical masterpieces are perhaps his great book on The Theory of Sound and his formula for the scattering of light, but his Nobel Prize (in chemistry) was for a totally different feat -- the discovery of the inert or "noble" gas, argon. This itself constitutes an instructive episode in the history of science. It had long been known that n«jtri?gen and oxygen (and presumably carbon dioxide) accounted for 99% of the atmosphere. But Rayleigh, who thought that even minor discrepancies and neglected phenomena should be investigated, stirred up the brilliant chemist William Ramsey, Professor at University College, London. In 189^- Rayleigh and Ramsay announced the isolation of argon and in 19C4 shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. I always took pleasure in the picture of Rayleigh in the Fellow's card room at Trinity College,' Cambridge. It showed a slightly portly man in his sh^rt sleeves at a bench of chemical apparatus. Like his predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton, Fellow of Trinity, a Cambridge Professor and President of the Royal Society, Rayleigh respected equally the two presiding deities of science -- theory and empirical fact a code of scientific morality as valid today as in Rayleigh's time, Newton's time, or the age of Archimedes. Normal and Paranormal. Psychical research or parapsychology is the area of study that concerns itself with a variety of phenomena which seem to be to an exceptional degree inexplicable by principles already known to science. In course of time some happenings that were once mysterious became, even if not fully understood, assimilated to the normal -- an example is hypnosis. Thus the original field of the parapsychological as sketched out "by the founders of psychical researc/iin nineteenth century Britain has contracted a little. However the shrinkage is surprizingly minor and unimportant. Although the nomenclature may have changed, as exemplified "by the terms ESP (extra sensory perception) and P.K. (psychokinesis), the basic subject matter of psychical research has held up as a body of well-evidenced phenomena. (This is true in spite of criticism by naive representatives of other disciplines and the disingenuous attacks of others; in fact the evidential status of parapsychological phenomena has increased by a very large factor during the last two decades. This is due in part to modern technological aids — computers and electronic recording — and in part to heightened interest as a result of improved world communication and an increased sephistication in methods employed by psychical research wor^kers). It is also the case that in spite of humanity's vastly augmented knowledge of both physics and physiology the typical phenomena of psychical research remain as enigmatic as they were a century ago. They are not, with any plausibility or conviction of rightness, explicable in terms of recognized and scientifically understood entities e.g. electromagnetism or other radiations. As a result it has become conventional to speak of these happenings as paranormal phenomena — events which do not as yet have an explanation in terms of accepted physical or physiological wisdom. There is also in the term paranormal the implications that the prospect of explaining the phenomena in terms of what is known in science at the present is a meagre oneJ Of course it is theoretically possible that new discoveries in "orthodox" science will render presently "paranormal" phenomena "normal", as the poet says,"Quien sabe?" — "Who knows?".

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