The History of Parapsychological Research J

The history of parapsychological research J. Beloff A mention of the word 'parapsychology' is apt to evoke different reactions in different people. At one end we have the professional sceptics like the American organization CSICOP, with its affiliated societies in Europe such as the Dutch Skepsis, who are the co-sponsors of this series of lectures. They see parapsychology as the respectable facade behind which lurk all kinds of superstitious or irrational and pseudo-scientific beliefs. Then there is the attitude of official science which is not so much hostile as indifferent. I do not know what view professor Doorman put forward in his introductory lecture to this series but what I shall try to do in my talk to you today is to present an insider's view of what is involved in parapsychology. Science, of necessity, has to be .conservative and cautious in lending its authority to any new claim from whatever quarter, whether it be in connection with a new drug in medicine or a new theory in physics. Now the fact is that parapsychological claims have never been able to satisfy the demands that such recognition requires. The phenomena with which it deals have proved to be too elusive and unreliable so that there has always been room for doubt or disquiet. As a conse- quence, parapsychology remains on the fringes of science. It is not, I must insist, a 'pseudo-science' (whatever some critics may allege) because it accepts scientific standards and criteria with respect to methodology and the evaluation of evidence. It remains, however, by the very nature of its findings, an unorthodox science. To make matters worse,itisnot always obvious tothe outsider how to distinguish between reputable parapsychological research, of the kind that would be recognized as such by the Parapsychological Association or by the editors of the accredited parapsychological journals, and those disreputableor even dishonest claims which get so much publicity in the media or in the occult literature. 27 But doesitmatter, in the end, what status we assign to parapsychology?Well,thisdoes have one verycriticalimplication. Research requires funding and, in the event, it is extremely difficult to get money to carry out parapsychological research. Government agencies, which are answerable to the taxpayer, dare not finance research when it is liable to be rejected by their scientific advisers. Consequently, from the very beginning, you will find that parapsychological research has been kept going almost entirely by private benefactors who, of course, are free to do what they like with their own money. In the late 19th and early twentieth centuries there were still enough scholars of independent means around who could devote most of their time to such research. Many of the foremost pioneers associated with the Society for Psychical Research in London, the first learned society of its kind in the world which was founded in 1882, fall into this cate- gory. At the present time however, it is perhaps only in the United States that there are enough wealthy patrons to have made it possible to establish laboratories where full time research can be conducted and, even there, these laboratories lead a precarious existence and from time to time have to close down for lack of support. Most European parapsychologists today have to earn their living in other ways. Speaking for myself, I taught psychology at the University of Edinburgh (until my retirement a few years ago) but this allowed me to purse parapsychology on a modest scale in my own time and to supervisegraduate students who preferred to work on a parapsychological topic for their doctoral thesis. Today, Edinburgh has an actual Chair of Parapsychology in the Department of Psychology thanks to the fact that, by a freak chance, the late Arthur Koestler, the well known writer, decided to leave his entire estate for this purpose. Robert Morris, a much respected American parapsychologist, became our first 'Koestler professor'. Unfortunately, but all too typical of the hazards which confront this field, at much the same time the Chair of Parapsychology in the Department of Psychology here at the University of Utrecht, which had been set up in 1974, was terminated as a result of the cut-backs which have afflicted the Dutch uni- versities. The upshot of what I have been saying is that, owing to lack of funding, parapsychology has never been able to break through the credibility barrier behind which it has hitherto been confined. It is my 28 belief, however, that it has now attained a level of sophistication at which, for a relatively trivial sum by the standards of conventional science budgets, it should now be possible to establish the reality of the basic phenomena to the satisfaction of the scientific community at large. What I propose to do today, is to try and present a case for parapsychology. It is not my intention to make propaganda - no one is more aware than I am of the limitations of parapsychology as it now exists - but I can, hopefully, try to give you a clearer understanding of what is involved than you would get from some outsider. Defining the field To start with some very basic points, how should we define 'parapsychology'? What should we takeitto include or exclude? The broadest definition would be to say that parapsychology is the study of 'paranormal' phenomena where the term 'paranormal' is taken to mean all such phenomena that appear to contravene some general assumption whether of science or of commonsense. This may, however, be at once too broad and too negative a definition to be helpful and it omits any reference to the psychology component of 'parapsychology'. So, perhaps a better definition would be to say that it is more specifically the study of 'psi phenomena' where by psi phenomenon we allude to some interaction between an individual and the external world that is not mediated by any sensory or motor mechanisms such as are known to operate in the case of normal perception or normal motor activity. Such a definition is still, of course, negative - and until there are some generally agreed theories as to what is involved, this could hardly be otherwise - but, at any rate, it focusses attention on psi phenomena as a special property of minds and that is itself of some philosophical importance since itis one of the key issues in contemporary phi- losophy whether mind has any unique powers or properties or whether it is to be regarded as no more than the subjective aspect of brain processes. Given this definition of parapsychology in terms of psi phenomena, most of the technical expressions, used by parapsychologists can be unpacked as particular instances or aspects of psi. Thus we have extrasensory perception or ESP as denoting the cognitive aspects of psi which, in turn, can be, broken down into awareness of another person's 29, thoughts, or 'telepathy'; awareness of things or events in the world that are not accesible to normal perception or 'clairvoyance'; and each of these modes of ESP can, in turn, be instances of 'precognition' if the objects of awareness do not yet exist, or of 'retrocognition' if they have at the time ceased to exist. Similarly, we have psychokinesis or PK denoting the active or intentional aspects of psi, sometimes referred to in popular parlance as the action of mind over matter. Further distinctions can be made according to whether one is dealing with phenomena that can only be distinguished by statistical analysis or are such as can be observed by straightforward inspection. As you can appreciate, while the terminology may be new, the pheno-, mena as such are as old as recorded history and as widely distributed as the human race itself. What is peculiar to the recent history of Western Civilization is the concept of the paranormal itself, that is: the idea that such phenomena are incompatible with the accepted world view. Magical practices are based on the idea that the performance of appropriate rituals and incantations can bring about desired changes in the physical world. All religions are based on the idea that discarnate spirits, be they angels, demons, deities or deceased human beings, can intervene in the workings of nature. Of course, ' a distinction has always been drawn between a natural or everyday occurence and a miracle as something out of the ordinary but a world view that ex- cluded miracles altogether or indeed any type of supernatural phenomenon, was something that could not have arisen before the scientific revolution of the 17th century had taken root and is, in fact, a,product of that 18th century movement we call the Enlightenment as pro- pounded in the works of such celebrated sceptics as David Hume or Voltaire. Even as late as the end of the 17th century we still find learned individuals who are prepared to credit stories of witchcraft or who themselves practice one or other of the occult arts. Indeed, the great Newton himself was a devotee of alchemy, although by then that was considered rather odd by his contemporaries. Mesmerism and spiritualism But the Enlightenment, as we know, was succeeded by the Romantic Movement which turned nostalgically to the past, or at least to the imagined past, for its inspiration. One of the products of this new outlook was the success of mesmerism. For, although Mesmer liked to think himself as a man of the Enlightenment, there is no doubt that, as 30 a popular cult, mesmerism is an expression of the romantic era, an era that had something in common with our own so-called New Age'.

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