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parapsychology
Columbia Encyclopedia entry: parapsychology
Parapsychology, study of mental phenomena not explainable by accepted principles of science. The organized, scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena began with the foundation (1882) of the Society for Psychical Research in London. Such early efforts attempted to dissociate psychical phenomena from spiritualism and superstition, and particularly to investigate mediums and their claims of evoking spirits or apparitions. The society also studied automatic writing, levitation, and ectoplasmic and poltergeist activities. One of its principal founders, Frederic William Henry Myers, summed up the society's early efforts in Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1903). An American Society for Psychical Research was also founded, with James Hervey Hyslop as its leading spokesman. Considerable experimentation has been conducted, perhaps the best-known being that of Joseph Banks Rhine at Duke. The Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, created in the early 1960s, has since replaced the Duke program. In Great Britain the work of Whately Carington and Samuel George Soal paralleled that of Rhine. The great majority of parapsychological studies have focused on the area called extrasensory perception (ESP), which includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. The popular press often reports stories that are parapsychological in nature. Many scientists criticize the claims made by parapsychologists, arguing in particular that there can be no proof of such phenomena.

See S. Coblentz, Light Beyond: The Wonderworld of Parapsychology (1981); A. P. Dubrov and V. N. Pushkin, Parapsychology and Contemporary Science (1982); H. Edge et al. Foundations of Parapsychology (1986); A. Berger, Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology (1988).

The Columbia Encyclopedia. Copyright © 2001-09 Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Wikipedia search results for: Parapsychology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method. Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects and Ganzfeld experiments to test for extrasensory perception. While the results of such experiments are regarded by some parapsychologists as having demonstrated the existence of some forms of psychic abilities, the consensus of the scientific community is that psychic abilities have not been demonstrated to exist. Critics...more »
Columbia Encyclopedia search results: parapsychology
Results 1 - 4  of 4
  • clairvoyance

    Clairvoyance, alleged power to perceive, as though visually, objects or persons not discernible through the ordinary sense channels. Clairvoyance may occur in a supposedly normal state (second...

  • telepathy

    Telepathy, supposed communication between two persons without recourse to the senses. The word was formulated in 1882 by Frederic William Henry Myers, English poet, essayist, and a leading fou...

  • Dessoir, Max

    Dessoir, Max, 1867–1947, German philosopher. He earned doctorates from the universities of Berlin (philosophy, 1889) and Würtzburg (medicine, 1892). He was a professor at Berlin from 1897 unti...

  • spiritism

    Spiritism or spiritualism, belief that the human personality continues to exist after death and can communicate with the living through the agency of a medium or psychic. The advocates of spir...

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