This
blog contains a
scientific paper by me, written in popular style and accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Paranormal Review – offical
magazine of The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) London. It’s a summary of a longer - and wholly uncontested - address
I gave at the 38th SPR International Convention, held at York Univ: September
5-7, 2014.
‘Psi’
is the technical term for ‘psychic’ awareness of supposed various sorts. These
include ‘clairvoyance’ (France 1786), ‘telepathy’ (Britain 1884),
‘Extra-Sensory Perception’ = ‘ESP (America 1930), ‘Remote-Viewing’ (CIA
sponsored 1972-95), ‘precognition’ (Britain ca. 1890)
The
term ‘psychic’ itself literally means ‘of the soul’. Introduced by distinguished physicist Sir
William Crookes in 1871, it was thought to support common religious thinking in
MidVictorian Britain. Though Crookes
should have known better, since this term has continued to obscure clear
thinking ever since.
‘Parapsychology’ describes one
methodology for researching into psychic
affairs. Introduced in America ca. 1930 as an
extension of then new behaviourist methodology, it has notably
failed to
produce either clarification or much practical results.
This paper describes a very different approach, one
which demsytifies the longstanding riddle of
so-called ‘psychic’ awareness to a new degree. It develops my new psycho-physics concept of
anti-memory – or more specifically repressed pre-call -
on which I’ve
partially expounded in our most recent blogs.
This subject is also covered more extensively in my new kindle book: Future, Memory and Time - now available on Kindle.
This subject is also covered more extensively in my new kindle book: Future, Memory and Time - now available on Kindle.
It shows how there really is ‘something to’
incidents of ‘psychic’ awareness, though not atall as
hitherto construed. They’re better
interpreted as a radical but useful resolution of certain unresolved issues
concerning ‘The Nature of Time’. The conclusion being that Einstein’s Relativity Theory (RT) likely applies to the
everyday human condition, and to a degree unsuspected hitherto.
DEMYSTIFYING
PSI: IS ANTI-MEMORY THE MOST SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM?
TO START A NEW
SCIENCE OF TIME.....
As Donal West recently observed, current parapsychology
shows little sign of significant
progress.[1] Still, as I pointed out at the recent SPR Conference, this
needn’t entail that psi awareness is unreal or invalid, but rather that it
should be researched in a more productive way.[2} One such is the anti-memory paradigm
proposed by me in 1973, and summarised in this magazine in 2005. [3]
There I’ve detailed how the universal tendency,
to think in terms of space before considering time, has produced various contra-scientific
hypotheses like ‘clairvoyance, telepathy, remote-viewing, ESP’. All these presuppose some mysterious mental process
of ‘transmission’ across space, understandably leading to suspicion and opposition
from conventional scientists.
So here
I will show how the anti-memory paradigm is a more scientific concept for psi awareness, conforming with good
science practice in most or all respects,
One Clear
Common Pattern
Anti-memory (or pre-call) derives from a 15-month Survey
of Subjective Coincidence I once conducted in Galway, Ireland among 16
professional people, so logging a total 257 cases of potential psi. ‘Subjective’ meant that one of the two
coincident components was always some unusual or anomalous act of mind. Our psychology was ‘Shakespearean rather than
Skinnerian’ and our methodology derived from mining prospecting. There commerce dictates that no possibly
relevant anomaly can be neglected - no matter how weak, tenuous, arguable or
coincidental it might at first appear.
Our Survey was therefore more thorough or
‘microscopic’ than those ‘telescopic’
surveys conducted by the early SPR, where only outstanding psi anecdotes garnered
from the public were regarded as significant.[4] But our closer acquaintance with the natural
facts of psi eventually crystallised them into one new common pattern of ‘First think, then see’ throughout.
And since this universal pattern was a clear
temporal inversion of ‘First see, then think’ which is a summary
of episodic memory, my two neologisms of
‘anti-memory’ and ‘pre-call’ (more specific) emerged almost automatically. These
further obviated traditional ‘pre-cognition’,
as a demonstrably misleading and inaccurate term.[3]
Psi’s new
common pattern violated everyday temporal notions as formalised into Absolute Time
by Newton, but was consistent with Einstein’s newer concept of time in Relativity.
[5] Further, as I’ll summarise below, close
acquaintance with those many cases of potential psi soon led to deliberate pre-call
learning in various modes.
Our initially
casual Concidence Survey therefore developed into a novel exercise in psycho-physics,
one fittting the universal model of discovery which historians like T.Kuhn describe. It was a
new way of giving order to assembled data, by people new to the field,
because not committed to the previous failing rules. [6]
The Pattern is
Universal
But does the ‘First
think, then see’ summation apply more
generally to those wider fields of psi anecdotes elsewhere? It seems to hold for those few incomplete observations
on ‘clairvoyance’ as initiated by
mesmerist M de Puysegur (1786).[7] It describes
every one of those 109 spontaneous anecdotes advanced in Phantasms to support ‘telepathy’ (1886), all of those 35 cases
of potential psi reported in JW
Dune’s‘Experiment with Time’ (1927), and R. Sheldrake’s much later
demonstration of ‘telephone telepathy’ (2003).[8]
‘First think, then see’ also holds true
for at least most of J.B. Rhine’s early card-guessing experiments, later
successes in the ganzfeld procedure, and 179 of those 184 cases interpreted by Louisa Rhine as ‘spontaneous
ESP’ (1962).[9] Finally it applies to
those various scattered anecdotes reported from the remote-viewing program
after 1972.[10]
In some 98%
of this total psi corpus therefore, my original induction of anti-memory or
pre-call holds good. (A fact easily checked
by scrutinising any or all of those sources I’ve just listed here.) So relying on Occam’s excellent principle
that ‘Mysteries must not be multiplied beyond necessity’ all trans-spatial notions
like clairvoyance, telepathy, ESP, remote-viewing, become superfluous to clear
thought.
Visualisation
through Diagram
Pre-call can also be visualised in a useful time
diagram which encompasses the entire psi corpus
as above. Here the left side
depicts the normal decay of episodic re-call in a standard memory curve.[11]
The paranormal right side is of course much
steeper, depicting less frequent and far weaker pre-call of experiences still
to come.
Re-call from past NOW Pre-call from
future?
As I’ve also
explained earlier, this diagram permits a first-ever estimate for the natural
abundance of psi.[3] Though probably
much greater in reality, the comparative pre-call/re-call frequency still works
out at a minimum 10-8, a very significant level of anomaly in science
elsewhere. For example CERN’s recent
discovery of a possible Higgs boson was a 10-15 anomaly.
Likewise
I’ve explained how psi’s represssed nature – widely accepted by most
researchers – gains further temporal credence from suggestions by S.Freud, C.Jung, JT. Fraser, E.Berne.
Most important of these is J.Piaget’s answer to Einstein’s question
about the growth in child awareness of
subjective time: ‘(It’s) largely based on what they hear from adults,
and not from their own experience......One could almost say that the child
begins as a little relativist, but ends up a Newtonian absolutist!’[12]
All of which
can explain why the typical psi experience so often seems disconcerting, or the
pre-call curve manifests as relatively weak.
Psi likely emanates from a highly repressed or Child-centered
capability, unwelcome because it threatens or contradicts that learned world-picture
all western peoples have assumed for time.
The Prime
Assumption is Invalid
Such considerations also highlight one striking
weakness in most time thinking hitherto: the universal idea that memory must
work pastward (i.e. ‘backward’) only.
This is a totally unchecked belief never previously clarified nor investigated
to see if it’s really true. It’s a
logical weakness I’ve termed The Prime Assumption because it’s such a crucially
important one
Wherefore, as
P.Medawar states more generally, the original anti-memory hypothesis has
evolved into an imaginative preconception of what might be true, in the form of
a declaration with verifiable deductive consequences, which should account for
the known phenomena, predict what is not yet known to be the case, and carries
an obligation to test.[13]
Due testing
then shows that anti-memory can indeed be developed through learning based on the
pre-call diagram, and in various different though limited modes I’ve described
elsewhere.[14] Always the essential
point is to develop intense interest in a specific outcome, so raising those
diagrammed memory peaks in both past and future mode. To date learned pre-call, first tackled by
myself, has been confirmed by some dozen others in varying degree. All rightful sceptics are also invited to
“Try it and see!” at their own convenience, as is the standard or Galilean mode
of scientific proof.
Quantitative
learning in this way can involve cards, roulette, 3-digit numbers, each mode
requiring that one largely starts all over again for each new feat. Pre-call of
a quantum RNG also disproves the Copenhagen dictum that singular electrons are
unpredictable. This replicates an
original experiment by Helmudt Schmidt (1969), indicating further that
Relativity rather than Quantum Theory is the prime arbitrer of time.[15] And finally 3-digit pre-call can be used to
label everyday human futures, with startling results again only explicable
through Relativity.
Pre-call
Complements Relativity
As physicists well know, Einstein’s Relativity Theory
(1905) works perfectly wherever it’s been tried. (For example your car’s SatNav depends on it.)
But psychologically its implications
remain contentious and hitherto unproven, because they differ so much from
common impressions of subjective time. Relativity implies that we’re passing
through static and predetermined (space)-time, instead of the more egocentric
impression that ‘time passes’ by ourselves.
Commentator Paul
Davies has termed this conflict ‘Einstein’s unfinished revolution... the
glaring mismatch between physical and psychological time...One suspects that
time doesn’t really flow at all; it’s all in the mind.’[16] Among
the majority who agree is CERN physicist Costa de Beauregaard: ‘There can be no
objective and essential division between ‘events that have already occurred ‘
and ‘ events that have not yet occurred’... Relativity is a theory in which
everything is written, and where change is only relative to the perceptual mode
of human beings’ [17]
Most
physicists who’ve contemplated this dichotomy probably concur, though still totally
unable to bridge the seeming gulf between Relativity and subjective time. Or as recently summarised in a compendium by
Scientific American: ‘There’s a hole
at the heart of physics, and it’s all to do with the nature of time’ [18]
Re-call
from past NOW Pre-call from future?
Full pre-call capability
(top) would psychologically complement physical implications of a predetermined
future as expressed in Relativity diagrams (bottom)
But this is
a hole which anti-memory can now start to fill quite readily. First through learned pre-call which
disproves the Prime Assumption that memory must work pastward only; second by
its provision of a psycho-physical isomorph for which commentators like JT
Fraser and W. Pauli long ago expressed the need. [19]
Such an
isomorph (lit: same shape) would be a hand-to glove fit between psychology and
physics in matters temporal. And it
would exist if ever memory could be developed to full re-call/pre-call symmetry
in even a few limited modes - as does indeed seem entirely feasible.
Fits Tests for
Good Science
All of which means that anti-memory must be much more
than a mere hypothesis, in fact more of a theory for those familiar with those
proofs so readily available. But otherwise
one may regard it as a paradigm, Kuhn’s rather ambiguous term for an idea
half-way between the two.
Finally science
can be described as ‘a discipline devoted to description of nature and its laws’. So does all the foregoing fulfil those
universal tests for good science and theory, helpfully well clarified by three Nobel-class
researchers - M.GellMann, T.Kuhn, P.Medawar? [20, 6, 13] Their tests I’ve summarised in a table which
compares the new anti-memory concept with older ‘transmission’ ideas like
‘ESP’.
TESTS OF GOOD THEORY IN SCIENCE
|
TRANSMISSION e.g. ESP
|
ANTI-MEMORY = PRE-CALL
|
1/ Compression into a simple pattern
2/Elegance
through brevity, fit, symmetry
|
-
-
|
+
+
|
3/ A synthesis of wide generality
|
-(?)
|
+
|
4/ Open-ended potential - to extend and correct.
|
-
|
+
|
5/ Unification
with simplicity
|
-
|
+
|
6/
Utility through suggesting experiments unthinkable before.
|
-
|
+
|
7/ Testability of hypothesis
|
-(?)
|
+
|
8/ Predictability of outcome.
|
-
|
+
|
9/
Repeatability of such reports
|
-
|
+ (?)
|
10/ Consistent with established science,
|
-
|
+
|
11/ Solution
to current problems therein
|
-
|
+
|
12/
Productivity towards open-ended progress
|
-
|
+
|
Can Start a New Science of Time?
Considered
in this light there can be little doubt that anti-memory provides the most
scientific paradigm for the psi anomaly so far.
More importantly it can provide the basis for a whole new Science of
Time, a discipline still non-existent because it has lacked those firm foundations
which anti-memory can now provide....
REFERENCES
[1]
West, D. Awkward Questions J.S.P.R. Oct 2012
[2]
O’Donnell, S. Abstracts 37th Internat.
Conference SPR 2013. p.9
[3]
O’Donnell, S. Paranormal Review. October
2005
[4]
Myers, F.W. et al. Phantasms of the Living. SPR
1886
[5]
O’Donnell, S. Relativity and Subjective Time Parascience Conf. London 1973
[6]
Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions 2012 p.90
[7]
de Puysegur, C. Animal Magnetism Paris 1784
[8]
Sheldrake, R. J.S.P.R. – 67 – p.184
[9]
Rhine, L. Hidden Channels of the Mind 1962
[10]
McMoneagle, J. Remote Viewing Secrets 2000
[11]
Ebbinghaus,H. About Memory 1882
[12]
Piaget J. Construction of Reality in the Child 1954
[13]
Medawar P. The Art of the Soluble 1967, Ch.7
[14]
O’Donnell S. The Paranormal Explained 2007
[15]
Schmidt H. J.Parapsychology 33-2 p.99
[16]
Davies P. About Time 1988
[17]
Fraser J.T. The Voices of Time 1968
p.417
[18]
Scientific American A Question of Time 20123 Ch.1.3
[19]
FraserJ.T. TheVoices p. 217
[20]
GellMann M. The Quark and the Jaguar 1994 p.75
