|
|
|
|
Is Extrasensory Perception for Real? |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Morton A. Kaplan |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 9/1/2003 |
| Size: 2,823 Words, 16,755 Characters |
|
THE SENSE OF BEING STARED AT
And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind
Rupert Sheldrake
New York: Crown Publishers, 2003
384 pp., $25.00
Rupert Sheldrake has been arguing for a long time that extrasensory perception really exists, a position that is generally doubted by scientists. The Sense of Being Stared At is his most recent effort to support that thesis.
When I studied graduate psychology at Stanford in 1943 in an Army Specialized Training Program, an instructor who taught psi (extrasensory perception) courses was on the faculty as the consequence of a large bequest that required this. He was, however, held in contempt by the rest of the faculty. I remember Professor Fairchild mentioning an experiment by epigones of J.B. Rhine, the crucial figure in the scientific study of ESP. It seemingly provided corroborating evidence for psi phenomena. As it turned out, a skeptic had secretly mounted cameras in the scoring room. They showed that the proctors had falsified the results. When confronted with this evidence, the experimenters argued that the skepticism of the critics had influenced what the cameras had recorded!
Over time my skepticism diminished because of some strange experiences, though I am not yet ready to attest to the reality of psi phenomena. Rupert Sheldrake has presented evidence in The Sense of Being Stared At that will surely shake some of the skeptics. Sheldrake is an academic with a Ph.D. in biochemistry who is a research scholar of the Royal Society. He has made a serious effort to deal in a scientific manner with alternative explanations of putative psi phenomena, such as subliminal communication, although he has not ...
Read Full Article
...e sensed where they normally would be in relation to the body. The near-death experiences, if they are not hallucinations, divorce perceiver and body.
Sheldrake's book is an interesting read. Still, given that even those instances in my own experience which I tend to accept as involving extrasensory perception are subject to alternative explanations, its thesis is plausible but not proven.
(1,706 of 16,755 characters)
|
|
|
Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
|
The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
