A NEW SCIENCE OF THE PARANORMAL

The title of this review is a quotation from the 19th century scientist Gustav Fechner, and expresses the core issue of this new book by Larry LeShan, who celebrates his 90th birthday this year. Network readers will be well aware of the prevailing attitude of science towards the 'paranormal' – dismissive scepticism based on ignorance of 100 years of research, and the sacrosanct nature of its underlying materialistic assumptions. LeShan shows how this position is illogical and intellectually untenable. He begins with a striking case involving Eileen Garrett, who dreams that the deceased researcher Hereward Carrington comes to her in a dream, saying that his wife is in grave danger and badly needs help. She and LeShan took no immediate action, but the next night Carrington comes again, very angry that nothing has been done about his wife, and literally kicks her out of bed so that she wakes up on the floor. This galvanised them into action, but they did not even know which country she was in. After contacting the tax authorities in England, they located her last known address. The police had to break into the house, where they found the elderly widow helplessly lying on the floor, where she had been for three days. Since no one was expected to come to the cottage for another three days, she would probably have been dead by that time. So Carrington had good reason to want to contact Garrett.

LeShan explains that this is a good example of a 'need-determined' case of psychical research as opposed to a 'flaw-determined' example of lab parapsychology. It also indicates purposeful activity on the part of a deceased person, thus implying survival of consciousness. This is several steps too far for the scientific materialist, who can only dismiss this case as coincidence. Yet, as LeShan observes, this does nothing to explain the case; it simply demonstrates that it is inexplicable in terms of the assumptions behind scientific materialism. The Enlightenment formulated an understanding of the universe as a unified rational structure to be understood in terms of quantities, objective observers and through a mechanistic metaphor that precludes free will. In addition, it is supposed that there is only one consistent and valid order of reality in terms of which everything must be explained. However, as Augustine reminds us, 'there are no such things as miracles which violate the laws of nature. There are only events which violate our limited understanding of the laws of nature.' On that basis we have no right to say that something is impossible, yet this is precisely what scientists do say in relation to psychical research.

This stems from a fundamental confusion between theories and facts. Impossible events do not occur, so if they do, then our understanding of reality needs to be revised. Our knowledge of what we regard as possible comes from our assumptions, and from Hume onwards scientists and philosophers have taken their interpretation of how the world works – their theory of reality - as a fact when it is only a theory. The very definition of 'paranormal' is a theoretical construction. So 'if a system of reality-ordering forbids certain events from occurring...you cannot explain that event within the system.' This leads to the need for different ways of construing reality in order to make data coherent. Here LeShan builds on his earlier work outlining different and complementary orders of reality, calling for readers to recognise the validity of the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic science or flaw-determined parapsychology and need-determined psychical research. No one world picture has a monopoly of the truth, as LeShan points out.

On the constructive side, LeShan reviews what we know about psychical research in a series of general propositions which informed readers will recognise as fair inferences from the evidence. He then discusses this in terms of normal and paranormal communication, showing how the same structures can be applied, and drawing on the work of Gardner Murphy. He calls the first Type A and the second Type B, which takes the emotive edge off the analysis. Interestingly, the same conditions favour both types. Next he designs a science of psychical research in terms of the selection of a specific domain – where we observe psi occurrences – the identification and definition of observables within that domain, then the relationship between these observables. He defines the observables as self-aware individual identity, communication and relationships between people. It is immediately apparent that these observables can apply to both Types A and B. It seems that psi occurs when sensory communication channels are blocked on a need-determined basis – of which the Carrington case above is a striking example. From this basis a number of predictions can be generated, for instance that psi is more likely to occur between people who like each other, a prediction verified by Rupert Sheldrake in his email and telephone telepathy experiments. Amusingly, as long ago as 1979, LeShan and Henry Margenau sent a letter to Science expressing the view that psychic phenomena could be and have been studied scientifically, but the letter was rejected because 'it put the burden of proof on the critics of parapsychology rather than on its supporters.' Quite so!

As ever, the issue is that this lucid and persuasive book is unlikely to be read by those who need to read it. Given the cases presented in the book, which include that of Lisby Mayer's lost harp, the reader has only three choices: ignore the data and stick to familiar assumptions about reality, accuse researchers of lying and deception, or accept that there are genuine cases of psi that require an explanation. And this means revising one's notions of what is possible and impossible. I finish by reminding readers of the central proposition: impossible events do not happen, so if we are faced with a seemingly impossible event – a fact that cannot be denied – then we must revise and expand our concept of reality to encompass and explain this fact. This brilliant book should be compulsory reading for scientists and more especially for university psychologists and philosophers. Science and medicine claim to be evidence-based, and they now need to take this kind of evidence into account, revising their theories of reality accordingly.