ENTANGLED MINDS

Some readers will remember that Dean Radin's previous book, The Conscious Universe, was awarded the Network book prize in 1997. Here he takes both the argument and the research further to formulate a new quantum approach to psi. Schrodinger said that entanglement of was not just one but rather the characteristic of quantum mechanics. Radin believes that science is at an early stage in understanding entanglement and that psi is an unavoidable consequence of living in an interconnected, entangled physical reality. He recounts his own early years in the field, especially the relationship between sceptics and more open-minded researchers, a key theme that runs throughout the book. His basic thesis is that, despite everyday appearances, we live within a holistic, deeply interconnected reality. He proposes that the fabric of reality is comprised of entangled threads that are consistent with the core of psi experience. His analysis begins with anecdotal cases and premonitions of 9/11. His next chapter looks at disagreements that arise where scientific faith is faced with repeated human experiences. Research demonstrates that a belief in the paranormal cannot be explained by ignorance or mental deficiency, but rather that people who believe in psychic phenomena see further into the depths of the world. Radin characterises conventional responses to parapsychology as an immune response reaction arising from the premise that the present scientific worldview is complete. With this in mind, he sketches the origins and history of the field, quoting a revealing passage from Alan Turing who states that ESP seems to deny all our usual scientific ideas: 'how we should like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in.' He goes on to say that 'once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogeys.' This is exactly reflects science's fear of falling back into 'superstition'. In this connection. Radin quotes Thomas Etter: 'when a belief is widely held in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we call it superstition. By that criterion, the most egregious superstition of modern times, perhaps of all time is the 'scientific' belief in the non existence of psi.' The next few chapters update Radin's analysis of psi research. This includes telepathy, clairvoyance,remote viewing, psi in dreams, Ganzfeld, the sense of being stared at, DMILS, entangled brain experiments, presentiment and gut feelings. In each case the data are presented along with meta-analysis of the total results in the field as well as discussion of possible methodological flaws and the file drawer affect in relation to calculating the odds against chance. Radin also describes his work on the field consciousness and what he calls the global consciousness project measuring widespread collective mental responses. The last few chapters are the most groundbreaking in presenting Radin's understanding of the implications of psi research within a quantum reality. He relates the history of parapscyhology experiments, commenting that 'quantum theory and a vast body of supporting experiments tell us that something unaccounted for is connecting otherwise isolated objects.' Psi is the human experience of quantum interconnectedness or an entangled universe. In discussing theories of psi, Radin looks at aspects in physics, neuroscience and psychology. He proposes a new model of the evolution of physical and mental worldviews in relation to psi, moving from magic to industry to information and on towards a future integral view. Under the classical view, psi experiences are impossible. They become possible with information and actually required in an integral view based on quantum non-locality. Radin then turns his attention to a detailed theories of the psi: sceptical, signal transfer, goal-oriented, field, collective mind, multidimensional space time, and finally quantum mechanical. His analysis yields important distinctions that enable readers to reassess their own theoretical views. He concludes that the fabric of reality allows for nonlocal connections. Also that, although psi experiences seem to indicate a form of information transfer, they are in fact pure correlation since we are always connected within a holistic medium. He also predicts that better experimental results will be obtained with highly entangled subjects such as family members, a finding confirmed by the e-mail and telephone telepathy experiments conducted by Rupert Sheldrake. Radin's final chapter looks forward after a summary of all the experimental results and a table indicating their cumulative odds against chance. He reviews the sceptical resistance against reading the relevant literature, commenting that consensus opinion advances through authoritative persuasion. This is not how it is meant to be if one assumes that science is a rational process. As Ed May notes, this is called the 'rational man fallacy': when we are presented with evidence that counters our prior beliefs, it tends to reaffirm them rather than sway us towards a new or revised belief. Phenomena that are not easily accommodated by prevailing scientific theories are frequently ignored or dismissed as impossible. Radin's view is that it is important to promote a serious study of novel ideas. At the end he debunks certain well rehearsed sceptical myths about the field in a masterly fashion, looking forward to the day when psi research will be taught in universities in the same way as today's elementary economics and biology. His book is an important contribution to this emerging process, and one can only hope that it will help open a few new minds and that it will be widely read by the new generation of physicists, neuroscientists and psychologists. But will it even receive mainstream reviews? One hopes so, otherwise it will be a further example of a conspiracy of silence blocking a genuine intellectual advance.