S6: A Paranormal Study

Tonight, we discuss paranormal activity and how it's studied from a scientific perspective.

 The parapsychological phenomenon, also called the PSI phenomenon, is any of several events that cannot be accounted for by natural law or knowledge acquired by other than usual sensory abilities. The discipline concerned with investigating such phenomena is called parapsychology.

 Parapsychological phenomena of two types have been described. They may be cognitive, as in the case of clairvoyance, telepathy, or precognition. Here, one person is believed to have acquired knowledge of facts, other people’s thoughts, or future events without using ordinary sensory channels. Hence, extrasensory perception (ESP) is often used to designate these phenomena. Alternatively, parapsychological phenomena may be physical: the fall of dice or the dealing of cards is thought to be influenced by a person’s “willing” them to fall in a certain way, or objects are moved, often inon, by poltergeists (see poltergeist a violent fashion). The term psychokinesis is often used in this connection. The general term psi has been established to denote all kinds of parapsychological phenomena.

 Scientific interest in the subject is relatively recent, but belief in the reality of such phenomena has been widespread since the earliest recorded times. Before the rise of modern science, the causation of all complex physical phenomena was poorly understood. Hence, appeals to nonmaterial agencies (ghosts, sorcerers, demons, mythological beings) replaced a causal, scientific explanation. Even so, there were widespread debates about the reality of phenomena that transcended the bounds of everyday happenings, such as veridical prophecies, as by the oracle of Delphi, or the revival of the dead.

 Clairvoyance (French: “clearwledge of information not necessarily known to any other person, not obtained byls of perceiving or reasoning—thus, seeing”) is kno ordinary channe a form of extrasensory perception (ESP). Spiritualists also use the term to mean seeing or hearing (clairaudience) the spirits of the dead that are said to surround the living. Research in parapsychology—such as testing a subject’s ability to predict the order of cards in a shuffled deck—has yet to provide conclusive support for the existence of prophecy.

 Occultism is various theories and practices involving a belief in and knowledge or use of supernatural forces or beings. Such beliefs and practices—principally magical or divinatory—have occurred in all human societies throughout recorded history, with considerable variations both in their nature and in the attitude of societies toward them. In the West, the term occultism has acquired intellectually and morally pejorative overtones that do not obtain in other societies where the practices and beliefs concerned do not run counter to the prevailing worldview.

 Occult practices center on the presumed ability of the practitioner to manipulate natural laws for personal benefit or on behalf of another; such practices tend to be regarded as evil only when they also involve breaking moral laws. Some anthropologists have argued that it is impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between magic—a principal component of occultism—and religion, which may well be true of the religious systems

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