Paranormalia

The Politics of Psi

Halfway through writing Randi's Prize I started to feel a nagging sense that many of the people I hoped to reach weren't really open to persuasion. The brilliance or otherwise of my arguments wouldn't make much difference; they would be acclaimed by people who already on some level accepted them, and denounced by those who never could.

The fact is, surely, that when it comes to our personal worldview, studies and experiments play a secondary role. We accept findings that best fit our preferred narrative, and reject those that don't. Mostly, I think, we gravitate towards writers who reinforce what we already intuitively feel to be true. Paranormalia readers aren't likely to frequent JREF or Pharyngula, which they probably find alien and uncomfortable, and vice versa.

So these days I'm thinking less about psi evidence itself and more about the social and psychological context. As a psi-advocate, I believe I know why my group believes what it does: we're convinced by the evidence, which happens to validate our ideals. But what about sceptics? Why is it so extremely important to them that psychic claims be shown to be false? Why does it irritate them so much, and why do they go to such extraordinary lengths to explain it away? (I'm thinking of the tenacity of people like Gerald Woerlee, for instance.)

This would seem to be a question for psychologists in their quest to identify the drivers of human thought and behaviour. Our brains stopped evolving when we were still hunter-gathering, they say, and aren't terribly well equipped to deal with the challenges of modern living. Among other things, that's why some of us tend to go on believing in fantasies like gods and ghosts and life after death.

Interestingly, sceptical thinkers implicitly exclude themselves from this tendency towards irrationality, at least in this context. They don't have hallucinations, so it doesn't apply to them. But having close-up experience of the way they argue, it seems to me that it very much does; they are as profoundly affected by emotive thinking as any of us, and with the added complication that their complacency blinds them to the fact.

Two books I've been reading recently seem relevant to the psi controversy, at least indirectly, driving home the emotive basis of so much human behaviour. One is Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious At Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan, a British writer and businesswoman. The other is a widely-covered new book by American psychologist Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Wilful Blindness describes how people manage to close their eyes to obvious wrongs, often out of solidarity with the group they belong to. That results in catastrophes that could easily have been avoided. Doctors close ranks in support of a paediatric surgeon accused of incompetence, with the result that dozens of babies die who might otherwise have been saved. An oil company orders severe cost-cutting at a distant refinery, which local employees obediently carry through, all the while knowing that it is compromising safety: the resulting explosion kills 15 people. Citizens of a small town fiercely resist emerging health concerns about a local asbestos mine, to protect jobs, even while all around them their friends and family members are dropping like flies.

In big corporate scandals like Enron, plenty of people in positions of authority knew that its success was built on a giant scam, but looked the other way. When it's a choice between exposing wrongdoing or showing loyalty to peers and superiors, the latter usually wins. That's why whistleblowers are so rare, and why they have to struggle so hard to be heard.

The sheer number of Heffernan's stories builds a deeply depressing picture of the limits of human thinking. Especially when one realises how much of the present economic troubles are due to the wilful blindness shown by bankers, regulators and politicians who for years fell into a kind of moral slumber. Yesterday I read a news item about the Bernie Madoff scandal, that what seemed to hit the world like a bolt from the blue was really no such thing. Most of Wall Street suspected he was fraudulent - as indeed it should have, considering his abnormally high returns to investors and his refusal to tell anyone how he managed it - but no one publicly said or did anything about it. Earlier I might have been shocked, but now I understand this is absolutely normal.

This is relevant if we agree that science itself is subject to the negative effects of groupishness. Even some scientists themselves are at pains to deny the idealised picture that the public has of science, as a process of disinterested truth-seeking that is absolutely rational, fair and objective. On the contrary, they say, it's a hugely emotive business driven by cliques and factions who identify with pet theories and beat up their opponents (intellectually if not actually). They close ranks to freeze out intruders like parapsychologists, who are not loyal to the central tenets of materialism.

Unsurprisingly, there are persistent reports from scientists and medical professionals sympathetic to psi-research that some of their colleagues privately agree with them, but publicly wouldn't dream of exposing themselves to ridicule by speaking out. It's quite literally more than their job's worth. For most, the group-think is the truth, and what they personally think doesn't come into it.

I've often felt, grappling with sceptics' arguments, that they literally can't see why paranormalists argue as they do. They are literally blind to the paranormal element, so they can't see what the fuss is about - they think people are just making it up.

Heffernan references a 2005 experiment in which subjects were placed in an fMFRI brain scanner, shown some objects, and asked to decide which of them were similar to others. In one version they made the decision on their own, and in another decided only after knowing what their fellow participants had decided. The subjects tended to be swayed by the group, which was expected; the purpose was to determine which area of their brain was active as they made the decision. Activity in the prefrontal cortex would indicate that it was a conscious choice ('I'm going to follow the others on this one'.) But in fact, there was no activity there. Instead the activity was centred in the occipital and perietal regions of the brain, suggesting that conformity was an act of perception.

This is a shocking finding. Social influence had altered what the volunteer actually saw.

Jonathan Haidt too is sceptical about the primacy of reason, arguing that its role in human judgements has been vastly exaggerated. He follows David Hume in believing that intuition, not reason, is what drives people in their decision-making (interestingly, given Hume's status as the patron saint of sceptics, who glorify the primacy of reason). His image is of the rider (reason) perched on top of the elephant (intuition), and trying, for the most part ineffectually, to guide it.

Haidt is a moral psychologist who has studied the basis of leftwing and rightwing political thinking. No space, alas, to go into detail of his wonderful book. (It's a bit complicated, and confusingly structured, but if you stick with it all makes sense in the end.) He's a liberal, but found himself becoming critical of the relatively shallow basis of liberal or progressive morality compared with conservatives, and coming to appreciate the true value of conservative morality (of the Burkean rather than the Tea Party kind). The liberal emphasis on fairness and equality, he thinks, can have negative effects if it tries to override the moral foundations that conservatives are big on, such as respect for authority, loyalty and sanctity.

That sounds like common sense, but this is the most detailed and nuanced explanation of human morality that I've found coming from a scientist, and a lot more satisfying than the rather crude speculations of evolutionary psychologists.

Haidt's thinking about politics chimes with my own about psi. What one believes - and how one responds to claims and evidence - has a lot to do with one's genetic predisposition, and how that predisposition is shaped by life experience into a worldview.

I don't know what the equivalent foundations would be of advocacy and scepticism. As a moderate leftie myself, I've been tempted in the past to think of scepticism as a rightwing thing. It's perhaps partly because I associate the crude and noisy intolerance of people like Martin Gardner and James Randi with the blow-hard, Rush Limbaugh-Fox News tendency in American politics; also the way the Right espouses extreme climate scepticism, arguably another form of denial. In general, there seems to be something inherently reactionary in the deference to established scientific authority and tradition, and the knee-jerk rejection of radical new thinking. At its worst, the rhetoric looks like an angry white (mainly) male defence of the establishment against dippy idealistic liberal New Agers.

OK, this is far too simplistic and I wouldn't seriously argue it. Psi-sceptics just as easily fit the secular liberal model, and progressives can be every bit as snarky as their opponents.

But what interests me about Haidt's analysis is that it provides a in-depth view of both sides' motivations, particularly that of the group he has always opposed. I think we should be doing something similar. If sceptics take what seem to us to be extraordinary, egregious and indefensible positions to defend themselves from the implications, of, for instance, veridical out-of-body perception in the near-death experience, it's worth exploring why. Is it personal fear, or does it threaten an idea of the world that they value and want to defend?

Off the top of my head, I can think of all sorts of things that bother them. The corruption of personal privacy implied by telepathy; the threat to the integrity and authority of science; the invitation to witchcraft implied by psychokinesis; the notion of a supernatural interference in human affairs; the terror of living on after death (and having nothing to do) and so on. These are things which may not bother psi-advocates, or even appear on our radar. But quite possibly they are legitimate worries. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, what kind of world this would be if science did an about-face, and endorsed the reality of psi. Is it something we're ready for?

All questions for another post, and things I'll be exploring in my next book.

Baggini's Heathenism

In Randi's Prize I held a brief imaginary dialogue with Julian Baggini, a philosopher who writes for the Guardian. I picked Baggini because he'd made some remarks about mediums, but also because he sounded like the sort of atheist that a person with religious interests could have a conversation with. That impression has been confirmed by the thoughtful articles about religious belief that he has been writing on the Guardian's Comment-is-Free site recently - not least by the infuriated responses of hardline atheists.

Today in the print version Baggini publishes a manifesto, a list of 12 points that distinguishes what a 'heathen' believes. I like the term 'heathen', but use it in a jokey sense, along with 'infidel'. Baggini has a serious use for it: he thinks it helps distinguish moderate atheism from the highly-charged version espoused by 'bishop-bashers' like Dawkins and Hitchens. It shows that 'we do not think too highly or ourselves', unlike terms such as 'rationalist' and 'bright' - which imply (I guess he would agree) that people who think differently are irrational and stupid.

So what's in the manifesto? Baggini starts with beliefs. Like all atheists, heathens are naturalists, who have no reason to believe there is anything like heavens, spirit worlds and deities. They arrive at this conclusion because their first commitment is to the truth,

a commitment to see the world as truthfully as we can, using our rational faculties as best we can, based on the best evidence we have. That is where our primary commitment lies, and we are prepared to accept the possibility that we are wrong about some of the specific beliefs that has led us to.

However heathens are emphatically not followers of scientism. For them, science is not the last word on everything. They can even be made to feel uncomfortable by the way it undermines certain beliefs about free will and rationality. They also recognise that human beings are very imperfect users of reason, easily led astray by biases, distortions and prejudices.

Reason itself always leaves us short of certain knowledge, requiring us to rely on our judgements in order to come a conclusion.

That isn't to say that heathens aren't confident that they're right, they just prefer to be discreet about their certainty. They'll concede that religion may help people to be happier and healthier, if the evidence is there, although it wouldn't make them give up their convictions. They are secularists, but don't demand that religion be banished from society or public life.

Some heathens can even be a tiny bit religious themselves:

A small minority of religions reject the real existence of supernatural entities and divinely authored texts, accept that science trumps dogma, and see the essential core of religion in its values and practices. These are entirely compatible with the heathen position.

In fact religion is often the heathen's friend:

We believe in not being tone-deaf to religion and to understand it in the most charitable way possible. So we support religions when they work to promote values we share, including those of social justice and compassion. We are respectful and sympathetic to the religious when they arrive at their different conclusions on the basis of the same commitment to sincere, rational, undogmatic inquiry as us, without in any way denying that we believe them to be false and misguided.

On the other hand that's balanced by an 'equally honest' commitment to be critical of religion when necessary, especially when it 'promotes prejudice, division or discrimination, suppresses truth or stands in the way of medical or social progress.'

There were some approving comments, although it seems a lot of atheists are attached to their dogmatic warrior status, and would hate to lose it. The idea of giving ground to religions is intolerable to them (eg 'I like Atheist, it's loud, proud and to the point. Heathen sounds like I'm a pussy.') But Baggini predicts that many people of faith will agree with much of what he says, and I think he's right. He's to be commended for making the effort to build bridges and deflate the rhetoric.

Obviously, though, I disagree that scientific naturalism is the inevitable outcome of a 'commitment to the truth'.

Elsewhere, as I mentioned in Randi's Prize, Baggini argues that belief in life after death can only be based on faith, since the evidence and good reasons required for a rational argument that it exists are lacking. True, mediums sometimes make correct statements, but then there are bound to be occasional uncanny coincidences and lucky guesses. If there were genuine communication between the living and the dead, there would surely be many more accurate and otherwise inexplicable communications. The fact that they are so rare suggests they are genuine, but frauds, guesses and coincidences.

I went on to point out that Baggini could not reasonably talk this way if he knew anything about psychic research.

Just now I'm going through the investigative material on Leonora Piper, and it's an extraordinary read. Much of it consists of notes taken of sittings, where one can see the back-and-forth between sitter and Piper, in the form of a distinct trance personality. A sitter will typically hear his or her extended family described in detail, with exact names, ages, characteristics, interests, living or dead and so on, without any feedback or anything that gives the slightest support for the cold reading hypothesis. The communications were not only accurate and inexplicable, they were very far from being rare. On the contrary, this material is voluminous and no serious challenge has ever been mounted against it: such efforts as there have been are trivial. Even well-informed sceptics agreed that telepathy was the minimum needed to explain it.

Those of us who know about this, and about many other similar investigations of other individuals, think of it as evidence. In my case, the findings of psychic research help inform my spiritualistic worldview. That worldview may be in conflict with Baggini's naturalism, yet it's surely consistent with the commitment, as he describes it, to 'see the world as truthfully as we can, using our rational faculties as best we can, based on the best evidence we have'.

I'd add that it doesn't appear especially truthful or rational to insist that all mediums rely on pre-gathered information or cold-reading, when there are instances - and Piper is far from being the only one - that powerfully refute that.

Baggini's excuse is ignorance. As I said in my book, I guess he doesn't know that psychic research even exists. It's not on his radar; the people he mixes with, the institutions he frequents will know nothing about it either. It's part of the naturalist creed - and in this respect a creed is exactly what it is - that all such notions have been swept away by modern science.

If, on the other hand, he knows all about Piper but has a reasoned counter-argument, then I would be interested to hear it. I suspect it would be based largely on the fact of no one having won James Randi's million dollars, the possibility of cold-reading, the gullibility of investigators - all those general nostrums that sceptics typically offer, and that reveal minds that have not yet got to grips with the problem.

I think this evocation of the primacy of reason is made with the sceptic's natural complacency. A true commitment to truth and reason could eventually lead a thinker to interesting places - and expose him to deeply awkward conclusions.

More Psi Wars

I reviewed Debating Psychic Experience here a year or so ago, and another review is coming out in the current issue of the SPR Journal. Meanwhile, parapsychologist Chris Roe sends me a copy of a recent exchange in the UK Skeptic magazine.

As usual the critics, represented here by Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman, want parapsychology to declare itself dead. Hyman contests the claim, based on ganzfeld meta-analyses and supported by Dean Radin and Jessica Utts, among others, that the reality of psi has been established. Wiseman argues that parapsychology is by now 'confined to the fringes of academia'.

However Wiseman also generously offers parapychologists 'one last chance' to prove themselves. They need to focus on one or two of the most promising approaches, he says, aiming for replications in a number of different labs, and pre-registering details in order to avoid the problems that arise with retrospective analysis.

If this approach yields a significant and replicable effect then the scientific mainstream would be forced to take the topic seriously and allow parapsychology in from the cold. If it fails the field needs to have the courage to accept the null hypothesis. In short, the time has come to put up or shut up.

Counter-arguments are put forward by Caroline Watt and Chris Roe. Watt, from the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, points out that parapsychology hardly exists as a discipline: there are fewer than 100 researchers working full time in the world, and many of those study not psi itself but other areas such as paranormal belief.

Roe, a psychology lecturer and psi-experimenter at the University of Northampton, adds that at least 16 UK universities have academic staff whose doctoral training is in parapsychology. Parapsychology has featured regularly at conferences organised by the British Psychological Society, and he personally has had papers accepted by its annual conference. Interestingly, the largest of the A-level (the standard pre-university qualification) examination boards for psychology includes 'Anomalistic Psychology' in its specification, including elements on testing of ESP and PK. This means, Roe says, that 'future undergraduates will come to university with a grounding in parapsychology and an expectation that the subject will be represented on any comprehensive undergraduate syllabus' - hardly characteristics of a subject confined to the fringes.

Roe vigorously contests Hyman's claim that parapsychology doesn't look scientific. According to what criteria, he asks. For instance, studies show that the use of double blind methods are common in parapsychology at a level of 85%, but hardly at all in physics and biology and only 25% in medical sciences.

When it comes to arguments about replication, Hyman picked a poor study but could just as easily have chosen a good one, Roe says. Also, there is a very strong correlation between standardness and effect size, and where the focus in meta-analyses is on standard studies you get something that looks very like replication.

So why aren't there more of these? In such a tiny field, the active players tend to be innovators looking for interesting new approaches, Roe continues, not technicians engaged in replication exercises. This rather reinforces Wiseman's point, and Roe agrees there need to be changes, but then there's the problem of funding.

These arguments are by now quite familiar, and many were covered in Debating Psychic Experience. It's worth noting, though, that Hyman hardly ever talks about flawed methodology these days in the way that he used to. An alert reader might wonder why, if psi-researchers' experimental methodology is no longer the target of critics' attention, they are still often getting highly significant results.

But Hyman does have a new gambit, and it strikes me as one that goes to the heart of the matter. He claims that some psi-researchers themselves agree that parapsychology has failed. These neoparapyschologists, as he calls them - he mentions Dick Bierman, Walter von Lucadou and Robert Jahn - appear to concede that psi fails to meet scientific criteria, and that the evidence for it will never satisfy scientific standards. In that case, he argues, the goal set by the founders of psychical research, that psi be accepted by mainstream science, is clearly unattainable.

Since the time of Calileo, Kepler, Harvey, and Newton, modern science has flourished just because it focused only on phenomena that were available for public scrutiny, were lawful, and could be independently replicated.

Quite so, and for science to restrict its focus in this way has made sense. But it does not follow that a phenomenon for which there is abundant evidence in a number of areas - often anecdotal, to be sure, but also confirmed by careful investigation - does not exist, merely on the grounds that it does not fully meet these three criteria. On the contrary, an entity that arises from consciousness would surely be expected to be fitful and elusive.

Jahn notes that psi's primary correlates appear to be subjective in character, including such nebulous factors as

teleological intention (need, desire); emotional resonance (bonding, meaning, personal importance); attitude (confidence, playfulness, low ego involvement); masculine/feminine distinctions (both psychological and biological); and perceived uncertainty or complexity, all of which may function at the unconscious as well as the conscious level'.

('Change the Rules!', Journal of Scientific Exploration), 2008.

Such an entity is likely to evade detection as long as it fails to conform to scientific objectivity, he says.

This is what Hyman's neoparapsychologists are really talking about. If psi lies outside science, as science is presently conceived, then as far as they're concerned, so much the worse for science. It's time, as Jahn says, to change the rules. In particular - as Rupert Sheldrake too argues in his new book - scientists need to abandon the illusion that what they do is somehow purely objective, as if human subjectivity never entered into it.

The problem, then, is how a methodology designed to deal with material entities can be modified so that it can also deal with immaterial ones. And how can its guardians be persuaded to relax their vigilance?

For Jahn there are plenty of precedents. Change is a characteristic of human endeavour, for instance in sports competitions, where a modification of rules can often lead to improvement. There's a similar process of continuous change and development in the creative arts, religion and spirituality, psychology and philosophy, he notes. (Also in politics of course; there are good reasons why the American constitution has been amended so often.) So why should not change also come to science?

A rather obvious reason is its sheer authority and prestige. Science continues to be a fertile source of new technologies, and continues to attract huge public interest in areas like cosmology and neuroscience. So why tinker with it? For critics like Hyman, changing the rules would destroy science: if you let in psi, you risk endorsing other, equally dubious claims, like N-Rays, cold fusion and polywater. Indeed, from his point of view, an article with the title Change the Rules! might almost have been a spoof penned by a satirical critic.

He surely has a point. Yet all this further exposes the ideological nature of science, as an institution based on nineteenth-century positivism. Reality is held to be synonymous with what is lawful, and psi's irregular and subjective nature puts it beyond the pale. It's as much about the reality that we want than the one we're in.

So the psi debate has shifted to a new and more interesting phase, to the nature and purpose of science itself. And at bottom it's driven by the same differences of temperament and vision that drive political arguments. The Hymans and Alcocks are the reactionaries, for whom the unstable, unlawful nature of psi is intolerable and want to prevent change at all costs. The Jahns and Sheldrakes are the visionary pioneers, mapping paths to a future in which the spiritual components of humans are at last recognised.

History tells us that their time will come, because change always comes eventually - whether we like it or not. Positions that once were defended to the death are overrun and disappear, and with hindsight it's incredible that anyone took them seriously. That will happen with the resistance to psi - of that we can be sure. What we don't know is how long it will take.

Book Review: Rupert Sheldrake's The Science Delusion

We're used to scientists telling us that the universe is inert matter, that we lack free will, and that our ideas, beliefs and goals are just 'folk psychology'. To voice dissent is to invite sharp correction or be denounced as a follower of pseudoscience. So for those of us who are suspicious of the claims of materialism it's astonishing, and also heartening, to hear a scientist agree that it's a hidebound ideology, dismiss the belief in determinism as a 'delusion' and call on the 'high priests' of science to abandon their 'fantasy of omniscience'.

All this sounds rather rhetorical, and the title of The Science Delusion seems to have been chosen as a counterblast to the Great Panjandrum of scientific orthodoxy himself. But Rupert Sheldrake is not Richard Dawkins, and this is as coloured as his language gets; the book certainly has little about religion. For the most part it's a dispassionate expose of materialism's failures and a plea for scientists to open up to new thinking. The sciences are being held back by 'assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos', he argues. Not only have the most fundamental questions not been answered for all time, they can all be replaced by more interesting and fruitful ones.

Provoking stuff, but despite his reputation as a heretic, gained from his controversial theory of morphic resonance and his psychic research, Sheldrake has impeccable credentials as a biochemist - Cambridge, Harvard, ground-breaking research and a stint in India helping to develop high-yield crops - that demand respect.

Sheldrake identifies ten core beliefs that scientists take for granted: that people and animals are complex mechanisms rather than goal-driven organisms; that matter is unconscious and human consciousness an illusion; that the laws of nature are fixed; that nature is purposeless; that all biological inheritance is carried via material structures like genes, and so on. Each is the basis of a chapter in which he draws attention to unresolved tensions, problems and dilemmas. Most scientists think these will eventually be ironed out. However Sheldrake argues they are symptoms of a deeper malaise, and that the failure of the materialist model to make good on its predictions will eventually lead to its demise.

A key idea for Sheldrake is the existence of information fields that act as a kind of universal memory. Once a form or activity has come into being it provides the blueprint for other similar effects, which may then multiply with ease. The classic example is the formation of crystals, for which Sheldrake has elsewhere provided evidence, but in principle he thinks it can apply to anything, from the development of new organisms to the acquisition of new skills.

This has implications for cosmology, he believes. Far from being set in stone since the Big Bang, nature's laws should be considered as evolving habits that grow stronger through repetition; the universe is an ongoing creative process, of which human creativity is part. He questions the belief in the absolute equivalence of energy and matter, arguing instead that new energy may be coming into the universe all the time. If that's so, then the idea of a perpetual motion machine - a guarantee of crackpot status to anyone bold enough to propose it - could indeed be possible. But how will we know if scientists lack the confidence to strike out in bold new directions?

Modern science claims to have vanquished vitalism - the idea of a living force and purposive vital factors in animals an plants - as long ago as the nineteenth century. In practice it has simply reinvented it in molecular guises, Sheldrake argues. Dawkins justifies his idea of the selfish gene as a metaphor, but other neo-Darwinists like Daniel Dennett appear to take it literally, as if genes have a conscious interest in their future state. In reality, Sheldrake insists, genes are not 'selfish and ruthless, as if they contained gangster homunculi'; there's no evidence that they do anything more than make proteins. They don't carry the instructions for the development of embryos, let alone the intensely goal-directed behaviour demonstrated, for instance, by the wasps who successfully build and repair complex nesting structures no matter what obstacles are put in their way.

The machine metaphors beloved of materialist thinkers are misleading, he insists. No machine starts from small beginnings, grows, forms new structures within itself and then reproduces itself. Yet plants and animals do this all the time and to many people - especially those like pet owners and gardeners who deal with them on a daily basis - it's 'blindingly obvious' that they are living organisms. For scientists to see them as machines propelled only by ordinary physics and chemistry is an act of faith. Sheldrake believes instead that the development of organisms, and animal behaviour, are controlled by 'attractors' in morphogenetic fields, that exert a causal influence and draw the organism towards its goal.

Sheldrake has a lot to say about the unfulfilled promises of molecular biology. For all the excitement over gene science in the past two decades, and the $100 billion biotechnology boom that it fuelled, only a very limited genetic basis has been discovered for human disease. Biologists are drowning in data but can't make much sense of it. The genes associated with development have turned out to be almost identical in mice, humans, flies and reptiles, offering no insights as to why these forms differ so dramatically. In short, he says, it's time to look elsewhere for the causes of biological formation.

On the subject of consciousness Sheldrake points out that even materialists can't decide what causes it, which is why there are so many rival theories. He quotes Galen Strawson, himself a materialist, who is scathing about the way fellow philosophers are willing to deny the reality of their own experience - testament to the power of the materialist faith. He approves Strawson's interest in panspychism, the doctrine that all matter is invested with mental as well as physical aspects. That same conclusion was reached nearly a century ago by the philosophers Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, based on quantum mechanics: that matter is not timeless, and that all physical objects are entities or events that have an inner duration.

There is just one chapter on psychic research: this covers telepathy and precognition, with especial focus on animal telepathy and Sheldrake's own experiments with animals, also telephone telepathy. (The sense of being stared at is covered in a chapter on consciousness.) Sheldrake urges that science pay more attention to animal premonitions of disasters, and describes his 840-strong collection of anecdotal accounts of premonitions in humans, of which 70 per cent are about dangers, disasters or deaths. There is little on sceptics, apart from details of public encounters with two who dismissed his arguments while amply demonstrating they knew nothing about his research, and with Dawkins, who tried unsuccessfully to lure him into a debunking television interview. There follows also a chapter on mechanistic medicine, in which he acknowledges its record of success, but questions whether it is the only kind that works.

Materialists argue that their model has proved so durable, and so resistant to challenge, that there can no longer be any doubt that it is true. Sheldrake argues by contrast that the model is simply reinforcing itself by its expectations. Psychologists and medical researchers know only too well how experimenters' beliefs can influence outcomes. However this is not at all understood in the hard sciences, which as a result hardly at all use blind methods in their experiments. The assumption is that there is a 'correct' outcome, and if you don't get it you're not doing it properly. It would be easy enough to test for experimenter bias in a biochemical experiment on enzymes, for instance, Sheldrake says, but so far no one has taken him up on the idea. One British science teacher agreed that students are influenced by their expectations, but said that was 'what science education is all about' and he certainly wasn't going to open up that particular can of worms in his school.

If psychic phenomena is real, there is even the possibility that scientists can affect the outcomes of experiments psychically. Indeed the belief in mind over matter - so furiously denounced by professional sceptics - has been observed in the physics lab. Wolfgang Pauli was believed by his colleagues - and by himself - to unwittingly interfere with sensitive lab equipment by his mere presence. And remarkably, a biochemistry professor at a major US university even boasted to Sheldrake about his ability to get better results than his colleagues by 'willing' the system to work.

This is a superb and timely book and one for which in a way I have been waiting for the last twenty years. My own academic research has convinced me that psychic phenomena genuinely occur, and that the rejection of it is driven largely by ideology and personal antipathy. That being the case, it's hard to conceive that the materialist model is the whole story - for all its dramatic successes, which of course Sheldrake fully acknowledges. I can't judge how solid the case is for morphic resonance, but there seems to be at least some evidence for it and in theory it helps resolve some major dilemmas. Of course the book won't find favour with most scientists, who will brush it off as a persistence of discredited vitalism. But it may encourage some to be open about the more adventurous views that Sheldrake claims they often express to him in private.

Perhaps more to the point, there's a need for a book like this that's authoritative, wide ranging and accessible, and that challenges the prevailing paradigm for a wider audience. That applies especially to young people whose ideas have not yet been shaped by it, and their curiosity dulled as a result. The publishers were kind enough to send me two hardback copies - an error, no doubt, but I have put it to good use, giving the extra one to my eighteen-year old nephew, who is brimming with curiosity and questions about nature. I'd like to think that his generation have a greater opportunity to question the prevailing dogmas and will eventually forge a new science, one that describes more closely what humans observe and feel about their world.

The Spiritualization of Science

We take it for granted that the future would look astoundingly different to our eyes, if we could only see it. Could medieval folk in their dingy hovels possibly have visualised the world we inhabit?

And what would strike them most? The machinery and labour saving gadgets? The concrete forests? Or the fact that people aren't constantly spitting, cursing and hitting each other?

It takes effort to imagine the future. What comes to mind most easily are the dystopias which Hollywood does so well: urban jungles, totalitarian systems, technologies gone mad.

Otherwise our humanistic reflexes encourage us to think in utopian terms, as if today's positive developments will lead to a better tomorrow.

This morning I found a book in my shelves that I didn't know I possessed: Wider Horizons: Explorations in Science and Human Experience (1999). It's published by the Scientific and Medical Network, which I joined recently, and consists of essays on alternative science/spirituality topics.

One that caught my eye is by Mark B. Woodhouse titled 'Worldviews in Transition'. Woodhouse argues that we are in a process of transformation in which "materialistic reductionism, fear, hierarchical control and disempowering competition" will all yield to "holism, multi-dimensional realities, mutually empowering cooperation, and the singular importance of compassion and unconditional love". Not merely because these are nice ideas, he suggests, but because the old ways no longer serve us.

He lists about thirty areas of change, anticipating the new millennium, and I hope he won't mind my reproducing some of them here. (He has written a book called Paradigm Wars, which should be worth checking out).

I have to say, though, confident assertions of this kind make me feel conservative. I know people who are much more cautious than I am about psychic phenomena. However when it comes to things like extra-terrestrials and ancient civilizations and earth mysteries I too find myself hanging back.

A part of me is also suspicious about utopianism. Contemporary materialism could prove much more durable than we hope and expect, and the challenge from conservative religious fundamentalism may also grow. If the battle between those two old-world ideologies dominates the next few decades, it might hold up any moves towards the "sacralization" of science.

One could also argue that, given the manifest imperfections of human nature, spirituality-based thinking by definition will always remain apart from the mainstream. It may even be that we understand it best by seeing it as an alternative, a goal to strive for. Or is that unduly pessimistic?

To be fair, Woodhouse acknowledges that these emerging ideas and trends are still very much a minority position. And I agree when he says we're better advised to 'spend less time examining the ships in the harbor, more to looking in which way the winds are blowing.'

Here are some of Woodhouse's predictions, in terms of prevailing praradigms and how he sees them metamorphosing:

Past/current: Matter and energy are coequal realities, each translatable into the other. Current/developing: Energy or fields of force are fundamental; matter is compressed energy - trapped light.

Past/current: All that we can know is confined to three dimensional sensory awareness. Current/developing: reality is multi-dimensional; our physical sensory level is but one of many.

Past/current: Consciousness is a by-product of (or identical with) the neurochemistry of the brain. Consciousness is a passive mirror of external events. Current/developing: Consciousness is irreducible and extends as a spectrum to other realms. The Brain is a filter. Consciousness deeply influences outer worlds.

Past/current: If mind exists, as many believe, it is as a separate (non-physical) "ghost in the machine". Current/developing: Energy-consciousness exists throughout the cosmos, including in plants, cells and animals.

Past/current: Only sound and the electromagnetic spectrum have "frequencies" that are of much use to us. Standard physics, chemistry and biology are what we need to control our environments. Current/developing: Everything has a vibratory signature, from angels and love to disease and the weapons of war. Power accrues to those who understand and access those signatures and their forms.

Past/current: If God exists, as most believe, "He" is separate from creation and rules through organized religion. Theism prevails. Current/developing: God/Goddess is not separate from creation; accessing inner divinity is a key to spirituality. Panentheism is a more inclusive cosmology.

Past/current: To be "religious" means to have faith in your God, belong to an organization that supports your faith, and to act according to scripture. Current/developing: Emphasis is on spiritual development over outer forms of religion, including the transformative power of transpersonal experiences.

Past/current: The paranormal (broadly conceived) violates both science and common sense; it is illusory. Current/developing: The paranormal is becoming normal. Basic theory is changing to accommodate it.

Past/current: Being healthy means not having any overt signs of illness or disease. Curing disease is eradicating symptoms and physical pathology. Current/developing: Health means optimum function of all interrelated physical, emotional and spiritual systems. Healing is deeper than curing.

Past/current: Humans evolved from a chemical soup by accident, random mutation, and natural selection. Keep refining Darwin. Current/developing: Not without periodic "boosts" from sources external to the planet. Interspecies evolution is not biochemically explained.

Past/current: Human civilizations have existed for no more than seven thousand years - no earlier than 5000 BC. Current/developing: Civilizations probably existed tens of thousands of years ago, if not more. The Sphinx dates to at least 10,000 BC.

Past/current: Education is left-brained information/skills to help us do something useful and to transmit the values and paradigms of our culture(s). Courses don't fit in a coherent paradigm of human nature and social purpose. Current/developing: Different learning styles, deep critical thinking skills, psychotechnologies, life long learning, and the power of self-image are stressed. Courses do fit a coherent overarching paradigm of human nature and social purpose.

Past/current: It always costs a greater amount of some form of energy to produce a lesser amount of another form of energy, eg. the gasoline engine. Energy production is not free. We can increase efficiency, but never over 99%. Current/developing: Esoteric technologies are emerging to master gravity (thus space travel), produce five times the quality and quantity of food, detoxify the environment, eliminate gas engines, and extract "free" energy from the vacuum field.

Past/current: The media objectively and truthfully reports most of what we need to know. Investigative journalism tells us the way "things really are". Current/developing: News that deeply threatens existing power structures is either not reported or unfairly reported. A new world requires full disclosure.

Past/current: We are on the planet because our parents by design or accident created us. We now have to determine the best way of surviving. Either God put us here to worship Him, or we create our own relative meaning in a chaotic world. Current/developing: We chose to be here on a soul level to grow in wisdom and alignments with love, to integrate our spirituality with our physicality, and to contribute to the creative evolution of the universe.

Past/current: When we die, we either rot in the grave or go to (some version of) Heaven or Hell. Current/developing: Reincarnation promises to become the prevailing "after life" philosophy.

Past/current: In theory extraterrestrial races exist somewhere "out there". But they are not here and would have no interest in us, even if they could travel here efficiently. Besides, if they were here, our governments would tell us. Current/developing: Extraterrestrial races have visited Earth for thousands of years and are currently in, on, or around the planet. If they are not formally recognized as of this writing (1998) they soon will be.

Past/current: Our current worldview(s) have served us well and should be refined, but not abandoned. Judeo-Christian, Cartesian-Newtonian, or Postmodern paradigms will take us into the new millennium. There's no need for alarm or for pie in the sky. Current/developing: We need a fundamentally new worldview to respond to current transformational challenges. Holism, Systems and Complexity theories, and the Perennial Wisdom underwrite a vision for the next millennium. They are both needed and realistic.