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Parapsychology, Science or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective
Parapsychology, Science or Magic?: A Psychological Perspective (Foundations & Philosophy of Science & Technology.)
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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March 11, 2018
The best science book I have read for a while. Which is a little embarrassing as it’s been sitting on my ‘to read’ shelf for 33 years. In fairness, if I had read it when I bought it, when I was seventeen, I doubt I would have appreciated it. So why did I buy it? Why wouldn’t I have appreciated it?
As best I can remember around that time I read Dune and Saga of the Pliocene Exile. Both of these books admirably blended the distinction between Science Fiction and Fantasy by utilising psychic powers. Was ‘psi’ science or fantasy? Before I began to approach this question, I began to meditate, and occasionally experienced something that looked like the telepathy. Despite Lawrence Le Shan’s reassurances in How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery that these were a perfectly common, and not particularly interesting feature of meditation, they frightened me. I suppose the question I asked myself then, was ‘Are these experiences what they seem? Alcock’s answer is ‘no’. Perhaps at the time, I wasn’t up to reading a book as straightforwardly academic and as clearly argued as Alcock’s. But now, university under my belt, it was a pleasure, not a struggle, to read. Perhaps as these experiences weren’t ‘real’, I shouldn’t have been frightened by these experiences, perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped meditating. After all the science these days seems to say it's a good thing.
This is the best science book I have read for a while because it’s claims seem to reach far beyond parapsychology. The chapters ‘The Psychology of Belief’, ‘The Psychology of Experience’, ‘The Fallibility of Human Judgement’ and ‘Parapsychology and Statistics’ make general claims about the fallaciousness of much of our reasoning, and use the paranormal merely to illustrate the general points. This approach is made explicit in chapter on statistics, where he points that as "Parapsychology research makes little use of mathematics or logic, which is typical of pseudo-science. This is also true of much of social science.”. I have a degree in Applied Linguistics, another social science, and I have to agree with him. Most social science is pseudoscience or at best protoscience.
As best I can remember around that time I read Dune and Saga of the Pliocene Exile. Both of these books admirably blended the distinction between Science Fiction and Fantasy by utilising psychic powers. Was ‘psi’ science or fantasy? Before I began to approach this question, I began to meditate, and occasionally experienced something that looked like the telepathy. Despite Lawrence Le Shan’s reassurances in How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery that these were a perfectly common, and not particularly interesting feature of meditation, they frightened me. I suppose the question I asked myself then, was ‘Are these experiences what they seem? Alcock’s answer is ‘no’. Perhaps at the time, I wasn’t up to reading a book as straightforwardly academic and as clearly argued as Alcock’s. But now, university under my belt, it was a pleasure, not a struggle, to read. Perhaps as these experiences weren’t ‘real’, I shouldn’t have been frightened by these experiences, perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped meditating. After all the science these days seems to say it's a good thing.
This is the best science book I have read for a while because it’s claims seem to reach far beyond parapsychology. The chapters ‘The Psychology of Belief’, ‘The Psychology of Experience’, ‘The Fallibility of Human Judgement’ and ‘Parapsychology and Statistics’ make general claims about the fallaciousness of much of our reasoning, and use the paranormal merely to illustrate the general points. This approach is made explicit in chapter on statistics, where he points that as "Parapsychology research makes little use of mathematics or logic, which is typical of pseudo-science. This is also true of much of social science.”. I have a degree in Applied Linguistics, another social science, and I have to agree with him. Most social science is pseudoscience or at best protoscience.
Displaying 1 of 1 review