Violations of the Law.

I was taught that breathless tales of mind over matter or extrasensory perception – when presented as literally true – were at best a sign of magical thinking and at worst an impending psychiatric crisis.

But I was troubled by a nagging sense that something was missing from my university education, something real and important that mythology and fairytales point to beyond metaphors. I later discovered to my surprise that the same uncomfortable feeling was shared by many of my professional colleagues. Still later I found that this was also true also within the larger scientific world. Despite official amusement, dismissal and scorn heaped upon stories of the supernormal, I found that quiet interest in advanced human potentials, including psychic and mystical experiences, could be found among many scientists and scholars in the mainstream, accredited academic world. In such contexts, you quickly learn not to talk about these things openly, because a few people will invariably turn red and cause trouble. So the widespread interests go underground, where they percolate and wait patiently for more tolerant times.

Clashes between private and public interests have given rise to powerful taboos. In this case, the “woo-woo” taboo ensures that mainstream scientific interest in the supernormal continues to simmer below the surface. And all that simmering translates into a stunning statistic. In spite of opinion surveys that consistently reveal that a majority of the world’s population is fascinated with psychic phenomena, far fewer than one percent of the world’s accredited universities are home to even a single faculty member known for his or her scientific interest in the supernormal.

Why is this taboo so robust? One reason is that college psychology and neuroscience textbooks inculcate students into believing that supernormal abilities violate the basic limiting principles of science. And a result, taking the concept of superpowers seriously evokes only mockery and shame. Few can survive in the academic world when faced with that type of stigma.

The idea of “basic limiting principles” in science was introduced by philosopher C. D. Broad in a 1949 article. He wrote, “There are certain limiting principles which we unhesitatingly take for granted as the framework within which all our practical activities and our scientific theories are confined. Some of these seem to be self-evident. Others are so overwhelmingly supported by all the empirical facts which fall within the range of ordinary experience and the scientific elaborations of it (including under this heading orthodox psychology) that it hardly enters our heads to question them.”

Broad presented these principles in four general categories. The first is that it is impossible to have an effect before a cause. This law rules out any form of retrocausation, including precognition. The second rule is that direct mind-matter interactions are impossible, except perhaps if the mind changes brain activity. This eliminates any form of psychokinesis, including effects of prayer or other forms of mental healing from a distance. Third, mental events depend completely on the brain, ruling out the possibility of out-of-body states or of survival of consciousness after bodily death. Fourth, it is impossible to gain information about anything that occurs outside the body except through means conveyed by the ordinary senses. This law rules out clairvoyance or remote viewing.

Then, after reviewing the evidence for psychic abilities as observed in controlled laboratory studies, which Broad considered to be “facts which have been established to the satisfaction of everyone who is familiar with the evidence and is not the victim of invincible prejudice,” he concluded that, “To sum up about the implications of the various kinds of paranormal cognition, it seems plain that they call for very radical changes in a number of our basic limiting principles.”

In other words, students and teachers who rely on Broad’s basic limiting principles of science to discount the plausibility of psychic phenomena do not realize that the reason Broad stated those principles in the first place was to argue, based on the empirical evidence, that a major change in such “self-evident” principles was necessary. That was over a half-century ago. The strength of the evidence is much, much stronger today. The law is indeed violated, because it was wrong!