An Excursion Into the Paranormal by George Karolyi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the paranormal. The term itself is almost taboo among scientists and people who have devoted themselves, whether knowingly or not, to the High Church of Materialism, an idea and its implications beautifully explored by Rupert Sheldrake in The Science Delusion. It’s been connected with very specific things and phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telekinesis, auras etc, which have all been discredited and/or completely rejected by what you’d call mainstream rationality; bad science, Tricks of the Mind/hallucination or outright fraud have been strongly suggested as the cause of the above phenomena and more. Nevertheless, according to the book’s definition of the word:
Paranormal phenomena do seem to occur, it’s just that the tools our current level of understanding of the world provide us with are insufficient to explain the why. Fraud, bad science etc. as explanations would constitute those phenomena normal, not paranormal, which by the way is the dominant narrative at this point in time. Perhaps things are not as clear-cut when the “definite proof” of these phenomena being normal is placed under scrutiny.
George Karolyi, in this book, did what in my opinion every scientist – or at the very least more of them – should be doing: he didn’t accept or dismiss observations based on what he assumed was true; rather, he put observations first and attempting to build a theory on the results second.
Apparently (and I’m using this word in particular because according to Google this man doesn’t exist), when Karolyi wrote the book, he was a researcher in the University of South Australia with a background in electrical engineering. This explains the absolutely rigorous methodology he seems to have followed. I’m serious: he begins the book with a Physics 101 on electricity, waves, EM fields and quantum mechanics, all of them fields of physics which were either completely unknown, very poorly understood or deemed magical/supernatural as little as 150 years ago. It even has a section on probability and statistics for readers to get a basic grasp of what significant, as opposed to chance, results mean when conducting experiments.
The book then goes through human auras, psychokinesis, Kirlian photography, ESP and survival-related phenomena (among others), describing what experiments have been done on each inquiry – some by the author himself -, often going into extreme, virtually unfollowable by the layman, technical details on the methodology thereof. What genuinely surprised me? The author, to his credit, included negative results. For example, his experiments on aura perception did not lead to anything more than chance results, yet there they were for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions on.
The majority of the rest of the phenomena, though, did in fact produce significant, sometimes even highly significant, statistical results, even when some of them generally either don’t lend themselves well to controlled laboratory experimentation due to the apparently unconscious nature of their induction, as is the case with telepathy, or proof of their existence would not be easily quantifiable, such as in the case of survival-related phenomena e.g. apparitions or reincarnation. Imagine where we could be going if we let this research guide our curiosity, instead of the misguided skeptics the world over.
On an interesting side note, I thought it was funny how at the end of the book Karolyi started making conjectures to explain the paranormal, such as the existence of parallel universes or dimensions (see 10 Dimensions Theory) which would “carry” the non-physical, conjectures which he then used as a platform for closing the book by going on a moral tangent – how people ought to live in order to make the best of their lives. It came into stark contrast with the extraordinarily detached point of view which preceded it, given the material at hand, but I thought it was more interesting than inappropriate.
The main point of all this is that it’s very unfortunate that we have limited ourselves in such a way so as to not be able to even imagine, for the most part, what we could be doing with this frankly liberating information. Maybe in 150 years people like Rupert Sheldrake, Charles Fort (whose Book of the Damned I’m in the process of reading) and even George Karolyi and other researchers whose work I’m trying to hunt down will have found their place in future History of Science books (or their equivalents) as forerunners of the coming paradigm shift, the next renaissance. We can only hope.
This review is of a copy of the book recently donated to the English section of Sofia City Library.
You know what my gut reaction to things like this is.
I have always had a fascination with paranormal phenomena, never really believing them, but enjoying them in a guilty-pleasure sort of way.
I don’t think I agree with his definition of paranormal though, or at least he seems to use it for things I would use the term unexplained, maybe it is just a semantic thing though.
I also take issue with the “misguided skepticism” approach. Sure skepticism might be a slow mode of learning things, but it is one of the most certain ones.
I would much rather be a skeptic about ghosts and telepathy , not accepting it until I am satisfied with the proof of their existence, but also not dismissing it because “This is absurd, it can’t happen”.
Being a skeptic is not the same as being dogmatic, something that I think you seem to believe.
Also , to be honest, I can very well see how all the bad rep around everything paranormal has come to be, sure it could be a case of poisoning the well, but the well currently seems surrounded by poison-carrying idiots. Between Χαρδαβέλες, Reiki nutjobs, crystal/power bracelet selling con-men and religion, I think any attempt that wants to shed some light in a serious way would do well do adopt new terms, the idiots have claimed the paranormal.
It’s funny how your other opening comment under the review for The Science Delusion was very similar to this one! http://hallografik.ws/archive/?p=4477#comments Maybe you shouldn’t trust your gut reaction so much and actually look into the arguments proposed instead. Hell, I’M the INFP here, not you! 😛
I’m waiting for your definition of paranormal. As I do mention in the review, it’s not his fault the word paranormal is charged; I would track it back to mainstream science’s insistence on using the word for “strange phenomena which might seem inexplicable at first glance, but don’t be naive, we can actually explain them; just watch!” The word has come to be interchangeable with pseudoscience, for crying out loud!
For every Hardavelas, Yuri Geller and crystal salesman, there is one or more skeptics telling me what a looney I am for choosing to question the assumptions. I want to be fair, though. Let’s agree that we’re both biased and are making generalisations here: you’re doing so by saying that all paranormal phenomena are really produced by con-men, little more than smoke and mirrors, and I’m guilty of believing that most skeptics aren’t examining the data and are being aggressive and dogmatic protectors of the status quo. Not all skeptics are like that, and obviously not every researcher of the paranormal is out to trick and scam you.
This whole thing, as I’ve said again and again, just reminds me of the discussion surrounding conspiracy theories. All you need to do to discredit someone is call him a “truthist”, if he doesn’t believe the mainstream story of 9/11, and bam, whatever he says is effectively coming from the mouth of a truthist, i.e. it’s bullshit. I see it a lot happening on the web. Hardavelases and Liakopouloses the world over are actively contributing to this, and whether they’re in on something or not is ultimately of little importance: they’re catering to the lowest common denominator of spectators with sensational content whose validity and/or sources are highly questionable at very best, and then everything in the same field of studies is tainted as that stuff Hardavelas/Liakopoulos says. It’s media figures – people with obvious vested interests – that scientists, the public and you yourself have ended up trusting for determining what’s real, what’s not and what’s worth ridiculing. Maybe the public is excused – becoming aware of one’s dominant culture without external influences is comparable to the fish becoming aware of the sea it’s breathing and swimming in – but individual scientists should know better. Or now that I think about it, maybe not. Because scientists are also human.
Would you consider all “conspiracy theories” to be just things Liakopoulos is saying? Que bono, if paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories are being lumped up with exorcisms and lizard people the way they’re being treated currently?
Don’t you think it’s important that we should be able to make the distinction ourselves, or that at least there should be people out there taking the search for truth a step further?
PS: You ought to read Charles Fort. I’d love to hear your opinion on him.
Yes, I think the term “conspiracy theories” and “paranormal” are quite unsalvageable . A well so poisoned it would be less effort to just drill a new one.
I would much rather try and think about each “thing” that I am trying to understand on its own, without any labels that might drag with them unwanted connotations.
Research ghosts, aliens, chemtrails, esp, telepathy (is that a part of esp?) whatever.
It is a waste of energy trying to shake off all the smelly baggage that come by trying to investigate the “paranormal”.
Anything is worth investigating.