Читать книгу E.S.P. Extra Sensory Perception - J. B. Rhine PhD - Страница 9

This is the book that started all the hullabaloo that for more than twenty-five years has been going on around the world over the subject of ESP, or extrasensory perception, and related topics. Its publication in 1934 started the movement that has brought parapsychology into the university laboratories in various countries and is leading to its acceptance as a proper branch of science, slow and irregular though this later development is in some countries especially.

Moreover, this is the only book that gives a blow-by-blow account of the early explanatory efforts of the group of workers at Duke University, who gave the subject its first permanent foothold in the academic world. I have written other more general reviews covering the program in the large, such as that in my book. The Reach of the Mind, but those first three strenuous, exciting, venturesome years of the Duke work have had no other ac- counting. We at the Laboratory have been too busy to go back. I had not even read this book in the last twenty-five years, and the world itself, that is, that part of it that pays attention to the new science of parapsychology, has been focusing attention on current developments. This is all as it should have been.

Why, then, turn back now? And whom should we expect to be interested? Is the book, indeed, mere history? I can at least give my own judgment.

I should place the main value of the book in the fact that it reports a unique situation that needs to be re-examined by the student and worker in parapsychology today, young or old. It seems clear, to me at least, and all the more so from a re-reading, that we had in those early years at Duke a very special situation and it was largely responsible for the unusual and unequalled production of results in ESP experiments. Where has there ever been such teamwork, a comparable spirit, a similar atmosphere?

Here was a young pair of scientists, man and wife, who had, with some determination, pulled up stakes in another university and another field, and had come to Duke University to set up under the distinguished founder of the Psychology Department, Professor William McDougall, a research center for work in the field known as psychical research. Here was a favorable university administration, and even some modest research funds, with working space, with the cooperative interest of the departmental staff, with the active cooperation of five and, later, twice as many graduate students in psychology, and the eager, enthusiastic assistance of large numbers of undergraduates, a tolerant university community that allowed, even in that day, the added attraction of the liberal use of hypnosis, the admission of interesting personalities, such as mediums, to the Department of Psychology; and, over it all, the protective sponsorship of departmental and administrative approval and personal interest. It was just about ideal. The enthusiasm was of course directed along scientific lines, the invention of new methods, the design of new test programs, but there was balance, too, judicious restraint, avoidance of sensationalism and publicity. The program was accepted, welcomed. It gave research training, intellectual excitement, and scientific adventure to hundreds of students. It was all in great good spirit and those who took part still look back upon those early days and retain a common bond.

It is true that probably no one who was not "there" will easily catch this spirit from reading between the lines in the book that follows; but I think it will not be hard for anyone to see that there must have been such an integrative influence, as I have suggested, to have kept these numerous young workers going through thousands of card-calling tests which, in some situations, can become boring in a few minutes. But for all of us concerned, this was a big thing we were doing, and every fresh score was a reminder of the magnitude of what we were discovering. We knew we had something by the tail that was too big for all of us, but we were having riotous fun pulling and holding on, twisting and prying, to get a better hold, a further advantage, a more complete capture.

The sober, reflective parapsychology worker of today well knows how important this kind of motivation can be; first, on the part of the one who administers the tests, because he needs to arouse it in the persons he tests if he hopes to motivate them to the effort and patience and persistence needed to bring out the elusive ESP ability. In the early 1930^ we hardly knew how fortunate we were in the atmosphere we had helped to create. There are glimmers of this realization to be found in the book, but the appreciation of it was easily lost when, following the publication of the book, other investigators undertook to do some sort of repetition. Arguments began, controversy followed, and aspects of the research came into prominence that over-shadowed the importance of the psycho- logical atmosphere of testing. Attention concentrated on disputes over experimental precautions, interpretation of results, and the like; and, in the years of tension and contention, the wonderful good fun of the early Duke days was lost and forgotten. It never came back to the Duke Laboratory, where the ramparts had to be "manned for defense" for so many later years. Only in recent times have the older workers begun to call attention to the importance of the psychological atmosphere of testing, the prime importance of strong motivation in the subject, and to recall what has been lost over the years of shifting emphasis.

But can we take these early tests of the 1930 seriously? If there has been this long period of debate over the adequacy of test procedures, may not these early experiments have been so loosely conducted from today's point of view as to be relatively worthless? No, and I say it with emphasis! There have, of course, been many advances made since. In fact, it was through these early explorations that the advances were made possible. They were necessary steps, and the step-by-step advances can be seen. It is true, as I think every reader will see when all the details are given, those advances were made slowly. As one looks back, he wonders continually, "Why did we not see such and such a weakness?" Perhaps others in the same situation would have seen it. No one will ever know.

But here is just where the value of this early report comes in. It tells me, l:or one, what I want to know today—how in spite of the monotony of the procedure, how well the long we were able to keep those early subjects scoring well subjects responded to the new conditions introduced, and what sort of program we had that kept so many so productive for so long. What would we not give today for the like of that? I think any worker in the field today would say the same.

The point is, then, we do not read this book to see how good the evidence for ESP may be today. We want to know what made it so good then—so good in terms of performance level, so good at this crucial beginning. At the same time, I do not apologize for its quality. This is a story of progress, of advancement toward better control, and the evidence, especially that from the clairvoyance tests conducted with new cards, screened cards, with different rooms and even different buildings (as it ends up with the experiments with Pearce) would stand up very well even today for any reasonable mind. The main point is that, in any experiment, the evidence strictly needs to be only good enough to lead to the next advance; then, as each experimenter introduces an improvement or a modification, the advancement goes steadily on. So that any reader who is making up his mind about the case for ESP today, might better continue on through the progressive advances following the period of this book. But by the time this book was sent off to the printer (at the end of 1933) no one acquainted with the experiments could see any reasonable alternative to the ESP hypothesis. All were confident that there was a case deserving publication and further research. That is enough for one step to have provided. That started the ball rolling in ESP research.

But this book did another thing: It gave the field a frame-work of organization, showed how psychical research could be conveniently renamed and defined, suggested a system for its various problem areas and indicated where ESP belonged in it all. I do not see how I could do very much better today although if I were rewriting the first chapter I would trim it somewhat. For one thing our problems today are not primarily in terminology, due perhaps partly to this bit of organization introduced at that time.

It is also worthwhile to compare this summary of experimental parapsychology made in the early thirties with the picture of the field today. Since I laid myself out rather broadly in the commentary chapters at the end of this book, there are a great many points for comparison. In a general way, the succeeding decades have rather confirmed the leading points of that commentary. What are some of these confirmations? The position taken that ESP was just not the sensory type of perception is one of these. Similarly, the nonphysical hypothesis of ESP has been considerably strengthened, and by the introduction of wholly new types of evidence as well. The unconscious level of operation has been more and more confirmed. The impression of the importance of motivation on the part of the subject is likewise strengthened. The lack of any association of ESP with ill health, mental or physical, has been firmed up strongly over the years. Also, the basic unity of ESP in its different phenomenal effects, telepathy and clairvoyance, has been further supported. It has been even extended, so that now it is in order to think of one basic parapsychical interaction between subject and object represented in ESP and PK (psychokinesis). We think of parapsychical phenomena as manifestations of this underlying reversible interaction between the person and his environment—extrasensory on the one hand and extramotor (PK) on the other.

Some of the tentative suggestions I made in 1934 have been strengthened. One of these emphasized the primary role or initiative of the percipient or receiver in telepathy tests. I stressed this "going-out" or active participation by the receiver as more likely than the view of a passive part in the transfer. Similarly, my hints regarding the energetic character of ESP have become bolder over the years, to the point where I would now say it makes little sense to talk about parapsychical operations without the assumption of a distinctive energy.

Where was I wrong in 1934? Had I known then what I now know about the evidence of ESP in animals, I would hot have made the suggestion I did, even though tentatively, on the evolutionary position of ESP. It is now much more likely that ESP is something the animal kingdom possessed long before man himself evolved; but we must leave to future research a firmer answer to this important question area.

I thought too, perhaps naturally enough, that when a subject persisted in avoiding the target in ESP tests and giving significantly negative deviations from the expected average instead of the positive ones he was supposed to give, this meant he was unconsciously negative in his attitude. But, in the light of later studies, I have now abandoned this hypothesis of negative motivation for "psi missing," as it is now called. I am not, of course, saying that there is never negative motivation but that it is not the more general explanation of these significantly negative deviations.