April 14, 2008Chris Carter is on this week’s Skeptiko podcast. Rupert Sheldrake wrote the Forward to Carter’s book Parapsychology & The Skeptics and said this of the book: “A masterly guide to the frontiers of science, belief and exploration. Carter leads us through the interplays of dogma, speculation and empirical research in a stimulating way. The controversy is intense because the implications for the scientific understanding of nature and of mind are so far reaching. If you want to know the current state of play, this is the book for you.”
September 6, 2007Sheldrake has written the Forward for a new book, Parapsychology and The Skeptics, by Chris Carter (not the X-Files Chris Carter), on the history of dogmatic skepticism and parapsychology. The book opens with a very interesting anecdote from the seventeenth century – when people believed that balls of fire came hurtling to Earth from space – believers called these “meteorites”. However, because there was not a theory that could accommodate rocks falling from space, the experts agreed that it was obviously a mass delusion. Of course, this still happens today. If the facts don’t fit the theory, to hell with the facts.
