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Posts tagged ‘parapsychology’

Apr 14

Chris Carter on Skeptiko

Chris 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.”

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Sep 12

Some Sheldrake Stuff

It’s interesting that the deeper I dive into ancient Hinduism, the closer I come to the same view that Sheldrake expresses in his first book, A New Science of Life. Most people don’t know this, but Rupert has a copy of the original manuscript he submitted for publication. It was reject as far to mystical and far reaching in its scope. A revised, toned down version was eventual sent to press. That’s the version I want to read. He wrote the book while living in an ashram in Hyderabad, India where perspective on the universe is a little different that in downtown London. He’s promised to dig up this version for me someday when he finds it.
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Sep 6

Parapsychology and The Skeptics

Sheldrake 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.

In the Forward, Sheldrake writes, “The kind of skepticism Carter is writing about is not the normal healthy kind on which all science depends, but arises from a belief that the existence of psychic phenomena is impossible; they contradict the established principles of science, and if they were to exist they would overthrow science as we know it, causing chaos and confusion.” This looks like a great book. I plan on picking up a copy. I will try to write up a brief review later this month.

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Jul 21

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Rupert Receives Perrott-Warrick Scholarship

Rupert SheldrakeThe Perrott-Warrick Fund is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge. Apart from the Koestler Chair at Edinburgh University, it is the largest source of financial support for psychical research and parapsychology in Britain.

In 1937, as a memorial to F.W.H.Myers, who had been a Fellow of Trinity College, Frank Duerdin Perrott made a bequest to the masters and Fellows of the college “absolutely for the purpose of psychical research”. He defined psychical research as: Read more