Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier

(10 of 10)
the truth seeker: doubt. One hundred and fifty years ago Charles Lamb observed that credulity was the child's strength but the adult's weakness. That observation is even more valid today, when shoddy or ignorant research is used to lend legitimacy to the most extravagant tenets of the psychic movement.

That is not to say that parapsychology ought to be excluded from serious scrutiny. Some first-rate minds have been attracted to it: Freud, Einstein, Jung, Edison. The paranormal may exist, against logic, against reason, against present evidence and beyond the standard criteria of empirical proof. Perhaps there are reasons why the roll of the dice and turn of the cards sometimes appear to obey the bettor's will. Perhaps the laws of probability are often suspended. Perhaps Geller and other magicians can indeed force metal to bend merely because they will it. Perhaps photographs can be projected by the mind. Perhaps plants think.

Perhaps not.

There is only one way to tell: by a thorough examination of the phenomena by those who do not express an a priori belief. By those for whom probability is not a mystique but a comprehensible code. By those who have nothing to lose but their skepticism. Until such examiners are allowed to play the psychic game, it is unlikely that the paranormal will escape the ambiguous utterance against it in Leviticus: "Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them ..." And that most wondrous and mysterious of entities, the human mind, will remain an underdeveloped country.