Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the supposed ability to receive information about the world independently of the use of the recognised senses.[2] The term was coined by the Duke University botanist J. B. Rhine in 1934 to characterise psychic abilities such as telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance and precognition.[1][3]
The scientific study of paranormal communication began in the late 19th century, with the foundation in 1882 of the Society for Psychical Research
Registered charity founded in 1882 to conduct scientific investigations into psychic and paranormal phenomena. to “examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis”. The “Census of Hallucinations”, published in 1886, reported that of the 17,000 respondents asked whether they had ever seen or felt something not attributable to any physical cause, revealed a far greater number who had than would be expected by chance, and in particular of those who claimed to have experienced a hallucination of someone within 12 hours of that person’s death.[1]
Early investigations into ESP involved an agent who drew a picture, and a percipient who attempted to reproduce it. But various confounding factors made the statistical analysis of the results of such experiments impossibly difficult. So in the 1930s J. B. Rhine began to design experiments using a set of black and white cards known as Zener cards bearing the symbols circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star, with five of each type of card in a pack of twenty-five.[4] In a typical telepathy experiment the “sender” looked at a series of randomly selected cards while the “receiver” guessed the symbols.[1]
Rhine published the results of his ESP experiments in his 1934 book Extrasensory Perception, in which he claimed to have found “overwhelming” evidence for the existence of ESP. In more than 100,000 guesses made by a large number of subjects, he reported that they averaged 7.1 correct identifications compared to the 5 expected by chance.[1][5] That led other researchers to try and replicate his findings, which none were able to do.[1] Rhine’s experiments were ultimately discredited owing to the realisation that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results, such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues.[6][7][8]
— Susan Blackmore[1]
See also
- British Premonitions Bureau
Organisation set up by the psychiatrist John Barker in 1966 in the wake of the Aberfan disaster. Its aim was to collect premonitions from members of the public in the hope of being able to issue warnings about similar tragedies in the future.
