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Introduction
Nobel Prize Winning Scientists:
Max Planck
Wolfgang Pauli
Erwin Schrödinger
Albert Einstein
J. J. Thomson
Brian D. Josephson
Charles Robert Richet
John William Strutt
Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
Eugene Wigner
John Eccles
Otto Stern
More Eminent Researchers:
Charles Darwin
Kurt Gödel
Alan Turing
Wernher von Braun
David Bohm
Karl Popper
Alfred Russel Wallace
Sir William Crookes
Sir Robert Boyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Richard Hodgson
Gary Schwartz
Neville Whymant
More Eminent Researchers
Books By Eminent Researchers
More Articles on Eminent Researchers at "Life in B Flat"
Introduction
Below is a list of Nobel prize winning scientists and others among the
greatest minds in the world who believed in some type of paranormal
phenomenon. They held these beliefs not out of religious faith but
because of their own research, the research of others, or their own
experiences. The beliefs and the reasons for those beliefs for each
researcher is provided and links are included for additional information.
Some of the Nobel prize winners in the list include: Max Planck the
founder of quantum mechanics who believed that matter is derived from
consciousness and therefore the mind cannot be produced by the brain.
Erwin Schrödinger also held this belief. Wolfgang Pauli believed he had
psychokinetic powers that he could not control. Otto Stern banned Pauli
from entering his lab to prevent Pauli's powers from damaging his
experimental apparatus. Pierre Curie and Marie Curie are also included
in the list. Marie Curie was the first woman awarded a Nobel prize and
was the first person awarded two Nobel prizes. Albert Einstein believed
that natural laws were designed by an intelligence. Charles Darwin (not
a Nobel prize winner) also held this belief. Many other great minds
although not Nobel prize winners are also on the list including: Kurt
Gödel who believed that a human is non-physical spirit connected to a
physical body. Alan Turing believed in ESP. Karl Popper believed in
dualism the philosophy that the mind is non-material. Robert Boyle the
father of modern chemistry and founder of the Royal Society of London
believed in spiritual healing based on his own investigations into the phenomenon.
Information on more Nobel prize winning scientists and other great minds can be found below...
Top
Max Planck
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was one of
the most important German physicists of the late 19th and early 20th
century, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918; he is considered
to be the founder of quantum theory.
Planck, based on his studies of atoms, did not believe that
consciousness is derived from matter. He did not believe that the brain
produces consciousness. He believed that matter is derived from
consciousness. He said:
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative
from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything
that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates
consciousness. As quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931)
And...
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed
science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my
research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All
matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the
particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system
of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of
a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all
matter.
Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy
(1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt.
Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)
Top
Wolfgang Pauli
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
Wolfgang Pauli, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945, was one of
the pioneers of quantum physics. He believed in psychokinesis - that a
person could influence material objects by means unknown to mainstream
science. He believed he manifested this power by damaging experimental
equipment. This phenomenon was called the Pauli Effect. Pauli also
believed in synchronicity and that parapsychology was not pseudo-science
but worthy of study. He believed that some psychic contents survive
personal ego and can effect other living people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect
Since the 20th century, the work of physics research has been divided
between theorists and experimentalists (see scientific method). Only a
few physicists, such as Enrico Fermi, have been successful in both
roles. Lacking an aptitude or interest in experimental work, many
theorists have earned a reputation for accidentally breaking
experimental equipment. Pauli was exceptional in this regard: it was
said that he was such a good theorist that any experiments would
self-destruct simply because he was in the vicinity. For fear of the
Pauli effect, the experimental physicist Otto Stern banned Pauli from
his laboratory in Hamburg despite their friendship.[1]
...
The Pauli effect, if it were real, would be classified as a
"macro-psychokinetic" phenomenon. Wolfgang Pauli was convinced that
the effect named after him was real.[3] As Pauli considered
parapsychology worthy of serious investigation, this would fit with his
thinking; to this end, Pauli corresponded with Hans Bender and Carl Jung
on the concept of Synchronicity.
Wikiquote gives this quote from Pauli that reveals he believed psychic
contents survive personal ego and can effect other living people:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Pauli
Although I have no objection to accepting the existence of relatively
constant psychic contents that survive personal ego, it must always be
born in mind that we have no way of knowing what these contents are
actually like "as such." All we can observe is their effect on other
living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious
crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.
"Modern Examples of Background Physics" ["Moderne Beispiele zur
Hintergrundsphysik"] (1948) as translated by David Roscoe in Atom and
Archetype (1992) edited by Carl Alfred Meier
Top
Erwin Schrödinger
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
Erwin Schrödinger received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. He believed consciousness was not produced by the brain and could not be explained in physical terms.
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( 12 August 1887 – 4 January
1961) was an Austrian born physicist and theoretical biologist who was
one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of
important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation,
for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. In 1935 he
proposed the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger
Schrödinger wrote:
"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/325387
Other quotes by Schrödinger:
The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any
physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject"
for the observing mind. ... For the subject, if anything, is the thing
that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the
"world of energy."
...
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world
around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all
our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly
silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that
really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue,
bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing
of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes
pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very
often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.
...
There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds
or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there
is only one mind.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger
Top
Albert Einstein
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
From Wikipedia
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist and violinist.
He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of
modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).[2][3] While best known for
his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed "the
world's most famous equation"),[4] he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in
Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his
discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".[5] The latter was
pivotal in establishing quantum theory.
Einstein is often mistakenly identified as an atheist. The
confusion comes from the fact that he did not believe in a personal god.
But, because of his experiences studying nature during his career as a
scientist, Einstein believed that natural laws were designed by an
intelligence.
These quotes by Einstein from
Wikiquote
explain his beliefs:
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
...
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely
superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak
and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality.
This next quote shows that Einstein's beliefs were not merely based on
faith but were shaped by his experiences working as a scientist.
On the other hand, however, every one who is seriously engaged in the
pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest
the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the
face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
Did Einstein Believe in God? by John Marsh provides a very detailed discussion demonstrating the fact that Einstein believed in God. Marsh writes:
To sum up: Einstein was – like Newton before him – deeply religious and a firm believer in a transcendent God.
Top
J. J. Thomson
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_J_Thomson
Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 – 30 August
1940) was a British physicist. He is credited with discovering
electrons and isotopes, and inventing the mass spectrometer. Thomson
was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the
electron and for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.
J. J. Thomson believed in psychic phenomena and was a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Psychical Research for 34 years. (Source: Entangled Minds by Dean Radin)
Top
Brian D. Josephson
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson
Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, 4 January 1940) is a
British physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect
... won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics
... [H]e is the head of the mind-matter unification project in the Theory of Condensed Matter
research group.
...
Josephson's is one of the more well-known scientists who believe that
parapsychological phenomena may be real...
In
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/psi/tucson.html
he writes:
"What are the implications for science of the fact that psychic
functioning appears to be a real effect? These phenomena seem
mysterious, but no more mysterious perhaps than strange phenomena of the
past which science has now happily incorporated within its scope."
His web site has links to many articles discussing the validity of psychic phenomena:
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/
Top
Charles Robert Richet
(Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine)
http://www.spiritwritings.com/charlesrichet.html
Charles Robert Richet: 1850-1925. Pioneer psychical researcher, honored professor of
physiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and winner of the 1913
Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
...
He conducted experiments with a number of different mediums
including Franek Kluski, Jan Guzyk, and Stephen Ossowiecki, both in
Paris and Warsaw.
In his book
Thirty Years of Psychical Research
Richet explained that he started out as a skeptic:
Movement without contact, clairvoyance, phantoms, and premonitions are
so very unusual that when we first hear of them we are inclined to laugh
at them. Till we have studied them we laugh and deny. This was my
state of mind for a very long time...
However, while conducting in his own research, he observed the evidence proving what he called four fundamental
facts of metapsychics: cryptesthesia (his term for the phenomena of
mediumship), telekinesis, ectoplasm, and premonitions. He wrote:
Therefore:
1. There is in us a faculty of cognition that differs radically from the usual sensorial faculties (Cryptesthesia).
2. There are, even in full light, movements of objects without contact (Telekinesis).
3. Hands, bodies, and objects seem to take shape in their entirety from a cloud and take all the semblance of life (Ectoplasms).
4. There occur premonitions that can be explained neither by chance nor perspicacity, and are sometimes verified in minute detail.
Such are my firm and explicit conclusions.
Top
John William Strutt
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Strutt,_3rd_Baron_Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (12 November 1842 – 30 June
1919) was an English physicist who (with William Ramsay) discovered the
element argon, an achievement that earned him the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1904. He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh
scattering and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as
Rayleigh waves.
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-william-strutt-3rd-baron-rayleigh
...[He] was president of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London,
1919.
...
Lord Rayleigh became interested in psychical research after reading
about the investigations of his colleague Sir William Crookes.
From the article on
Lord Rayleigh
at the International Survivalists Society web site:
...
"I have seen enough to convince me that those are wrong who wish to
prevent investigation by casting ridicule on those who may feel inclined
to engage in it."
...
Top
Marie Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)
Marie Curie was the first woman awarded a Nobel prize and she was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.
According to Wikipedia...
Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a
term coined by her[2]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes,
and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. It was also
under her personal direction that the world's first studies were
conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive
isotopes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie
Marie Curie participated
in experiments with the medium Eusapia Palladino.
According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...
The Institut Général Psychologique of Paris carried on extensive experiments in 43 sittings from 1905 to 1907. Pierre and Marie Curie were among the investigators.
...
The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.[12]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino
Top
Pierre Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
Pierre Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.
According to Wikipedia:
Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, a
pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and
radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize
in Physics with his wife, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel,
"in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by
their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by
Professor Henri Becquerel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie
According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...
On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."
It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared
inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of
objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous
apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of
spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only
trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility
of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when
one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so
that one can see everything that happens?[13]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino
Top
Eugene Wigner
(Nobel Prize in Physics)
Eugene Wigner shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. He believed that materialism is not consistent with quantum mechanics.
The
Wikipedia article on Wigner says:
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner (November 17, 1902 - January 1, 1995) FRS was a Hungarian American theoretical physicist and mathematician.
He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his
contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary
particles, particularly through the discovery and application of
fundamental symmetry principles"...
...
Near the end of his life, Wigner's thoughts turned more philosophical.
In his memoirs, Wigner said: "The full meaning of life, the collective
meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our
grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I
have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated
with such a mystery." He became interested in the Vedanta philosophy of
Hinduism, particularly its ideas of the universe as an all pervading
consciousness. In his collection of essays Symmetries and Reflections –
Scientific Essays, he commented "It was not possible to formulate the
laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to
consciousness."
Wigner also conceived the Wigner's friend thought experiment in physics,
which is an extension of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. The
Wigner's friend experiment asks the question: "At what stage does a
'measurement' take place?" Wigner designed the experiment to highlight
how he believed that consciousness is necessary to the
quantum-mechanical measurement processes.
Top
Sir John Eccles
Sir John Eccles was a neurophysiologist who won the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963 for his work on the synapse. He did not believe that the brain produces consciousness. In Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self (1989) he wrote:
I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific
reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account
eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of
neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ...
we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in
a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains
existing in a material world.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Carew_Eccles
Top
Otto Stern
Otto Stern won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1943. He believed in
psychokinesis in the form of the
Pauli Effect.
Stern banned physicist Wolfgang Pauli from entering his laboratory
because he believed Pauli could damage experimental equipment merely by
being present in the lab. (Also see
Wolfgang Pauli, above).
Top
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin is credited with being a co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
He was not an atheist, he was agnostic. He believed that one could not
know if God existed or not. Darwin also believed that the universe did not arise by chance and that
natural laws resulted from design which indicates that he
believed in a form of Intelligent Design.
Darwin also doubted human reason was reliable if it evolved through natural selection. This is a key point in the argument that
materialism is not a rational philosophy.
If you cannot trust human reason, then it is irrational to believe
anything, including materialism. It is significant that Darwin's
beliefs on this subject undermine materialism because Darwin's theory of
natural selection was one of the most important ideas that led to
materialism and philosophical naturalism being adopted by most
scientists. When you consider that Darwin believed natural laws were designed, and he did not trust human reason if it arose through natural selection, you begin to see that exploiting Darwinian theory as foundation of materialism is a
huge scam.
Wikiquote
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English
naturalist who achieved lasting fame by outlining the theory of
evolution and proposing that evolution could be explained through
natural and sexual selection. Prompted by awareness that Alfred Russel
Wallace was developing similar theories he published his own sooner than
he had originally intended. This theory is now considered an integral
component of biological science.
darwinproject.ac.uk
In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the
sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more
and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be
the most correct description of my state of mind.
Wikipedia
Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain
claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any
deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown and
(so far as can be judged) unknowable.
Wikiquote
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always
painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write
atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and
as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides
of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot
persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have
designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their
feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should
play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to
view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to
conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to
look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details,
whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call
chance.
Darwin Ccorrespondence Project
Darwin, C. R. to Graham, William
3 July 1881
Summary
...
He disagrees that the existence of natural laws implies purpose, but his "inmost conviction" is that "the Universe is not the result of chance". But then has horrid doubt whether convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from lower animals, are at all trustworthy.
...
July 3rd. 1881.
Dear Sir
...
Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more
vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the
result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises
whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the
mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.
Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are
any convictions in such a mind?
Top
Kurt Gödel
From Wikipedia:
Kurt Friedrich Gödel (April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was an
Austrian American logician, mathematician, and philosopher. After World
War II, he emigrated to the United States. Considered with Aristotle
and Frege one of the most significant logicians in human history, Gödel
made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the
20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, A. N.
Whitehead, and David Hilbert were pioneering the use of logic and set
theory to understand the foundations of mathematics.
Kurt Gödel
did not believe in materialism, or that the mind was produced by the
brain, or that the brain evolved through Darwinian evolution. He
believed a human was a spirit connected with a physical body and that there were beings higher than humans and other worlds than
earth.
Kevincarmody.com
lists these quotes by
Kurt Gödel
(among many others) from
A Logical Journey by Hao Wang.
Kurt Gödel said:
- Materialism is false.
- The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
- The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit.
- I don’t think the brain came in the Darwinian manner. In fact, it is
disprovable. Simple mechanism can’t yield the brain. I think the basic
elements of the universe are simple. Life force is a primitive element
of the universe and it obeys certain laws of action. These laws are not
simple, and they are not mechanical.
- In materialism all elements behave the same. It is mysterious to
think of them as spread out and automatically united. For something to
be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind.
“Matter” refers to one way of perceiving things, and elementary
particles are a lower form of mind. Mind is separate from matter.
- There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
Top
Alan Turing
From Wikipedia.
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was a
British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist.
He was highly influential in the development of computer science,
providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and
"computation" with the Turing machine.[1][2] Turing is widely considered
to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.[3]
In a paper where he describes his Turing Machine,
Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460,
Turing wrote:
I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory
perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy,
clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing
phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should
like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at
least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange
one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them
it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The
idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics,
together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would
be one of the first to go.
Turing recognized that the lack of ESP would prevent a computer from passing the Turing Test.
Top
Wernher von Braun
From Wikipedia:
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-born rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, the United States.
From Wikiquote:
Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation.
Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens
my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.
...
For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the
necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the
universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind
it all.
...
It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of
alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the
science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility
that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.
Top
David Bohm
David Bohm was one of the best quantum physicists of all time and one of
the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century
(Wikipedia).
David Joseph Bohm FRS[1] (20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an
American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical
physics, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology. David Bohm is widely
considered to be one of the most significant theoretical physicists of
the 20th century.[2]
...
David Bohm was widely considered one of the best quantum physicists of
all time.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm
In the article,
David Bohm and Jiddo Krishnamurti
which appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, July 2000, Martin Garner wrote
that Bohm was favorably impressed with parapsychology including Rupert
Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields. Bohm took Uri Geller's psychic
phenomena seriously and carried with him a key bent by Geller. Bohm believed in
panpsychicsm, in one interview he said, "Even the electron is informed
with a certain level of mind,"
Top
Karl Popper
Karl Popper, the philosopher of science who first proposed that
falsifibility is necessary for a theory to be scientific, did not
believe in materialism. He believed in dualism which holds that the
mind is nonmaterial.
The wikipedia on Karl Popper explains falsifiability:
Logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental
testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single counterexample is
logically decisive: it shows the theory, from which the implication is
derived, to be false. The term "falsifiable" does not mean something is
made false, but rather that, if it is false, it can be shown by
observation or experiment. Popper's account of the logical asymmetry
between verification and falsifiability lies at the heart of his
philosophy of science. It also inspired him to take falsifiability as
his criterion of demarcation between what is, and is not, genuinely
scientific: a theory should be considered scientific if, and only if, it
is falsifiable.
The wikipedia article on Philosophy of Mind describes Popper as a defender of interactionist dualism espoused by Descartes.
Interactionist dualism, or simply interactionism, is the particular form
of dualism first espoused by Descartes in the Meditations.[8] In the
20th century, its major defenders have been Karl Popper and John Carew
Eccles.[30] It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and
desires, causally interact with physical states.[9]
The wikipedia article on Rene Descartes explains that dualism as
espoused by Descartes holds that the soul is nonmaterial and does not
follow the laws of nature.
Descartes in his Passions of the Soul and
The Description of the Human Body suggested that the body works like a
machine, that it has material properties. The mind (or soul), on the
other hand, was described as a nonmaterial and does not follow the laws
of nature.
Top
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the theory of natural selection at the
same time Charles Darwin did. This theory was based on extensive
observations of the natural world. Wallace was originally a skeptic
about the evidence of mediumistic phenomena but his great powers
of observation, the same ones which led him to discover the theory of natural
selection, also forced him to accept mediumistic phenomena as
genuinely paranormal.
The Wikipedia article on Wallace gives a brief biography of his life
and work:
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a
British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist.
He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural
selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
The International Survivalists Society web site explains how Wallace was forced
to abandon his skeptical beliefs when the weight of his observations
proved to him that mediumistic phenomena are genuinely
paranormal. Wallace...
... was a confirmed philosophical sceptic, a materialist so
thorough that before he got acquainted with the facts of spiritualism
there was no place in his mind for the conception of spiritual
existence, or for any agencies in the universe other than matter and
force. The facts beat him. To quote his own words from his preface to
On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism:
"They compelled me to accept them, as facts, long before I could accept
the spiritual explanation of them: there was at that time 'no place in
my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted.' (Argument of Dr.
Carpenter). By slow degrees a place was made."
He was led to believe (1) in the existence of a number of preterhuman
intelligences of various grades; (2) that some of these intelligences,
although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on
matter, and do influence our minds.
(From the article on
Alfred Russel Wallace
on the International Survivalists Society web site.)
Many skeptics believe that natural selection gives sufficient
explanation of the origin of life and humankind so that belief in
supernatural forces is unwarranted. Clearly this is a
fallacy
if one of
the discovers of natural selection believed in supernatural
intelligences.
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Sir William Crookes
From the article on
Sir William Crookes
at the International Survivalists Society web site:
Sir William Crookes: 1832-1919. Discoverer of the element thallium.
Elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1863. Royal Gold Medal 1875,
Davy Medal 1888, Sir Joseph Copley Medal 1904, knighted in 1897, Order
of Merit 1910. Invented the cathode-ray tube.
Crookes first began his investigations into 'psychic' phenomena in 1869
as a hostile doubter. In his article, 'Spiritualism Viewed by the Light
of Modern Science' he declared:
"The increased employment of scientific methods will produce a race
of observers who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence
into the unknown limbo of magic and necromancy."
However...
Crookes' experiments with Daniel D. Home demonstrated the existence of
a 'psychic force' wholly ignored by science.
Crookes stated:
"Of all persons endowed with a powerful development of this Psychic
Force, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home is the most remarkable and it is mainly
owing to the many opportunities I have had of carrying on my
investigation in his presence that I am enabled to affirm so
conclusively the existence of this force."
Recommended Reading:
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Sir Robert Boyle
Sir Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was one of the most brilliant scientists of
all time. In the book "Extraordinary Knowing", Elizabeth Mayer explains
that Boyle was the father of modern chemistry, the founder of the Royal
Society of London, and the author of Boyle's Law.
Mayer also explains that Boyle investigated the spiritual healer
Valentine Greatrakes. At first Boyle was skeptical, but his
investigations convinced him of the genuineness of Greatrakes abilities.
Boyle's lab notebooks from 1666 contain notes on his observations.
This day a woman came among other Patients to be curd of a great
thicknesse of hearing she complaind of, & he haveing put his fingers in
her ears, and (as I remember) a litle strookd them, she complaind no
more of her deafnesse, but a great pain that resided in the fore part of
her Head, where haveing strookd her, he presently dislodgd the pain, &
after haveing chasd if from place to place about her Head, as she
informd us, at length she told us that both her pain & the deafnesse
were gone, & when I askd her how long she had [d] bin soe thick of
hearing, she innocently answerd me ever since the birth of her first
child, & when I smileing demaunded how it was since she was
brought in Bed of her first child, she said about a year & a quarter,
and affirmeing her self to be recoverd, as she seemd to the by-standers
to be, she went away joyfull.
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/workdiaries/WD26Clean.html
More information about Valentine Greatrakes can be found here:
http://www.dungarvanmuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article
/45/1;jsessionid=911B007920C90CA58E0F147732A0580B
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
From the article on
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
at the International Survivalists Society web site:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930. . . . In 1881 he
obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree. . . .
As regards survival, in 1902 when he first met Sir Oliver Lodge he
had not arrived at a definite conclusion. But Myers' Human
Personality made a deep impression on his mind. . . .
Later . . .
http://www.spiritwritings.com/arthurconandoyle.html
Until his death Doyle remained convinced that life
continued after death, because of ongoing communications from deceased
family members who assured him that they lived in the spirit world.
These communications remained the "definite demonstration" that he had
sought since his days at the University of Edinburgh.
One would expect that a trained doctor and surgeon and the creator of
the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes would not be taken in by
fraudulent mediums and would reach reasonable conclusions from the
evidence.
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Richard Hodgson
From the article on
Richard Hodgson
at the International Survivalists Society web site:
Richard Hodgson 1855-1905 . . . Professor of legal studies at
Cambridge University. . . . His legal training and personal
attainments made him specially qualified for the detection of fraud. .
. . The change in his general attitude towards the phenomenal side of
'spiritualism' was brought about very slowly and after desperate
resistance by his unparalleled opportunities of investigation with the
mediumship of Mrs. Piper for a period of fifteen years.
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Gary Schwartz
Psychic Researcher: Gary Schwartz Ph.D.
From
http://veritas.arizona.edu/investigators.htm
GARY E. SCHWARTZ, Ph.D., Director of the VERITAS Research Program, is a
professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at
the University of Arizona and director of its Human Energy Systems
Laboratory and its Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science.
After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, he served as a
professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, director of
the Yale Psychophysiology Center, and co-director of the Yale Behavioral
Medicine Clinic. Dr. Schwartz has published more than four hundred
scientific papers, edited eleven academic books, is the co-author of The
Living Energy Universe, and is the author of The Afterlife Experiments:
Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death and The Truth About
Medium.
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Neville Whymant
http://www.freewebs.com/psilib/PsychicAdventuresWhymant.txt
At the end of March, 1926, I first arrived in New York, having left
England a few days before. Previously I had spent several years in the
Far East engaged in ethnologic research, an occupation which
necessitated my speaking several Oriental languages daily. This
acquaintance with a variety of tongues was the direct cause of my being
drawn into the series of strange happenings which form the burden of
this tale.
. . .
As the [spirit] voice went on I realized that the style of Chinese
used was identical with that of the Chinese Classics, edited by
Confucius two thousand five hundred years ago. Only among the scholars
of Archaic Chinese could one now hear that accent and style, and then
only when they intoned some passage from the ancient books. In other
words, the Chinese to which we were now listening was as dead
colloquially as Sanskrit or Latin, and had been so for even a greater
length of time. If this was a hoax, it was a particularly clever one,
far beyond the scope of any of the sinologues now living.
. . .
I asked if "the Master" would explain to me the meaning of one of these long-obscure odes.
. . .
In declaiming the ode the voice had put a new construction on the
verses and made the whole thing hang together as a normal poem. It was,
I was told, a psychic poem, and it was well known that the Chinese
recognized psychic literature as a thing apart from ordinary literary
compositions. "Read in this way," the voice had said, "does not its
meaning become plain?
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More Eminent Researchers
A more complete list of eminent researchers can be found at:
http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/tymn/testimonials.htm
Top
Books by Eminent Researchers
The chapter
E-Libraries
has links to on line libraries of free e-books on the subject of
survival after death.
Many books and articles by the professionals listed on
http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/tymn/testimonials.htm
are available free on line. Here is a list of some of them
Judge John W. Edmonds
Spiritual Tracts by (100+ page excerpt)
http://www.spiritwritings.com/SpiritualismEdmonds.pdf
Allan Kardec, Esq.
Sir William Crookes
The Rev. William Stainton Moses
Sir William Barrett
Frederic W. H. Myers, Esq.
Human Personality Vol II
http://web.archive.org/web/20080311075436/http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/myers/intro.htm
Sir Oliver Lodge
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Dr. James H. Hyslop
Dr. William James
Dr. Charles Richet
Dr. Carl A. Wickland
Edward C. Randall, Esq.
Dr. Isaac K. Funk
The Psychic Riddle
http://survivalebooks.org
The Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas
Dr. T. Glen Hamilton
Dr. C. J. Ducasse
Gary Schwartz, Ph.D.
"Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using
a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol" Julie Beischel, Gary E. Schwartz Explore
(New York, N.Y.) 1 January 2007 (volume 3 issue 1 Pages 23-27 DOI:
10.1016/j.explore.2006.10.004)
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/PIIS155083070600454X/fulltext
More free e-books on psychic research can be found in the
Psychic Research
section of the chapter
Recommended Reading
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