The Paranormal Equation: A New Scientific Perspective on Inexplicable Phenomena

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James Stein on The Paranormal Equation: A New Scientific Perspective on Remote Viewing, Clairvoyance, and Other Inexplicable Phenomena

(1) Jim, the general perception on the part of the public is that scientists are naysayers when it comes to supernatural and paranormal phenomena.  Why do you suppose this is the case?

I think it’s an accurate perception – but being a naysayer has a legitimate basis in the nature of science and scientific investigation.  Science is extremely conservative – and justifiably so.  You really need more than just the preponderance of evidence on your side when it comes to declaring something to be accepted by science – you need to do the equivalent of “beyond all reasonable doubt.”  Although there have been a number of attempts to establish the existence of supernatural and paranormal phenomena, they’ve not met the standard of proof demanded by the scientific community.  In American jurisprudence, you’re innocent until proven guilty.  In science, you’re guilty until proven innocent.

(2) What are the reasons that scientists are reluctant to investigate supernatural and paranormal phenomena?

I think there are several contributing factors.  Investigations that have been conducted in the past have generally been inconclusive (this is the view of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, but there are dissidents).  If you’re an investigator, you generally want to go where there’s a good chance of finding something interesting, and in this area the deck seems stacked against you.  Also, scientific research needs to be funded – and generally the institutions that do the funding want a tangible payoff.  There’s a tangible payoff for discovering a cure for cancer, or a cheap supply of energy.  What’s the tangible payoff for discovering there are ghosts?

(3) Speaking of ghosts, what do you think will happen if ghosts are ever shown to be a legitimate phenomenon?

Here’s my guess – scientists will flock to investigate them.  The continuing mission of science is to investigate new phenomena, as long as the new phenomena are legitimate.  That’s what happened to scientific investigation of the paranormal, as I outlined in the previous question.  There’s just not enough evidence – and too little money – for most scientists to perform such investigations.  But demonstrate that ghosts are a legitimate phenomenon, and our understanding of the Universe would have to expand to incorporate them.  Every scientist wants to increase our understanding of the Universe – but most want some assurance that what they are doing has some chance of accomplishing this.

(4) The greatest scientist of the past century was Albert Einstein.  Did he have anything to say on the subject of paranormal phenomena?

Einstein was approached by a psychologist, Jan Ehrenwald, who had spent considerable time and effort investigating telepathy.  Ehrenwald asked Einstein what physics had to say about the possibility of telepathy.  Einstein said that he felt that physics could not deny the possibility of telepathy, because the physics he knew and understood was just not sophisticated enough to preclude phenomena like this.  However, Einstein himself was dubious as to the existence of forces which did not weaken with distance, because all the forces of physics of which Einstein was aware weaken substantially as the distance between the object exerting the force and the object experiencing the force increases.

(5) Does quantum mechanics provide a legitimate explanation for paranormal phenomena?

As yet, no – but there is at least one brilliant contemporary scientist who believes there may be such a connection.  Brian Josephson won a Nobel Prize in Physics – that’s the Oscar in the scientific community.  Moreover, his work was in quantum mechanics, and he has written papers describing the connection between quantum mechanics and paranormal phenomena.  Josephson may well be ahead of the curve on this one, but he hasn’t convinced his colleagues.

Whenever I see a website saying “quantum mechanics supports the existence of paranormal phenomena”, or some such claim, alarm bells sound.  Sometimes it’s just sloppy research on the part of the website proprietor, sometimes it’s a con job – but I’m not even sure Josephson would be willing to go this far.

(6) Is telepathy real, possible, or impossible?

This is just my personal opinion, but I have it in the “very likely” category – only my view of it might differ from others.  Like Einstein, I find it difficult to believe that someone sitting in a room in New York can communicate telepathically with someone in Los Angeles, unless there is technological equipment that makes that possible.  But I do think that technological equipment will become a reality.  We already can measure the electromagnetic disturbances associated with increased brain activity in certain sections of the brain.  Some areas “light up” when you’re thinking about sex, others when you’re thinking about food, still others when you’re thinking about the Super Bowl.  I think that eventually technology will be able to detect the very subtle changes produced by different thoughts, and then it’s a matter of finding a “Rosetta Stone” which can decipher these subtle changes.  I think it’s a difficult problem, but one which will be solved.

(7) How do recent astronomical discoveries affect the possibility of life on other worlds?

I think the possibility of life on other worlds has increased enormously in the past couple of decades.  Back in the 1960s, an astronomer named Frank Drake created the Drake Equation for estimating the number of species of intelligent life in the galaxy (or the Universe).  Two critical factors in the equation were the probability that a star would be surrounded by planets, and the probability that a planet near such a star would have surface conditions suitable for life.  We’ve discovered more than a thousand planets outside the solar system – back in the 1960s we hadn’t discovered any – and we’ve recently found some which have water in the atmosphere and for which the surface temperature is about that of a warm spring day.  

(8) How likely is it that UFOs are spaceships from other worlds?

Again, this is just an opinion – I have it down in the list headed “extremely unlikely, but not completely impossible.”  I think it’s extremely unlikely because the Universe is so incredibly large, and given what we know about the Universe, it requires a long time to go between the stars and requires a big investment to do so.  This excludes the possibility of traveling via such devices as wormholes – but that possibility is only speculation at the moment.  We do know there are black holes – but as far as I know, wormholes have not yet been shown to exist.  I’m not a physicist, so I’m not up on the latest.
However, I think it’s extremely unlikely that the UFOs people are presently claiming to see are spaceships from other worlds.  If they’re good enough to build such a spaceship, there are only two possibilities that make sense to me: either they want us to know about them, or they don’t.  If the former, they could probably get booked on Fox or CNN without too much difficulty.  If the latter, and we’re actually seeing them, they’re a bunch of bunglers, which to me is inconsistent with the ability to develop such spacecraft.

(9) Let’s shift gears a little.  What do you think of astrology?

I think it’s a basically benign form of entertainment – most newspaper columns contain disclaimers to the effect that this column is meant for entertainment purposes.  My contention is that soccer is also a form of entertainment, but not so benign – thousands of people worldwide have been killed in soccer riots and if there has been a death due to an astrology riot, I missed that announcement.

However, I like what Linus Pauling – winner of two Nobel Prizes – said about astrology.  He said it was devised by Ptolemy, a brilliant scientist who lived during the second century after the birth of Christ.  Ptolemy did the best he could with what he had at that time.  Pauling said that he felt that Ptolemy was such a good scientist that, if he could be reincarnated today, he (Ptolemy) would reject astrology on the grounds that so much had been learned about the Universe since his death.  All that we have learned since his death would render astrology inadequate to describing what Ptolemy originally felt it described.

(10) Is numerology the 2500 year old science of numbers?

I have much the same view of numerology that I do have astrology – I see it as a mostly benign form of entertainment.  As to its being the 2500 year old science of numbers, I guess it’s 2500 years old, and it certainly deals with numbers, but it’s not even close to being a science.  I could go into detail about this, but it isn’t really necessary to do so here.

However, I do have a beef with numerology because it indirectly impacts my own quality of life.  There are probably millions of people – maybe hundreds of millions – whose fascination with numbers finds an outlet in numerology.  If only a small fraction of those people got interested in the real magic of numbers – how they enter into mathematics, science, and engineering – my guess is we’d be a lot closer to a cure for cancer and a source of cheap energy than we are now.

Published by New Page Books.