THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

Evening Star, Issue 17927, 24 March 1922, Page 6

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

DOES “TELEPATHY" EXIST?

LACK OF EXPERIMENTAL

EVIDENCE

Even an anonymous correspondent acquires rash friends and cunning tempters. Several writers, unknown to me, and so not lightly to be placed m either category, have begged that I should write on "telepathy” (savs tho scientific correspondent of ‘The Times’ in a recent issue of that journal). It is the holiday season, and 1 shall comply. I shall unstnng the bow, although it prove a bowstring for my reputation. The word “ telepathy ” was proposed by F. W. H. Myers in 1882 to connote alleged cases of the transference of thoughts or feelings from mind to mind by other than the ordinary channels of sense. Although the word was new, the conception was old, deeply rooted id tho most; primitive beliefs of the human race. This respectable antiquity, however, should not be taken to its prejudice, although the fact that the genera! progress of knowledge has neither brought a convincing assemblage of observations nor supplied any reasonable explanation illumines my_ rashness in writing of it under the caption of this column. APPARITIONS.

The alleged evidence from apparitions of dying or" recently dead persons bulks largely in the popular mind, and talk seldom turns on telepathy in any circle of society, without someone vouching for a case of this kind, Edward Gurney collected over 5,000 cases, and afterwards a “census,” conducted by Professor Henry Sidgwick, discovered amongst 17,000 persons who made replies 350 cases of recognised apparitions. Scrutiny by a committee led to the further conclusion that of tho 3SO recognitions thirty coincided 1 with death of the recognised person. The committee argued that as the probability of any person dying on any day is on., one in 19,000, thirty out of 350 / trough suggested a nexus that could not be sift down to coincidence. But even amateurs of telepathy seem shy of attaching much, w»-ght to this ingenious argument, if for no other reason than that evidence is missing as to any effort, on the part of dyh g persons to project their thoughts. Apparitions. then, may be regarded! as pjpular beliefs which, whether founded on luct or not, afford no proof of ihought traniierence.

The familiar exhibitions of “thoughtreading,” amateur and professional, have long been dismissed as evidence bearing on the existence of telepathy. In the amateur performances so many opportunities for the conveyance of information through ordinary channels exist that the conditions of an experiment are not complied with. Some of the professionals have done extraordinary feats, at least as impossible to the unprofessional to emulate or to understand as are the best tricks of a juggler. But there is none for whom a crucial case cannot easily be devised of such a kind that it would be simply met did actual thought transference exist,, but over which a code or collusion breaks down.

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

What is more surprising, if telepathy does exist, is the dubious results obtained by actual experiment. It is hardly overstating the case to say that the measure of success of experiments usually varies with the hopes or predilections of the experimenters. Tho Sidgwicks, for example, got a high proportion of successes when the agent and the percipients wore in tho same room. But they did not surpass probable when agent and percipients were in different rooms. Others have got better results, whereas experiments made with school children on a large scale in tho United States showed no trace of success. Tho present writer, here and in Germany, has made a number of card-guessing experiments, but failed to find any appreciable difference in tho results when,no one knew the card beforehand and when everyone in the room except tho gnesser knew it. The existence of natural phenomena may be taken to be proved experimentally when a method has been devised and described by which any impartial investigator, with the requisite skill and in tho requisite conditions, can ascertain for himself the'reality of tho phenomena. In this sense there is no experimental proof of the reality of telepathy—a significant circumstance if thought transference is as real as is often asserted, ABSENCE OF THEORY.

Nor has any progress been made in tho propounding of theories as to how telepathy takes place if it is an .actual phenomenon. Many facile comparisons have boon made with X-rays, wireless telegraphy, and so forth; but these n.ro rejected by psychologists, who distrust analogies drawn between operations of tho mind and physical phenomena. Tho lab ter, indeed, are not fully understood—it may be doubted if anything can be said to bo fully understood. But they fall readily into lino with other r.amfestations of physical energy. They ran bo controlled, arranged, inhibited,_ or encouraged, in which respects they differ totally from alleged telepathic phenomena. I hesitate to say that, telepathy does not exist. I have no hesitation in, assorting that its existence has not been proved-