2021-10-08, 01:07 PM
(2021-10-08, 02:27 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]I have to admire your optimism, Sci, even if I don't really share it. To my mind parapsychology is at the nadir of acceptability within the academic and scientific communities.
I think back to a time when Darwinism and mechanistic materialism were blowing away all that had gone before - around the turn of the 20th century - yet we had serious scientists and other respected voices investigating the paranormal. I think of Charles Richet and William James, of Arthur Eddington and even the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the quintessential proponent of evidence-based inquiry. While Conan Doyle took some flak over the Cottingley Fairies hoax, he was nevertheless a respected influencer. Add the names of prominent physicists such as Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Plank and Pauli and you have a formidable who's who of prominent thinkers of their time. Oh and let's not forget Jung. OK, so not all of them actually researched parapsychology but they were either open to it of subscribed to a philosophy that could accommodate it.
When you mention Sheldrake and Josephson - how often are they dismissed as fringe cranks? I think also about the pretence of academia in claiming that they do research parapsychology when I see that the University of Edinburgh Parapsychology Unit is run by Caroline Watt who, together with her partner, Richard Wiseman, are nothing more than sceptical debunkers posing as parapsychologists.
No, I'm sorry but the battle is over and the sceptics have won - at least in the upper atmosphere of the intellectuals. We here are counted among the hordes of the gullible and superstitious who question science (= materialism) and expect the Loch Ness Monster to emerge from the depths any day now.
I sympathise with everything you're saying there, Dave but I don't agree, you know. They can't ignore Parnia and his colleagues, ultimately anyway. Blackmore has already said she will change her mind if he gets the hits. Even if he doesn't have the hits because of low numbers recruited etc, he's still saying the same things he was seven years ago which means (logically) he can't have found anything to tip the scales the other way. It's just a case of endless patience.