Measuring the immeasurable

"Wow! What a coincidence! Imagine the odds against that!" "I was thinking about her, and out of the blue - she calls me!" 

Most of us have experienced this, where meaningful coincidences make us pause to consider the phenomenon of synchronicity - circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection. Rational science, based on classical Newtonian physics, is happy to dismiss coincidence as mere manifestations of the random. Can this sceptical point of view be overcome?

I have two copies of Explaining the Unexplained by Hans J. Eysenck and Carl Sargent (one in London and one on the działka); a popular book in the early 1980s, but one that missed the mark by miles.

Eysenck (a controversial figure) and Sargent (only slightly less so) set out to explain the mysteries of the paranormal in scientific terms, to prove that supernatural powers can be proven. They use the term psi to encompass all manners of paranormal activity from telepathy to psychokinesis, from precognition to remote viewing, and attempt to convince the reader that all these are real - on the basis of scientific experiment.

Pictures of machines used to 'catch dreams', to 'detect extra-sensory perception', or 'photograph ghosts' etc., adorn most of the pages of the book, along with diagrams of how consciousness acts on the needle of a meter etc; the aim being to show how science is in a position to validate claims made about supernatural, paranormal or metaphysical manifestations. 

"Consciousness can influence random events directly, both within the body and outside of it, by collapsing the wave function of of those events in the act of observation." This is the Dean Radin hypothesis, that you can will a quantum event into happening. Dr Radin believes that parapsychology is as repeatable as any science but also says that it is "difficult to replicate".

Explaining the Unexplained  was unconvincing to me when it came out, and looking at it today - even more so. The premise itself is faulty - that supernatural phenomena can be tested by scientific method - which above all means their experimental repeatability.

The guardians of the rational world, the sceptics and debunkers, ever rational, ever watchful for trickery, are keen to point out all the hoaxes, the statistical errors (deliberate or otherwise) and plausible non-paranormal explanations in any of these flaky pseudosciences as proof of absence of any paranormal phenomena. 

But proof of absence is not absence of proof.

So it's not that I'm sceptical about claims regarding the paranormal - it's just that I believe the paranormal - the metaphysical, if you prefer the term - won't let itself be measured. 

Out-of-the-ordinary events will happen when they happen. You will continue to experience them. But when you're looking out for them, or checking for them, waiting around for them, armed with scientific instruments - then these paranormal phenomena will evade you, because that is their nature.

That which we routinely experience as 'spooky', 'bizarre' - or even just 'unusual' is the lattice or web of coincidence that holds - in my belief - the Universe together. 

We know now that the universe is a field, a field of forces and points, fluctuating, repelling, attracting, resonating and converging into matter - it is entirely likely that a field of consciousness co-exists in the universe along with fields of waves, particles and probabilities.

But try to nail it down - and it won't let you. Over the generations, our paranormal powers will develop. The paranormal is that which runs beside the normal (from the ancient Greek παρά pará, 'beside' or 'next to', as in 'parallel'), rather than above the natural (supernatural) or that which lies behind physics (the metaphysical). Intangible to us, in other words. That's just the way it is. For us. For now. 

This time two years ago:
Heading Home [my father leaves Warsaw for the last time]

This time four years ago:
From my father's historic return to Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Country life in a capital city 

This time seven years ago:
My ogród is my działka

This time nine years ago:
Mazowieckie province tempts with mini- and micro-breaks

This time ten years ago:
Pride and anger