Accomplished Scientists Who Were Open to the Occult

[NJCher]

This is an intriguing blog post at Scientific American. The writer discusses the many scientists who have held an open mind to what is often called the paranormal, but which many maintain is just the normal that we don't understand (yet).

snip

(Referring to Alan Turing, the computer scientist) The pioneering computer theorist was a believer in telepathy, or mind-reading. (Turing was apparently impressed by the card-guessing experiments of J.B. Rhine.) Then, last weekend, I learned that a prominent scientist whom I once interviewed had had a vivid vision of the violent death of his child shortly before it happened, an example of clairvoyance. Serious scientists aren’t supposed to believe in paranormal phenomena, sometimes called “psi,” and yet some serious scientists do. I thought it would be fun to list a few, starting with ones who, like Turing, have passed into the great beyond.

...

Two accomplished living physicists who believe in extrasensory perception are Freeman Dyson and Brian Josephson. As I mentioned in a post last year, Dyson has written that “paranormal phenomena are real but lie outside the limits of science.”

snip

And then, ofr course, he discusses the scientists we all know about, such as Freud, Jung, and William James.

See more at Scientific American.


Cher