AT THE FRONTIERS OF REALITY...
Web links : THE PARANORMAL
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

So Shakespeare had Hamlet say in Act I Scene V of that play. Certainly, the prediction has come true : neither Horatio nor Hamlet had any idea of the quarks and gluons that were to enter scientific and philosophic jargon in a few centuries time. And many of us desperately want to believe that there are still whole domains of existence of which we are only dimly aware in special moments. We want to believe that there is more out there than meets the eye. Why else would stories of the paranormal be so popular?

In that famous case, it was a ghost - the ghost of the old King Hamlet - that inspired the thought. But there are many more forms that the paranormal can take. They include :

Sometimes, what was once considered 'supernatural' or 'paranormal' becomes mainstream. The mystical powers of some Buddhist monks over their own bodies have been partly comprehended by science. Accupuncture is gaining acceptance as a scientific method. But no matter how far science advances, many will always claim that they have access to something beyond it. Why?

Many philosophical as well as psychological questions are raised by this.

Is the concept of 'paranormal' coherent? Or does it simply refer to what we do not yet understand? What would count as an experience that science in principle cannot explain? There is a possible answer to this suggested by David Hume, the 18th century empiricist, which fits in nicely with modern scientific thinking. Science is about the repeatable. It can cover any repeatable phenomenon. But unrepeatable, non-rule-governed events simply fall outside its ambit. One-off miracles are supernatural.

Must the universe follow laws of nature? Do we have any good reason to believe that it always does?

Do humans have a psychological need to reach beyond the comprehensible - does our enquiring mind necessarily reach into the unknown? Is this why we have been such a scientifically successful species?

I, personally, have had many experiences of the paranormal, so here is one. Can you 'debunk' it?

After a childhood of regularly dreaming future events, I believed I had a gift of foretelling the future. One night in my second year at university I had two very striking dreams. The first was of a great tidal wave engulfing a beach. My father was on the beach and I fought, successfully in the end, to save him. There were many more details in the dream, which I won't relate. Then I dreamt I was in my second year exams. I saw the question paper quite clearly and remembered the questions. When I awoke, I turned the radio on and learned that there had been a tidal wave in the Bahamas. It had killed many and it was described exactly as I had seen it in the dream. So I guessed I had been clairvoyant that night and quickly wrote down the exam questions I had seen. Sure enough, they were all there on the real exam, which was exactly the exam I had seen... Unfortunately, there was not time to do too much emergency revision, as the exam was that day, but I did check a few things out.

Have you had paranormal experiences you could tell us about and we could try to debunk?

See you on Thursday,

Mr P