Telepathy

Telepathy ^[1] is the hypothesis that some people can communicate to others by thought, instead of through the known senses.^[2]

An experiment which takes away someone's senses to demonstrate telepathy.

The term was coined by classics scholar and psychologist Frederic William Henry Myers in 1882.^[3] Sigmund Freud did experiments with his daughter Anna where he attempted to communicate with her telepathically.^[4] In 1930 Upton Sinclair wrote a book about his experiments with his wife in telepathic communication entitled Mental Radio.^[5]

Eysenck's opinion

Professor Hans Eysenck of London University's Institute of Psychiatry stated:

Unless there is a gigantic conspiracy involving some thirty university departments all over the world, and several hundred highly respected scientists in various fields, many of them originally skeptical to the claims of the psychical researchers, the only conclusion that the unbiased observer can come to is that there does exist a small number of people who obtain knowledge existing in other people's minds, or in the outer world, by means as yet unknown to science.^[6]

Scientific reception

The scientific community considers parapsychology a pseudoscience.^{[7][8][9][10]} A variety of experiments have attempted to demonstrate telepathy, but found no scientific evidence that the power exists.^[11][12][13] There is no known mechanism for telepathy.^[14]

Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge wrote that telepathy would contradict laws of science: "[The claim that] signals can be transmitted across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics."^[15]

A panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council to study paranormal claims concluded:

Despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or 'mind over matter' exercises... Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not support the [claim] that these phenomena exist."^[16]

Related pages

• Parapsychology
• Teleportation