Beautifully written, Olavi, and sadly your assumptions resonate. Watts and Irwin
are a husband and wife team, and she is wondrously intelligent. She was, and
maybe still is a leader of the Koestler Chair at the U of Edinburgh. I was
saddened when I read your comments on the concluding chapter of their book.

I see her more as a parapsychologist, rather than a psychologist, largely
because of the Chair and her past publications in the Journal of the Society for
Paranormal Research in London, but I have had no contact with her in over three
or four our years now. Until then I shared my psychical experiences with her,
and she was always receptive - but one quickly learns of the emblematic
boundaries in what is clearly a closed society.

Caroline Watt, like many of her peers is caught up on the academic side of
paranormal endeavors, which from my perspective is largely rhetorical and
lacking in substance. Nonethe less, it has its place but not to the exclusion of
others.

Unfortunately, they closet the paranormal behind a veil of lofty academia and
turn a blind eye to that exciting world of paranormal intrigue. That, as we know
is real live psychical experience.

You cannot enter their domain without the proper credentials, and I'm afraid
that will not change. The premise is unless a psychical experience is repeatable
in the lab under controlled conditions; it will not be acknowledged or passed by
the referees for publication in leading journals. It is much like justice, in a
sense, kidnapped and hidden behind the law.

There is little doubt in my mind that parapsychology is the way of the future
and will dwarf science as we know it today. It continues to be met with fierce
resistance, but hasn't tht always been the way. I believe as you do, that the
paranormal world will meet any and all challenges and triumph in the long run.
Then, what's next? I can only imagine.


--- In PSI_research@yahoogroups.com, "Olavi Kiviniemi" <okivi@...> wrote:
>
> I have been reading the book:
> Harvey J. Irwin and Caroline A. Watt (2007): An Introduction to
> Parapsychology. 5th edition, illustrated. McFarland, 312 pages.
>
>
> An excellent book, comprehensive and highly recommended. But in the end of
> the book there is alarming information: parapsychology must be abandoned as
> a separate discipline and become assimilated in other sciences. It is
> impossible to study psi-phenomena because one cannot be certain there are
> any such natural phenomena at all. The object of the research in the future
> must be parapsychological experiences, because such phenomena certainly
> exist.
>
> Some relevant quotes from the book:
>
> - - -
>
> "Perhaps the ultimate survival of parapsychological research will rest on
> the demise of parapsychology as a discipline. Stevenson suggests that in the
> future, parapsychological issues might best be pursued within the framework
> of the orthodox sciences such as psychology and physics."
>
> "This is not to assert that parapsychology should be totally immersed in the
> world of human consciousness. Under a phenomenological definition of the
> discipline, the performance of psi experiments still is appropriate because
> some types of subjective parapsychological events might well prove to have
> an objective foundation, a basis rooted in the physical world."
>
> "In purely pragmatic terms, parapsychology is in crisis because new
> researchers and research funds are not being attracted into parapsychology
> to the degree necessary to sustain it as a discipline."
>
>
> "In some respect this scenario for the future seems like a meek capitulation
> to the skeptical attacks on parapsychology. Certainly it would entail the
> abandonment of some hard-won, academically sound graduate programs in
> parapsychology. But the viability of contemporary parapsychology is under
> serious threat, and the underlying problems need to be addressed in a
> realistic manner."
>
> - - -
>
> Having read all that, my background in natural sciences makes me think that
> parapsychology ought not to be left to scholars only. They are studying only
> what people are thinking and doing and too often they have a rather dim idea
> of the physical world.
>
> How is parapsychological experience defined? What about videos showing spoon
> bending or swinging ceiling lamps or a swinging picture on the wall? What
> about chart recorder papers showing unexplained spikes or metal pieces
> showing unexplained metallurgical effects? Are they parapsychological
> experiences?
>
> The writers, Irwin and Watts, are psychologists. It is obvious that they
> have not understood the importance of physical traces in PK research,
> although those traces are the most convincing evidence possible showing that
> psi is a real phenomenon. The traces can be studied with sophisticated and
> very reliable scientific methods so that no one having necessary knowledge
> can say the effects are not there. Remember the CSI TV series. It is a pity
> how much scholars and theoretical physicists have left aside and partly
> destroyed first-class parapsychological evidence that has already been
> obtained.
>
> - Olavi
>