E.S.P. and Psychology ed. by Cyril Burt, Anita Gregory (review)

Books 335 simultaneously. The Nuba, who paint their faces with a differentdesign each day, tend to make the right eye salient. Wolffhas suggested that the right side of the face expresses the conscious, the left the unconscious. It is tempting to speculate that the duplicity of the face is connected with the separate evolution of verbal and non-verbal auditory functions in the temporal lobes. Distrust of the left hand might originate in distrust of the left side of the face, presumably the master of the left hand. Hertz believed that it was a slight superiority of the right hand that provided the occasion for primitive man to project his moral feeling one way or the other; I suggest that perhaps a differencein function came into being along with the development of language and that the superior efficiency of the right hand developed only under conscious and verbal control. ESP. and Psychology. Cyril Burt. Anita Gregory, ed. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1975. 179 pp. E4.50. Reviewed by Richard I. Land* A most thoughtful discourse on paranormal psychology has been assembled in this collection of essays, reviews and other writings. Clearly, a scholar of the conscious, such as Burt, is qualifiedto stimulate investigations of what seems to arise in the mind from sources that appear to bypass the accepted senses. Throughout the book one enjoys reasoning that is thorough and often compelling. While he considers many cases of claimed ESP doubtful, his conclusion is that there is sufficient evidence to support parapsychology and that it should be studied more thoroughly. One need not agree with Burt’s conclusion to find fascinatingand informative the material on notions of themind, the soul, God and telepathy, which are considered in relation to his writings and those of C. G. Jung, J. Eccles, L. L. Vasiliev, G. Murphy and Alister Hardy (the Gifford Lectures of 1966and 1967). His viewpoint is that ‘...science strives not merely to prove but to understand. It aims at constructing the most plausible hypothesis, which, even if it cannot be demonstrated or tested, will enable us to render the universe and all its manifold phenomena as intelligible as possible ....’Thus, he clears away artificial distinctions when he states that ‘...conscious awareness is a fact which itself admits of no physical explanation. It is unique and irreducible. Ordinary sensory perception, as it seems to me, isjust as miraculous as extrasensory perception.’ The book contains surveys of many contemporary reports on parapsychology. He resorts to a dualistic approach to accommodate the apparent distinction between physical events and conscious activity. In the longer reviews of Hardy’s lectures under the title Evolution and Parapsychology , he states that ‘the study of theology should itself be treated as a branch of “psychical research” ’. In many instances where I was appreciative of Burt’s wide ranging scholarship and systematic consideration of details, I was disappointed by his poor understanding of physics. It is current practice to observe and interpret processes involving randomness in atomic and molecular events, but at the human macroscopic scale simpler deterministic physical laws are found to hold to great accuracy. Often in parapsychology appeals have been made to concepts such as time reversal and imaginary particles, but, unfortunately , these fall outside the context where the concepts have validity in physics. The attempts to apply the field theory of physics to paranormal events also seem to ignore the rigor with which gravity and electromagnetic phenomena are defined. This is one of the most stimulating books on ESP that I have read. However, it contains the seeds of its own refutattion , but what well-reasoned philosophical argument dealt with by an agile mind does not? The fundamental issues of the soul, mind and consciousness are bravely approached, clarified and organized with respect to a believingand mystical faith. Burt ends the book with the statement: ‘My own ~ *10Trapelo Rd., Belmont, MA 02178, U.S.A. guessisthat, likehypnotism, all theseso-called“Paranormal” phenomena will turn out to be perfectly “normal”: i.e., they will have rrutitruf explanations though not physical explanations.’ I am not inclined to agree with his ‘guess’. Charles Henry and the Formation of a Psychophysical Aesthetic. Jose A. Argiielles. University of Chicago Press, London...