Editorial Comments

PROCEEDINGS OF THE XX JUNE, 1940 1939-40 CONTENTS Page Editorial Comment. By William H. Button and John J. O’Neill i : Tests of Extra-Sensory Perception Among A.S.P.R. _ Members. By Dr. Gardner Murphy and Ernest Taves 1 re ROCOMET ER a lO hohe ie ene eae tye U1 Meany 3 oO GASES ONE AL a A on nie 10 Analysis of Data Collected through March 31, 1940.. 13 SrirvinicakGontrily ofa he ae 25 40 East 34th Street, New York, N. Y. ie My oa = z low < > 3 g re) p =] m ° 2% 2 <q o Le) gy n < Q B: Q 2. w oO n oO p La Qa a I 5 bership $10 Associate Membership $5 ~ Price $1.00

NOTICE TO MEMBERS Members are desired to report as to facts and personal experiences | relating to psychology and psychical research or to contribute to critical discussions of material collected and published. These sub- — jects include Apparitions, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Premonitions, Mediumistic Phenomena, Visions of the Dying, Coincidences, Illu- sions, Hallucinations and all residual phenomena that tend to illustrate obscure mental processes. All reports and narratives of personal and other experiences will be treated as private and confidential, unless express permission is given to use them and the names connected therewith. Every person paying $5 a year will receive the JouRNAL one year; every person paying $10 a year will receive all the publications of the Society for that year, including the Journat and the PROCEEDINGS. — The JourNnAx is published monthly and keeps the reader informed as to what is transpiring in the scientific world relating to psychic research. The Proceepincs are published as occasion demands. The Pro- CEEDINGS aré more technical than the Journat and will be more | ~ important for those who wish to have detailed records. ‘ Back numbers of either the JourNAL or the Prockepincs may be had at any time. Editorial Comment This report by Dr. Gardner Murphy and Ernest Taves is published by this Society by authority of the Board of Trustees and the Research and Publications Committee. * XK * *K This issue of the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research contains our first formal report of the research in the field of Extra-Sensory Perception car- ried on by Dr. Gardner Murphy and Ernest Taves. All phases of the inquiry are not covered in this report. Addi- tional results will be recorded in a subsequent issue of the Proceedings. The field in which this inquiry is being carried on is still largely virgin territory awaiting scientific exploration. Some small fringes of the area have been surveyed and charted by the many scores of investigators who have en- tered the field in recent years. Many items of knowledge of intrinsic value have been recorded plus many other items whose place in the larger pattern of knowledge still remains to be determined. ‘There is no more difficult field in which to carry on scientific research than that which embraces the inquiries into Extra-Sensory Perception and other extra-normal phe- nomena. The term “extra’’ is applied because scientists have thus far failed to include these manifestations in the generalizations of law and principles which cover the more easily studied phenomena of the physical and biological Sciences. Electromagnetic radiation in the range that has Siven us our radios might well have been called “ghost’’ waves if their existence had been known before the days of Faraday, Maxwell and Hertz. In the experiments of Hertz an electric spark was cre- ated. It lived its brief existence of a tiny fraction of a Second and then gave up the ghost. Before the time of Maxwell’s researches scientists would have appeared to be

ii] Editorial Comment fully justified in saying that there was no “ghost”, and © when the spark snapped out of existence, that ended every- — thing for the spark. But Hertz designed a receiver which — resurrected the ghost out of empty space and caused the © spark to once again live its brief existence, but in a new — environment. There is an interesting analogy between the phenomena of electromagnetic waves and Extra-Sensory Perception. When a spark is created, invisible waves are radiated into the ether or into space. When a receiver properly attuned to these waves is available, it can extract the energy of the waves and transform it into an electric current which © will reproduce the spark. When an individual indulges in | mental activity, something intangible may be given off — which progresses through time and space. We do not — know what the nature of this “something” is, but there — is adequate evidence available that it can stimulate another — individual at a distance beyond the range of the normal sensory powers so that the second individual reproduces in — whole or in part the thoughts generated by the first indi- — vidual. This phenomenon is known as telepathy. When an ~ inanimate object is used as the “sender”, the phenomenon ~ is called clairvoyance. The report by Dr. Murphy and Taves contains a small — but valuable part of the evidence that a transmission of — some kind takes place between individuals at a distance and ~ apparently between objects and individuals. Even if every- — one were satisfied with the existing evidence that an extra- _ normal transmission of something takes place, the task of the investigator would still be far from completed. We are — almost completely without demonstrable scientific knowl- i edge of the nature of the something that is transmitted. — We do not know whether it has the form of waves, that are transmitted like electromagnetic waves, or whether it has a form completely different from anything we now know about. We must learn what part of the living body is responsible for the generation of the something that goes i Editorial Comment [ iii out into space and we must learn what part of us acts as a receiver and makes the telepathic material available to our consciousness. This approach to the problem may make it appear that only a purely physical interpretation of the phenomena is being considered and that all other interpretations are ruled out, or in other words that participation in the phenomena by extra-physical entities, or “spirits” is not being consid- ered. Such is not the case. No agency of transmission is ruled out. Science works from the known to the unknown. We know a great deal about physical phenomena. When we have attained a sufficient mastery over the purely phy- sical phenomena involved in Extra-Sensory Perception, we have provided ourselves with an important route for pene- trating into the realms that lie beyond. The work reported in this number of the Proceedings is entirely consistent with the findings of other investigators which indicate that telepathic and clairvoyant transmission of intelligence is a natural phenomenon, the reality of which has been amply demonstrated, but that the ability is not uniformly distributed. A large number of persons can demonstrate telepathic ability to a limited extent under some highly specialized circumstances, and a smaller num- ber can demonstrate it under a wider range of conditions. A rare individual can be found in every sufficiently large group who will give an astounding demonstration of sen- Sitivity to telepathic transmission. This distribution cor- responds to the distribution of normal and abnormal char- acteristics, mental and physical, in most randomly selected groups. The work of Murphy and Taves indicates that ordinary Subjects working in an ordinary mental state with statis- tically measurable material can manifest in experiments, similar in structure but differing slightly in content, large deviations from chance that are statistically significant while in others they do not average significantly above chance expectations.

iv] Editorial Comment In one experiment in which the results are statistically _ significant, the deviating experimental factor was the use | of the color red, or the red-white combination. ‘ The scores on the simple choice of red or white cards © are significantly low, not merely low enough to arouse inter- est, but so extremely low that such a result would be ex- — pected to appear by chance only once in the course of 4,000 — such experiments. This was due to uniformly low scores by — all subjects tested and not to a large deviation by any one — individual—a social factor associated with possible antag- — onism to the color red may be involved but as yet no adequate — hypothesis is available. ' In one card reading experiments the group made higher — than chance scores that are statistically significant and — could be expected by chance but once in 670 such experi> ments. This high average was due largely to a few indi- | ' viduals who made very high scores. One individual who 1 made one-tenth of the calls in the test scored one-third of — the total deviation above chance, thus reducing the total 4 “significance” although indicating that the group did mani- ’ fest some small ability to score above chance. J Witi1aAM H. Button, President Joun J. O’NerL1, for the Research and Publications Committee.