J. PUBLISHED & UNPUBLISHED PAPERS
The Problem of Repeatability, or do the Laws of Nature evolve? (Review of the Society for Psychical Research 1999)
Duplication Theory (S&MN Journal December 1988)
Unpublished papers: a few, the main one being 150 pages and the final version of which was printed in 1985, but the first version complete in 1979
The Repeatability paper was interesting in that it owed its intial direction to an astonsihing insight from Sheldrake contained in his second book, and which I then adapted to justify the lack of repeatibility in ESP. The paper that was published in the review of the SPR was the first of three drafts that were submitted in 1997, the later versions being improved but it seem there was not time to publish the later versions, maybe due to the possibility they had been mislaid. Rather than quote the slightly shorter published script, below is a revised, later and better version.
Paper published in the Paranormal review in July 1999 following letter to the editor dated
REPEATABILITY
Over the least two decades following the subject, There has been disappointingly little progress in the discovery of proofs for existence of the paranormal. It seems to be stuck in the same old rut that it was in a century ago, never mind two decades, despite the introduction of laboratory techniques by the Rhines half way through the century.
There does seem to be an increasing public interest in the subject, which is good, but how much this has to do with the efforts of the Network and other similarly inclined bodies, or whether it has more to do with Hollywood and the need to sell newspapers, is hard to discern. In spite of this increasing public interest, and maybe because of it, the attitude of established science can be encapsulated in the dictum that if an effect is not reliably and regularly repeatable, then it does not exist. Without repeatability, the paranormal can only have a de facto existence rather de iure, and will not attract funds for research. In which case I now put up a brief explanation for a way in which the lack of repeatability might be rationalised. It is not authoritative, of course, being based on intuition, ingenuity and 20 years musing on the subject. The problem is so imponderable, that any attempt which is not entirely irrational might serve to provoke at worst scorn and contempt, and at best, to instigate constructive criticism and counter suggestions.
In attempting to isolate a new effect or phenomenon, what does the scientist do? I assume in very general terms he has to reduce a multitude of observations and then try to identify a lowest common denominator of action and effect, or a basic common behaviour pattern, from which a new general rule might be teased out in outline and then reinforced by experiments which have to be reliably repeatable.
In ESP or paranormal research it is a striking common factor that all the effects under observation are not repeatable, and they seem to be incapable of control. But this fact in itself presents an immediately identifiable category, ripe for investigation, and not one that should automatically disqualify it from serious consideration.
The required repeatability argument is based on the assumption that the rules of nature and physics are constant and never change. An electron at this side of the universe will be identical to one on the other side; the velocity of light is absolute; energy can neither be created or destroyed. But this is a very large assumption and one for which we have no proper established basis. The problem was addressed in Rupert Sheldrake's second book, "The Presence of the Past". Maybe if more attention was paid to the point he makes in this and other books, this initial and overwhelming objection of established science could be more easily set aside, with the ensuing result that paranormal research could then be legitimised and properly funded. Dr. Sheldrake asks the questions:
"Do the laws of nature evolve? Or does physical reality evolve while the laws of nature stay the same? In any case, what do we mean by the Laws of Nature'?
He shows that since the discovery of the Big Bang, the 19th century mechanistic world view of the permanence of physical laws has been thrown into doubt.
"But wait a minute. How could we possibly know that the laws of nature existed before the universe came into being? We could not ever hope to prove it by experiment. This is surely no more than a metaphysical assumption. Nevertheless, this assumption is still taken for granted by most scientists, including evolutionary cosmologists, and has been incorporated into the common sense of the modern world. Probably all of us can recognise it in the background of our own thinking.
This assumption that the laws of nature are eternal is the last great surviving legacy of the old cosmology. We are rarely even conscious of making it. But when we do bring this assumption into awareness, we can see that it is one of only several possibilities. Perhaps all the laws of nature came into being at the very moment of the big bang. Or perhaps they arose in stages, and then having arisen, persisted changelessly thereafter. ........Or perhaps the laws of nature have actually evolved along with nature itself, and perhaps they are still evolving. Or perhaps they are not laws at all, but more like habits. Maybe the very idea of laws is inappropriate.
The concept of laws of nature is metaphorical. It is based on an analogy with human laws, which are binding rules of conduct prescribed by authority and extending throughout the realm of the sovereign power. In the seventeenth century, the metaphor was quite explicit: the lasts of nature were framed by God the Lord of all creation. His laws were immutable; his writ ran everywhere and always........
Eternal laws made sense when they were ideas within the mind of God, as they were for the founding fathers of modern science. They still seemed to make sense when they governed an eternal universe from which God's mind had been dissolved. But do they any longer make any sense in the context of the Big Bang and an evolving universe?"
If the laws of nature evolve, then we might expect phenomena which have been very well established for aeons, will not tend to change that much. But there will be certain border areas at the periphery where development is occurring and that the rules governing these new phenomena are as yet hazy and not properly established. One might also expect that, ex hypothesi, it is hard to produce results in such areas. It might be one thing to work in established conditions under the classical paradigm of permanent laws, yet quite another to work in a fringe area where rules have not yet crystallised and do not fully apply.
If the laws of nature are found to evolve, and if it were assumed that most of the active change occurs as new phenomena become established as nature develops and becomes more complex, then it would be surprising if we had not been able to identify certain fringe phenomena which were not subject to predictable behaviour. It is what common sense would anticipate. One might also expect authority figures in academic circles not to want their power base eroded and to be inclined to take a dim view of such a possibility, if their whole career and mind set has been based on the invariance of physical laws. For similar reasons the Church regarded the heliocentric universe of Copernicus with trepidation.
If this argument were debated fully and its possible consequences recognised, then the prospects for proper funding for paranormal research and further advances might be greatly enhanced. Unfortunately, it seems to be more within the jurisdiction of philosophy than any other one subject, and the professional academic philosophers might make such a meal of it that we could anticipate another half century before resolution is obtained from that quarter. Perhaps they are already well dug into the subject? I do not know, but they certainly ought to be.
My subjective conviction is that we, the human race (along with the rest of the universe), are indeed evolving and developing into more complex and sensitive organisms. We slowly develop our ability to understand our behaviour and that of the laws of nature which govern our existence. Whether or not we shall evolve enough to be able to play an executive part in the forming and changing of the laws of nature, is a delightful topic of speculation but premature, given our current degree of comprehension.
Our ability to communicate more effectively with each other is also escalating rapidly through advances in electrical technology, which brings about increased intelligence and understanding. I see no reason why another huge increase in intercommunication would not occur if a mechanism for ESP was produced so that now so called "paranormal" methods of communication could be rationalised, developed and made part of our normal behaviour pattern within a century or two, and hopefully sooner, given the exponential rate of increase of knowledge over the last century. If it is possible that the laws of Nature are not fixed but are evolving, then the sooner this fundamental point is considered and possibly clarified, the sooner might many imponderables including that of ESP be resolved.
The proposals above were put to a scientist well versed in the subject for comment. he responded that:
a. It is likely that early man had far better developed psychic abilities similar perhaps to those possessed by animals today, so how does such an hypothesis explain the retrograde step by man in paranormal ability? And,
b. The behaviour of certain animals indicate that they have a far more developed psychic ability than humans, in which case how is it that we the more intelligent, and therefore more highly evolved species have appeared to have gone backwards in this respect?
A convincing answer is not immediately forthcoming to these valid points but at this stage I can come up with this response
a. In order to develop more rapidly and gain dominance over the competition, nature allowed that human intelligence should instead start develop through logical and deductive thought, and in the process, his psychic abilities withered, because the two abilities tend to be mutually exclusive. It is also argued that animal life has developed telepathic powers to such a level that further advances would little improve chances of survival of the next generation, in terms of natural selection.
Psychic ability in animals appears to be in a relatively primitive stage of evolution at which it might have been frozen without progress for millions of years simply because it does not need to be taken further to enhance survival, given the limits of the abilities of those animals in other directions. With the strength of their jaws and teeth, or the agility of their limbs, they survive well enough with in the wild without further psychic assistance, other than for the intervention of natural disasters (and latterly the interference of man). But they are not capable of dealing with some major climactic or other externally introduced threat, which might upset equilibrium to possible extinction unless behaviour patterns are radically changed. Some other form of breakthrough from another direction was required for further development of intelligent life. It might also be that too much psychic ability reduces the chances of an individual's survival; that a little increased psychic ability will not further enhance the chances of such genes to prosper.
As a result the deductive intelligence of human life had to be developed, so that exterior acts of God over which animal intelligence had no control, could be possibly anticipated, avoided and then even remedied through the application of technology. The latter has been made possible through the development of the human analytical ability to discern the rules behind all activity. Such understanding could then be developed to improve the chances of survival of all life by physical application of that knowledge.
b. Such a set of circumstances would fall into a case of what Arthur Koestler described in his book, Act of Creation, as "reculer pour mieux sauter". Organisms develop through natural selection, but then discover that a certain acquired characteristic is a blind alley, and is of limited use to extend survival in changing external conditions. This ability then withers through diminishing use, a temporary regression so that some other new ability can then be developed to take its place. Humankind fell back and allowed its psychic ability to atrophy in order that it should better develop its logical thought process, in order to enhance its chance of survival.
Such a proposal still does not fully answer the question why, if the paranormal ability is developed among animals, have the laws governing such effects not evolved far enough for them to be repeatable under laboratory conditions. One answer could be that psychic ability is already well established amongst animals so that it repeatable, but it seems that very little research has been carried on animals and their ESP ability, other than by Sheldrake. Then there are obvious difficulties in that only humans can communicate verbally.
But if this is so, there is another difficulty, if the original argument is to be followed through. If some animals have a well developed psychic ability, then nature has evolved far enough in this respect to give the phenomena some degree of reliable repeatability, then why has it not done so with human intelligence? This is more difficult to justify other than to say different rules apply to different species, not a very satisfactory response. Or, a better answer might be, as above, that in order to develop his analytical skills, man has had to reduce his intuitive or psychic abilities, even though the laws of nature, even at this fringe/border area of newly evolving phenomena, have become established enough to allow some psychic ability to be practised among intelligences with less analytical ability.
I also hold a suspicion that psychic ability is reinforced when there are very large numbers of similarly structures intelligences in a group. Certainly swarms of fish, flocks of birds, colonies of insects seem to exhibit a group mind. Perhaps there is a sort of quantum theory effect which dictates that with limited numbers of participants, no individual effect is predictable, but with large numbers, an overall tendency becomes predictable with increasing accuracy as numbers multiply. However, I do not currently see a clear way to bind this presentiment into the scenario which caters for the laws of Nature evolving, and the resulting flexibility of behaviour on new fringe areas. Might it be that the more similarly minded participants become involves in a new behaviour patter, the more quickly the embryonic laws surrounding its development become established?
If it were established in due course that the Laws of Nature do indeed evolve and change with time, then this would surely provide an escape route for those who currently see no intellectual reason to justify the existence of ESP. Even if none of the proposals above appeal, other more viable alternatives might suggest themselves. It would also be a new paradigm to change the whole philosophy of how we regard the operation of Nature. Is Sheldrake the only individual to have publicly acknowledged the extent of the possible paradigm shift here?
Nicholas Greaves
01/06/98