Abstract

The widespread publicity and the consequent furor created by Dr. J. B. Rhine's experiments on telepathy and clairvoyance, have been interpreted in some quarters as a call for a thorough-going revision of the entire field of psychological thought. This revision, it is held, must be in the direction of philosophic idealism, and away from previously accepted materialistic doctrines. The present paper points out the non-verifiable nature of the entities postulated by the believers in "supernormal" phenomena. Furthermore, the interpretations of contemporary science held by such individuals are not in themselves on a scientific plane. Specific errors in reasoning made by workers in the field of psychical research, are presented. In short, "psychical research... cannot turn the universe into a non-material, non-objective one, on either the basis of misinterpretations of current physical thought or on the basis of its own work."