The Paradox of Psychic Research: With Especial Reference to the 'Margery' Case
I
THE Margery mediumship, which has now become so famous, brings to the fore certain problems of scientific method which the lay public seldom faces, and which, being unrealized, are likely to leave the thoughtful student of such a case in considerable perplexity. In the scientific investigation of an affair like the Margery case it is generally supposed that the investigators are seeking to prove or to disprove the genuineness of certain supernormal phenomena. A scientist cannot, however, seriously undertake to offer a solution of such a proposition, for it implies some things that are not true about scientific method. There are at least four difficulties with this formulation of the problem.
Genuineness. Strange as it may seem, science can never deal with the problem of genuineness. All it can do is to report the relations it observes among phenomena, and then go on, reporting other relationships between these phenomena and other phenomena, thus building up ultimately a systematic body of knowledge t hat is a chapter of science.
Let us take the atom. Are atoms real or genuine? Originally they were purely speculative affairs. It did not seem to be conceivable that matter could be subdivided and subdivided again, and so on forever. There must be, so it seemed, some stopping-place, something so small that it could be no further divided — an atom forsooth. Were such atoms genuine? No, they were the product of the inability of the mind to grasp the notion of an infinitude of subdivisions. There was no proof that they actually ‘existed.’
Ever so much later the chemical law of multiple proportions was discovered. This law was an observed relationship. It showed that in entering into chemical combination the amounts of the elementary substances either remained constant or bore simple proportional relationships to one another. For instance, a given amount of hydrogen will combine with a given amount of oxygen to yield water, and for water the proportion of hydrogen to oxygen is fixed immutably. It is possible, however, to cause exactly twice as much oxygen to combine with the same amount of hydrogen to make hydrogen peroxide, and for hydrogen peroxide the proportions are also immutable. One cannot, with the same amount of hydrogen, get one and one-half or any fractional proportion of oxygen to combine. This law is a matter of observation and cannot be challenged within the limits of the exactness with which it was observed. It happens, however, to be a law which would hold if the chemical elements were divided into atoms which were themselves indivisible in entering into combinations, and thus the law of multiple proportions came to support the atomic hypothesis. We now say water is H2O and hydrogen peroxide H2O2. With two parts of hydrogen we can combine one part or two parts of oxygen because the atoms combine thus to make a molecule. We cannot have one and onehalf parts of oxygen to the two of hydrogen because we cannot have one and one-half atoms of oxygen. The atoms for these purposes are indivisible.
Have we proven the genuineness of the atom now? No, because we have not observed atoms as such. All we have done is to establish an atomic hypothesis, a statement that certain phenomena occur as if matter were made up of indivisible atoms. Nevertheless we must now distinguish between science and human belief. Certainly the fact that combinations occur in multiple proportions strengthens the belief of both layman and scientist that there actually are atoms.
The atomic hypothesis, since it was first laid down, has been tremendously strengthened. Something might have been discovered at any time to discredit it, but nothing has. What has happened has been that chemists have assumed that the hypothesis is genuine, and have set experiments based upon this hypothesis, realizing that every such experiment was a test of it. The belief in the reality of atoms grew stronger as more and more experiments, based upon the belief, proved successful. Presently the belief became so strong that we came to speak of the atomic law instead of the atomic hypothesis.
Nowadays, however, no physicist believes in an indivisible atom. Atoms are supposed to be made up of ions. And the physicist counts the ions in an atom, measures them, and plots their orbits of motion within the complex system that the atom is. What does this mean? Is the atom no longer genuine? Well, the original proposition has been proven untrue. The atom is not, after all, an indivisible smallest particle of matter. The atom is, speaking relatively, a vast system of ions, each moving in a precise manner at a tremendous velocity. As originally defined, the atom is not genuine, but this discovery makes no difference to the scientist. The law of multiple proportions and all the other observed relationships still hold, and all that has happened is that a partially erroneous hypothesis has led to positive results and a further knowledge of the truth.
Moreover, we may go even further. The atomic hypothesis is based on a belief in the reality of matter, but modern physics is beginning to question even this reality. The hypothesis of matter has yielded most of modern science, but it may be wrong after all. There may be nothing but energy. It now seems possible that even matter is not genuine.
It is plain, then, that genuineness is a relative and temporary affair. Genuineness is simply an expression that means we have a practical belief in something at a particular time. What is doubted to-day is proven to-morrow and disproven later. But the disproof of the better accepted scientific beliefs generally means progress and not retrogression. Professor Whitehead has recently expounded this fact of the progressive nature of science in the Atlantic. The observed laws remain, worth all that they ever were. All we do is to alter our belief in the nature of factors, like the atom, with which the laws are concerned.
Now it is this instability of the genuineness of scientific conclusions that makes particular difficulty in the investigation of psychic phenomena. The investigation usually hinges on the genuineness of certain phenomena, as to whether they are ‘normal’ or ‘supernormal.’ Sometimes a prize is offered for a proof of genuineness. What can the scientist do? The medium, not being a scientist, usually wants her genuineness attested, and may make such an attempt the condition of the investigation. If the scientist goes ahead he probably does so with the mental reservation that he means by genuineness a naïve definition of the word. But when he comes to make a conclusion, he is faced with a dilemma, especially if he should be about to conclude that the phenomena are supernormal. He may assert that the phenomena are genuine, but he must know in his heart that his assertion is simply the measure of the strength of his temporary belief. Any discovery at any time may make him wish to alter his verdict. He would not be a scientist if he felt that his conclusion was necessarily permanent. If a prize has been offered, his dilemma is the worse. He feels that money is being paid on the basis of a conclusion that may later have to be altered. On the other hand, if his conclusion is negative, as it usually is, he is in difficulty. There is always a chance that he is wrong, if not about the problem of the normal and the supernormal, at least about his own particular explanation of normal fraud; and he may be sure that the proponents of the supernormal will not fail to take advantage of this chance of error in controversy subsequent to his formal conclusion.
Perhaps this difficulty of the scientist will be clearer if we consider specifically the Margery case. A year ago there was a committee of scientists who sought to render a verdict upon the question of the genuineness of the phenomena which occur in the presence of Margery. This committee witnessed many things that they could not immediately explain and they signed reports describing them because they knew what they had observed. So far they were on safe ground. A trained observer can report what he observes with considerable reliability. Just so one might report that the motorman turned a handle and the trolley-car moved forward, without having any notion at all how the movement was brought about. Perhaps there was a demon inside the thing, and, not liking the crank to be turned, he ran and made the car go — at least this is a possible hypothesis.
Now, if this committee had kept on being mystified, they would finally have gotten to the stage where they believed it useless to continue further in the hope of dispelling the mystery. They might then have decided to conclude that the phenomena were genuine and to award the prize. Nevertheless, prize or no prize, it would still remain possible for someone cleverer than they, or more lucky than they, to solve the mystery in some perfectly normal manner.
On the other hand, if the committee had actually discovered some normal explanation of the originally strange events, — that Margery rang the bellbox with her foot, or that Walter’s voice was Margery’s whisper in a trance, — then they might have given a negative report. Still they would not be sure of their generalization. Perhaps Margery made the particular whispers that they observed, but perhaps Walter also whispers at other times. Their whole finding would be upset if it could later be shown that any whispering at all occurred without Margery’s participation.
As a matter of fact, this particular committee made neither finding. The majority reported that the supernormality of the phenomena was not established, and thus they remained on scientific ground. If, however, they had made a definite statement one way or the other, it is plain that their finding could not have been final and irrevocable for the reason that scientific research is never final or irrevocable. One hears so much talk about science ‘settling problems,’ whereas it never settles them: it merely advances them.
II
Supernormality. The second difficulty which psychic research faces lies in the fact that its task is often formulated as the proof of the supernormal nature of certain phenomena. When are phenomena supernormal?
Suppose we are asked to a séance and there we observe many objects, remote from the medium and everyone else, moving about on the table or going up in the air. There is no doubt about the observation. The question arises: Is the movement supernormal?
Here the investigator is faced with a necessity for establishing relationships. To find the cause of a phenomenon is to find what else has to occur in order that the phenomenon may occur. If, in his final analysis, he finds that the movement will not occur unless the medium’s hand or foot is free to touch the object and that the movement will not occur beyond the range of the hand or foot, he has established an hypothesis which bids fair to be accepted as genuine. Such an explanation, however, would be regarded as a demonstration of normality.
What other sort of relationship could he possibly find? Let us suppose that the investigator, as the result of prolonged experimentation, becomes convinced that the movement is not caused directly by any movable part of the medium’s body or of the bodies of any other persons in the room; and, by choosing suddenly unexpected rooms known only to himself, that it is not caused by elaborate concealed apparatus. The unscientific person would begin then to think that the movement must be supernormal. He might be convinced until he discovered that the medium was in possession of what appeared to be a fountain pen, but was really a strong extensible rod by which objects at a distance could be manipulated. Then he would conclude that the movement might be normal after all.
Suppose, however, that at last he exhausts his ingenuity in thinking of things and conditions to exclude, and still the movements occur. What has he proved? Not supcrnormality, but simply that there is movement and he does not know how it occurs. The belief in the supernormal turns out to be nothing more than a belief in his own ignorance.
To most readers this statement may seem very strange. Science, they will say, has done wonderful things; why should it not some day establish the reality of the supernormal? The answer is that to establish the reality of the supernormal would be to bring it within the normal. Science has no way of working except by relating the unknown to the known. When phenomena are built into the system of knowledge they cease to be supernormal.
The logicians would state this conclusion in another way. They tell us that you cannot prove a universal negative. Proof is essentially positive in its nature. To prove the supernormal you must define it, but you can only define it by saying that it is something that is not normal. Now you cannot prove that a phenomenon is not normal. You may be able to prove that it is normal, or you may persistently fail to prove it normal. If you fail to prove it normal you have not proved it supernormal; you have simply failed to prove it anything at all. It is surprising how easy it is to confuse the knowledge that one is ignorant with a knowledge about the thing of which one is ignorant.
All this argument does not, of course, go to show that there is nothing supernormal. It asserts merely that science cannot cope with the problem of the supernormal, which must presumably remain a matter of faith without proof.
III
Generalization. A fundamental characteristic of science that plays an important rôle in the misunderstanding of psychic research is generalization. Theoretical science is interested always in the general, never in the particular. Yet it has always to study the particular. Galileo was not concerned to see whether his two particular weights, dropped from the tower of Pisa, would reach the ground at the same time, but whether bodies in general fell at speeds that were independent of their weights. Thus the scientist takes his particular materials as representative of the general class, and ordinarily he avoids difficulty by picking his representatives by naïve common-sense. He secures his generalizations further by repeating his observations with different materials, all of which he assumes belong to the same class, thus effecting a criticism of his common-sense selection. We become convinced of the law of falling bodies only after it has been tested out for a large number of objects and a larger number of weights.
In psychic research, however, repetition cannot always be had. Even astronomy is not so difficult as psychic research in this matter. In astronomy control of the actual phenomena is impossible, but they do recur, or else we learn little of them. There is no guarantee, however, that a ‘spirit’ will consent to repeat a given phenomenon just when it is wanted. Unless the ‘control’ will coöperate, it may be quite impossible to come to any conclusions at all.
Sometimes, nevertheless, the control does coöperate. In the Margery case, Walter was willing to repeat phenomena again and again. Is this all that science could ask for? No, for one needs assurance that apparent phenomena are really the same. In Mr. Hoagland’s account of Margery in the November Atlantic the group remained for a long time puzzled. They thought that the hands and feet, of the medium were controlled. Then it appeared that she could slip off an ankle-band, freeing a foot. With this discovery it became immediately possible to arrange to control the foot; and the group, to put their hypothesis to the test, predicted that the phenomena would either cease or change. They did change somewhat in nature. Yet, even if they had not changed, they would not have been in a scientific sense the same phenomena. If Margery had done with her hand what she did with her foot, something else would have been going on.
The professional magician makes use of this principle generally. When he repeats a trick he does it in a different way. The naïve observer thinks he is observing the same phenomenon, eliminates some possibilities the first time and others later, and so remains mystified.
In studying accounts of supposed psychic phenomena, one has therefore to be extremely cautious. It is very easy to talk about teleplasm, for example, as if it existed, because there are telekinetic movements, and because one possible normal explanation has been excluded in one experiment, and others in others. The reader, however, knows nothing worth knowing until all the possibilities have been excluded in the same experiment, and even then, as we have seen, he knows only that teleplasm is something that acts in a particular manner by laws that he cannot explain. To me it seems that such a conclusion is worth mentioning only in so far as it sets the problem for further research.
IV
Sincerity. The fourth matter which I wish to take up is psychological and not methodological. It concerns the sincerity of the medium. Sincerity of the medium is often invoked as part of the demonstration of the genuineness of the phenomena. If the medium is a fraud she is insincere. Conversely, it is argued, if she is sincere the phenomena must be genuine. The converse of a proven proposition, however, does not necessarily hold. Presumably sincerity, as we ordinarily know it, is not a proof that there is no trickery. To understand this matter we have to understand the human mind.
Human beings, while they seek in modern society to be rational and consistent, fall far short of success. Most of us want, for example, to be both honest and polite, and we find sometimes that we cannot be both simultaneously. We tell the truth with a little shame or we resort to a ‘white lie.’ In this case both motives are worthy motives and the conflict is not very great. Whichever we do, we are justified to ourselves.
The case is more serious when an unworthy motive clashes with a worthy one. I knew a girl who had such a passion for cold lamb chops that once, on a picnic, she went off alone so as to have all her chops for herself and then came back with some excuse. When I reminded her of it a year later she denied ever having done so, and I think she had really forgotten it. This mental device by which we avoid thinking about the less pleasant sides of ourselves is the well-known psychological mechanism of ‘repression.’
In the extreme case one gets a dissociated personality. The most famous instance is Dr. Morton Prince’s Miss Beauchamp and her alternating personality called Sally. Miss Beauchamp was refined and sensitive, but Sally was a young devil, always making trouble for Miss Beauchamp, destroying her things or creating impossible situations for Miss Beauchamp to face when she later replaced Sally. What a medium Miss Beauchamp might have been, preparing all the necessary devices as Sally, facing the public in all sincerity as Miss Beauchamp, and reverting to Sally under the influence of the séance!
Nor does dissociation necessarily mean an alternation of personalities. There may be, as Dr. Prince styles them, co-conscious personalities. The one may control the voice while the other controls the hand, or at least the two may go on in rapid alternation. When we read in the papers of a devout man, respected in his community, carrying out over a considerable period some line of misconduct, we style him a hypocrite and dismiss the matter from mind. Most people, however, are not consciously hypocritical. The chances are that the man seemed to himself to be quite sincere when he was standing for morality and that the other life interpenetrated his moral life without his ever being able to bring himself to face the inconsistency.
Sincerity, then, may be a human ideal, but it will not be perfectly realized so long as the human mind remains the natural seat of conflicting impulses. I have recently had an example of such a conflict in my own experience.
Mr. Code, one of the Margery investigators, arranged a séance in which he was to produce all the Margery phenomena by trickery. I was present and held the important position of controlling his left hand. I wanted the control to be as rigid as possible in order that the demonstration should be convincing, but I also wanted Code to succeed. In general, Code was quite as mysterious as Margery to me, but once, in red light, he attempted too much and I saw how the trick was done. I should then have reported fraud into the dictaphone, according to the general understanding, but it never occurred to me to do so. It was only after I had gone home and thought it over that I realized that the desire to have Code succeed had won out over the desire to control him rigidly. If I were not a psychologist accustomed to analyze my motives, I do not believe that I should even have remembered this incident.
The incident goes to show, however, that persons who have the ‘will to believe’ in the supernormal do not make good investigators of psychic phenomena. It shows also that in an investigation persons sympathetic to the phenomena or to the medium should not be placed in the important positions near her. A sympathetic sitter is not only uncritical. He may actually help the medium or allow her to help herself, and he may, after the sitting, be able to answer with all sincerity — ‘ to the best of his knowledge and belief’ — that he did not aid. The trouble is that the best of one’s knowledge and belief is very apt not to be the truth when strongly conflicting motives arise.
I hope it is now plain that psychic research, in so far as it seeks to demonstrate the genuineness of supernormal phenomena, is a paradox. Research does not demonstrate genuineness; it yields at best a temporary practical belief. Research cannot prove the supernormal, for the supernormal is nothing more than something we knownothing at all about; it does not take research to tell us that we are ignorant of some things. And finally, with the human mind made the way it is, even sincerity is not a safeguard of the results of psychic research, for it takes more than sincerity to accomplish what is logically impossible.