New Frontiers of the Mind
by [Farrar and Rinehart, $2.50]
This book is the history of a will to believe in telepathy and clairvoyance. The recent experiments in extra-sensory perception (ESP) at Duke University have given results of profound interest and challenging appeal to all whose minds are open. But it is too early for this type of book about them.
New Frontiers of the Mind has opened the way to superficial and dangerous thinking on the part of many who accept it as ‘scientific proof’ of psychic phenomena. It is a cardinal principle of science that experiments claiming new discoveries be reported in full. The reader should be allowed to judge for himself. Dr. Rhine conducts the experiments, organizes the data, draws his conclusions — then asks the reader to believe the conclusions on fragmentary evidence. This is unfair to him and to us. Significant data are lacking; and less favorable experiments, such as those of Coover at Stanford, are dismissed summarily.
However, critics have rejected the book too easily. It is more significant than many are willing to confess. Mathematicians (for example, Dr. Kellogg in the Scientific Monthly) have found its calculations faulty. Such findings weaken the book’s argument without being fatal. Some of Dr. Rhine’s results are extraordinary. His subjects produced at will scores above or below those which one might expect from the operation of chance alone. Where chance alone operates, no such regular alterations are recorded. Many psychologists criticize Dr. Rhine for concentrating on good subjects. But Dr. Rhine is not arguing that everyone has ESP. He is justified in restricting himself to a supernormal few. If chance alone operates, this group should not obtain superior scores. Apparently other subjects get average, not negative, scores. The layman rejects Dr. Rhine’s conclusions because of the atmosphere of belief that seems essential to marked success in ESP. Yet perhaps Dr. Rhine is right. The will to believe operates in other fields and may be essential here. Suspicion is often the better part of wisdom, but it may conceivably hinder ESP.
Unfortunately the whole spirit of this book raises suspicion. Dr. Rhine describes himself as losing orthodox religion and seeking another. He found what he wanted in psychic research: ‘The common claims of psychic research enthusiasts are the very substance of most religious belief, stripped, of course, of theological trappings.’ This statement, in itself highly questionable, betrays the author. Of hearing Conan Doyle on spiritualism, he writes: ‘ I carried away an impression that I still retain, of what his belief had done for Sir Arthur. It had made him supremely happy. It had banished his religious doubts and made him a crusader, willing to make a fool of himself, if necessary, for what he believed to be a great principle.’ Dr. Rhine is also a crusader.
There may be such a thing as telepathy. There may be clairvoyance. Dr. Rhine’s book shows effectively that these questions are still open. He has himself been cautious in drawing conclusions. But his metaphysical speculations are sometimes wild. And when he talks seriously about precognition it is easy to believe that the non-sensory has become the nonsensical.
ROGER W. HOLMES