Science and Psychical Research

Abstract

HAVING read with interest the correspondence in recent issues of NATURE arising out of Dr. Tillyard's article on Sir A. Conan Doyle's “History of Spiritualism”, I beg space for the following remarks which I shall try to confine so far as possible within the editorial limits stated in the issue of September 11 to be the main point of the reviewer's article of July 31, namely, “that scientific men generally presented an unscientific attitude to the subject of psychical research”. But Dr. Tillyard in his article appears to prefer the substitution of the term supernormal phenomena to the term subject of psychical research. Therefore my remarks will deal almost wholly with that department of psychical research which concerns itself with such supernormal phenomena as may be included under the head of accounts given of communications between living persons and the discarnate spirits, or intelligencies, or ‘hosts’of those who are normally called the dead, and thus omit here all reference to much of the material studied by the Psychical Research Society, for example, telepathy, etc., as quite irrelevant to this correspondence.