Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses

Rating:
Summary: The Voice of Reason
Review: There is a disturbing new trend in "popular science" to justify New Age and mystical beliefs using misinterpreted scientific ideas. Most experimental physicists are content to ignore this trend and continue in their research, regardless of how people choose to interpret it. Others are careless enough to make ambiguous statements about physics and the nature of reality that add fuel to the fire of pseudoscience. Victor Stenger is a refreshing voice of reason, with a solid background as a respected experimental physicist.

First of all, Dr. Stenger is not attacking parapsychology. Rather, he is defending science from those who try to corrupt it by putting parapsychology on the same level, or use scientific ideas to support unscientific theories. Science, specifically physics, has a rigorous standard of evidence and experimental verifiability under controlled conditions. Any theory that claims to be scientific must meet these standards to justify that claim. Psychic powers, and the other supernatural phenomena addressed in this book, have never met these standards.

To summarize, this book is not anti-supernatural, it is just pro-science. Dr. Stenger does an excellent job of showing that supernatural phenomena are not scientifically established, and probably never will be, or they would have been experimentally verified a long time ago. If you choose to believe in the supernatural, feel free, but don't try to justify your beliefs scientifically.

Rating:
Summary: The Voice of Reason
Review: There is a disturbing new trend in "popular science" to justify New Age and mystical beliefs using misinterpreted scientific ideas. Most experimental physicists are content to ignore this trend and continue in their research, regardless of how people choose to interpret it. Others are careless enough to make ambiguous statements about physics and the nature of reality that add fuel to the fire of pseudoscience. Victor Stenger is a refreshing voice of reason, with a solid background as a respected experimental physicist.

First of all, Dr. Stenger is not attacking parapsychology. Rather, he is defending science from those who try to corrupt it by putting parapsychology on the same level, or use scientific ideas to support unscientific theories. Science, specifically physics, has a rigorous standard of evidence and experimental verifiability under controlled conditions. Any theory that claims to be scientific must meet these standards to justify that claim. Psychic powers, and the other supernatural phenomena addressed in this book, have never met these standards.

To summarize, this book is not anti-supernatural, it is just pro-science. Dr. Stenger does an excellent job of showing that supernatural phenomena are not scientifically established, and probably never will be, or they would have been experimentally verified a long time ago. If you choose to believe in the supernatural, feel free, but don't try to justify your beliefs scientifically.

Rating:
Summary: Informative but Unconvincing
Review: This book is good in that it identifies problems in understanding the paranormal in terms related to physics, especially relativity and quantum physics. The author indicates that the new world of quantum mechanics and relativity makes it improbable that the paranormal is real, even more so than the world of Newtonian physics. I personally do not agree with that conclusion. Quantum mechanics and relativity have demonstrated that the real world may be different than commonly assumed, however the author has suddenly concluded that all paranormal phenomena is fraud, delusion, you name it, anything but a possibility that it is true, and thus is making the same mistake as those who were so convinced that Newtonian mechanics was the final world that they refused to consider anything else. In my opinion I am very skeptical that all paranormal phenomena is fraudulent, resulting from wishful thinking, delusion, etc. There is just a bigger world out there than we have imagined and which remains to be explained.