Mind Over Matter -- in miniature by Mario
Varvoglis, Ph.D.
PK generally evokes images
of table levitations, spoons bending, and similar fireworks. But such
‘macroscopic’ or large-scale PK effects -- assuming they really exist -- are
probably just the more explicit and impressive manifestations of a broader phenomenon
which is going on all the time, unnoticed. Though macro-PK was the craze of late 19th
century psychical research (and briefly in the 1970s, with Uri Geller and others),
micro-PK - the mind’s influence upon microscopic events -- has been the preferred
laboratory approach for several decades now.
Actually, the idea of micro-PK is not new. Way back in the 1700s, Sir Francis Bacon,
‘father’ of the scientific method, gave some visionary suggestions for the study
of micro-PK. In his posthumously published work « Sylva Sylvarum » he proposed we study
this ‘mental force’ by applying it «...upon things that have the lightest and
easiest motions... as upon the sudden fading or coming up of herbs; or upon their bending
one way or other ...or upon the casting of dice».
Bacon’s ghost must have had something to do with the strange twist of fate which got
micro-PK research going in the 1930s. A young gambler arrived at the Duke University
parapsychology lab -- the first university lab fully dedicated to parapsychological
research -- claiming he could influence the fall of dice by sheer « will power ».
J.B.Rhine, director of the lab and ‘father’ of modern parapsychology, was
intrigued, and ready and willing. He devised tests using dice as ‘target’
systems, and found that the gambler indeed seemed to beat the odds and get the wished-for
outcome much more often than would be expected by chance. Micro-PK research was thus born,
as Rhine began to test different individuals’ ability to influence the fall of dice. |
