Creative Technology in the Testing Lab

“This book is about a very real kind of human experience, but one which is usually ignored or scoffed at, its meaning denied or debated. It is the kind of occurrence in which knowledge seems to come without the use of the senses. People generally keep in touch with the world around them by sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. But occasionally a person says he became aware of something when none of these channels operated, and then the argument begins. How did he know or did he actually know? Such debatable occurrences could be instances of extrasensory perception, or ESP. They are the subject matter of this book.” — Louisa Rhine, Hidden Channels of the Mind, 1961

A 2003 study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion reveals that almost two-thirds of Americans believe in psi phenomena — and that better educated individuals are more likely to believe in ESP. Similarly, a 2023 Spirituality Among Americans study by the Pew Research Center shows that 74 percent of Americans say there are some things that science cannot explain. As a culture, Americans seem readily capable believe that there is more out there than what we know through our senses — the sixth sense is hardly controversial for most of us. We go with our guts, trust our instincts, follow our inner voice — some of us do it multiple times in a single day. And yet don’t we wonder from where such feelings derive? Of course we do, or at least a good many of us humans do, which leads back to the Rhine.

We go with our guts, trust our instincts, follow our inner voice — some of us do it multiple times in a single day. And yet don’t we wonder from where such feelings derive?