The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective
Robert Jahn
(published in Proceedings of the IEEE, Volume 70, No. 2, February 1982)
Author:
Robert Jahn, Professor and Dean of Engineering, Princeton University
Summary:
Although a variety of so-called psychic phenomena have attracted man's attention throughout recorded history, organized scholarly effort to comprehend such effects is just one century old, and systematic academic research roughly half that age.
Over recent years, a sizeable spectrum of evidence has been brought forth from reputable laboratories in several disciplines to suggest that at times human consciousness can acquire information inaccessible by any known physical mechanism (ESP), and can influence the behavior of physical systems or process (PK), but even the most rigorous and sophisticated of these studies display a characteristic dilemma: The experimental results are rarely replicable in the strict scientific sense, but the anomalous yields are well beyond chance expectations and a number of common features threads through the broad range of reported effects.
Various attempts at theoretical modeling have so far shown little functional value in explicating experimental results, but have served to stimulate fundamental re-examination of the role of consciousness in the determination of physical reality. Further careful study of this formidable field seems justified, but only within the context of very well conceived and technically impeccable experiments of large data-base capability, with disciplined attention to the pertinent aesthetic factors, and with more constructive involvement of the critical community.
This 35-page paper presents a variety of research results in the field of PSI and PK. It also provides an outlook on aspects of future research in these fields.
Download: http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Jahn1982.pdf
Additional information:
Prof. Jahn has done research on the influence of the human mind of random number generators for over 20 years. During that last decades about 60 scientific papers have been published on these kinds of topics. 40 of them are available on the ICRL website.
The insights from his research have also led to the production of a 18-minute documentary, which is available in the Resource section.