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 Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:32 am
Hey Guys,
It's me, am sure your getting sick of seeing me about everywhere razz Sorry if you are ~
Well one of my passions is the paranormal. I love parapsychology and the unknown and it is such a great interest. So here, in this thread am going to go into a long detailed account of the different parts of the paranomal, what is parapsychology? What are the different parts of the Paranormal? Different beliefs, theories and maybe even studies within a certain area. The coverage of ghosts, what can be done to speak with the dead, conspiracies into UFOs, information on UFOs, into the paranormal abilities, the use of divination techniques, ghosts, how to hunt ghosts, folklores and it can go on and on. It would be a interesting: especially if it is your cup of tea (holy crap i did not just use that expression did i? O.O I oddly hate that expression and i used it >.< ).
Anyway back to what i am saying, this could be seen as a useful thread, especially if you are making a paranormal roleplay or even a role-play where your characters have "realistic" paranormal abilities.
THERE IS ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW: most of the work up will NOT be in my own words, some will be, some won't be. This is because it hard to rewrite everything from websites. I am putting up all the websites i am working from, they are the ones who deserve ALL THE CREDIT. This is so everything is in one place and you don't have to trail the websites for different information. WHEN I GET THE TIME ~ i will rewrite everything but with uni that is not possible at the current moment ~ Thank You.
So please enjoy yourselves
~ Rain heart
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:33 am
Contents
- What is the Paranormal? What is Parapsychology?
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and to be continued.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:49 am
Web + Book Resources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal
- http://atheism.about.com/od/parapsychology/a/definition.htm
- http://www.milwaukeeparanormal.com/What-IS-Paranormal.html
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:53 am
THE BASICS ~
Paranormal - Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure.
We are often asked, "What exactly does paranormal mean?" The term paranormal is used to describe a wide variety of activity and phenomena. According to the Journal of Parapsychology (a quarterly publication devoted primarily to the original publication of experimental results and other research findings as published by the Parapsychological Association), the term paranormal describes "any phenomenon that in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible according to current scientific assumptions." The actual word is derived from the Latin use of the prefix para meaning "outside or beyond" what is considered normal.
Many people associate the term paranormal as only dealing with hauntings and ghosts. However, the paranormal also includes subjects considered to be outside the scope of parapsychology including UFOs, cryptozoology, telepathy, ESP, faith healing, clairvoyance, and many other subjects.
An anomalous phenomena is an observed incident or experience for which there seems to be no agreeable scientific explanation. Because such observations do not easily fit into how many view our reality, these instances can be (and usually are) the subject of controversy.
Since paranormal phenomena is not generally accepted as real by traditional scientists, most of these ideas and theories about hard-to-reproduce anomalies are considered pseudoscientific (not a real science), partly because science needs evidence to be reproducible in a controlled environment.
Some anomalies eventually get a scientific explanation, losing their status as unexplained phenomena. For example, while the idea of stones falling from the sky was once considered anomalous, meteorites are now acknowledged and generally well understood.
Parapsychology - is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method.
Defining parapsychology is not an easy task. The researchers who would have been expected to clarify things have actually contributed to the problem. Most definitions of parapsychology tend to emphasize negative aspects, defining it according to what it is not rather than what it is. The absence of a substantive definition is one of the things that prevents parapsychology from being taken more seriously.
Parapsychology involves the study of the alleged evidence for psychological phenomena that are inexplicable by science. Other terms which have sometimes been used interchangeably with parapsychology include paranormal, parapsychical, psychic phenomenon, and psychical science. For most of the twentieth century, however, parapsychology has been used almost exclusively for the attempted scientific study of such phenomena.
The term “parapsychology” appears to have been coined by psychologist Max Dessoir sometime around or before 1889, and it first appeared in an article written by Dessoir, “Die Parapsychologie. Eine Entegegnung auf den Artikel “Der Prophet,”” which appeared in June 1889 (translation: Parapsychology. A Response to the Article “The Prophet”). Researcher J.B. Rhine probably did the most to popularize the term parapsychology in English and he was one of the first to engage in large-scale, organized study of the subject.
Parapsychological phenomena can generally be broken down into three general categories: telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition, and telekinesis. Telepathy is the ability to communicate information across space by the power of the mind alone. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind alone. Clairvoyance or precognition is the ability to learn about future events which have not yet actually occurred.
Closely related to all three is spiritualism, the alleged ability to speak with spirits of the dead which is often accompanied by moving objects and predictions of the future. In fact, what is today considered parapsychological research originally grew out of attempts to scientifically investigate the performances of spiritualists and mediums.
More materialistic scientists broke away from traditional spiritualists: while the spiritualists insisted that their activities proved the existence of an afterlife and immortal soul, the scientists insisted that their activities were actually evidence of previously unknown powers of telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyance. Even today this split between the two remains, despite their common origins.
Much of what lies behind parapsychology is the belief that the mind is independent of the body and that the field has the means of proving the truth of a nonmaterialistic conception of life and the universe — the same premise that drives spiritualism. James Alcock writes:
“Psi has been postulated not because normal psychology is incapable of accounting for people’s apparently psychic experiences, nor because of inexplicable findings in physics or chemistry; nor is it the logical outgrowth of some compelling scientific theory. Rather, the search for psi is now, as it has been since the formal beginning of empirical parapsychology over a century ago, the quest to establish the reality of a nonmaterial aspect of human existence — some form of secularized soul.”
What is interesting, and what makes parapsychology and so-called psychic phenomena so difficult to research, is that each of these is essentially defined in a negative fashion. All three are defined as the ability to perform some act or acquire some knowledge in the absence of any known scientific laws or means.
When people talk about things occurring “by telepathy” or “by telekinesis,” it sounds a lot like we are saying something similar to an event occurring “by a chemical reaction” or “by photosynthesis” — but that isn’t the case. Instead, it is more like saying that an event has occurred “by some mechanism that is unknown to current science, which is improbably according to the laws of chance, and which doesn’t seem compatible with any known models of how the world works.”
Curiously, one by-product of these negative definitions is that if any psi phenomena could be proven to exist, they would not longer be a part of parapsychological studies. They would lose their negative definitions and would become part of the fields of biology and physics. By its very nature, parapsychology is a shrinking field, always destined to losing its topics to other fields as soon as any naturalistic explanations become available. So long as the possibility of some known scientific or normal means exists, parapsychological phenomena have (by definition) not been proven.
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