Introduction
Paranormal is one of the controversial issues in modern science which has supporters and opponents, believers and non-believers. Contemporary science is rapidly expanding in many directions: On the macro level, astronomy reports exciting new discoveries. The quest for extraterrestrial life is one of the most dramatic adventures of our time. This is grist for science fiction and the poetic imagination, outstripping that which has been verified or is technologically feasible today. Critics (Hines 1988) admit that its is important to distinguish between pseudoscience and paranormal.
Thesis
Paranormal phenomena are real even if modern science cannot explain and study all paranormal events; thus it cannot reject existence of unusual phenomena and their imaginable nature.
The Meaning And Etymology Of Paranormal
The term paranormal has also been stretched far beyond parapsychology to other, so-called mysterious powers within the universe not contained within the parameters of our existing conceptual framework. It has been used to refer to such disparate phenomena as reincarnation, life after life, biorhythms, astrology, UFOs, Chariots of the Gods, the Bermuda Triangle, monsters of the deep—whether Nessie, Chessie, or Champie—Bigfoot, cattle mutilations, human spontaneous combustion, psychic archaeology, and faith healing; in short, almost anything that comes within the range of human imagination and is thought to be “incredible.” far back as we can trace there has been an interest in the occult and the magical (Hines 1988).
Some people believe in paranormal supposing that it is nothing more that manifestations of “the other reality”. It is difficult to explain and define paranormal phenomena using modern science and theories, thus it does not mean that paranormal is a product of imagination.
For instance, in the micro-level, physicists postulate new particles in an attempt to unravel the nature of physical reality. And in the life sciences, biologists are decoding the genetic basis of life and are on the threshold of creating new forms. At the same time, the information revolution unfolds stunning new applications (Jones, 2006). The world of the paranormal embraces enough plainly unscrupulous quackery and exploitation to keep us fully occupied. Whether we concentrate on finding alternative ways of accounting for the supposedly non-normal features of all these things or whether we focus rather on the sociological factors and political motives involved in such situations (Lawrence, 1995).
On the other hand, scientists and non-believers state that men and women have always been fascinated by the depths of the unknown. They do not believe in paranormal because parapsychologists are unable to study directly their putative psi in this way. They have no way of treating it like an independent variable because they have no way of turning it on or off, or even of knowing whether it is in operation at any specific point in time during the study (Jones, 2006).
The persistence and growth of ancient paranormal beliefs in our highly educated scientific-technological civilization is a puzzling phenomenon to many of us. The failure of a century of research to improve the evidence—are as strong arguments against the paranormal position today as they were in the past. A new reason for skepticism is that, no matter how wild the hypothesis may seem, statistical evidence can be adduced that supports the claim; this suggests that artifact rather than ” paranormal” is the most probable explanation for the statistical deviations reported in parapsychological research (Lawrence, 1995).
Present-day science for many seems to demonstrate that virtually anything is possible, and that what was once thought to be impractical or unreal can later be found to be so. And they think perhaps paranormal phenomena, biorhythms and horoscopes, faith healing and extraterrestrial UFOs are genuine. There is some confusion in the public mind between the possible and the actual, and for many people the fact that something is possible converts it into the actual. Science surely is not to be taken as infallible, and some of the defects found in the pseudo- and para-sciences can be found in the established sciences as well, though on a reduced scale. Scientists are fallible, and they are as prone to error as everyone else—though it is hoped that the self-corrective process of scientific inquiry will bring these errors to the light of day (Kelly, 2005).
Similarly, it would be presumptuous to maintain that all intelligence and wisdom is on the side of the skeptic; for he may be as liable to error as the next person. For example, the standards that determine what counts as a scientific “prediction” vary between one science and another, and even from one phase to another in the development of any particular science. So, before critics can apply these formal, abstract demands to actual scientific situations, they must pay attention also to certain specific, concrete features that are distinctive of any given science at this or that stage in its history; and it turns out that most of these features are highly variable, both among different sciences and among historical epochs (Jones, 2006).
Correspondingly, all the general terms that the philosophers looked to as providing the universal and timeless indices of a science’s rational status—verify, falsify, predict, and the like—turn out to be multivocal (Jones 2006). They have a determinable sense only when understood in the particular ways appropriate to the problems of the science in question at the time in question. As to the first of these questions, critics distinguish by reconsidering the meaning of the very term normal and its two parallel antonyms, abnormal and paranormal. The idea of normality must be a permanent item in the inventory of human thought; or that it is at the very least a necessary presupposition of modern science (Kelly, 2005).
An alternative explanation of the same departures might be that one is using an inappropriate model or that some unrecognized “normal” influence may be responsible for the departure of the data from what the model would predict. To decide that this unrecognized influence is a “psychic” influence is no more logically compelling than to decide that invisible creatures from another solar system are hovering in the laboratory and causing the observed departures from chance (Lawrence, 1995).
He more that parapsychologists report evidence of new statistical departures from chance that suggest new and wilder psychic effects, the less credibility their claims should have. Unlike the psychologist who can contrast two groups of scores, the parapsychologist must argue his; her case on the basis of departures from a chance model said to describe the population from which the data arises. This imposes severe limitations on the extent to which one can draw inferences from the statistical conclusions. This claim is demonstrably false, and all one has to do to establish that is to turn to the parapsychology research journals to see how departures from chance are typically interpreted (Jones, 2006).
Conclusion
Despite the lack of scientific support, and because of the clear distinctions between these two spheres of knowledge, those who “believe” in palmistry will continue to do so. After all, there is a certain comfort in having access to knowledge that is hidden from view or “hiding” in the future. Paranormal as an understandable phenomenon, communicates the excitement and intrigue of “occult” (“hidden” or “concealed”) knowledge: the fascinating mysteries of black holes in space, of the extinction of the dinosaurs, of invisible particles smaller than atoms. Paranormal is real because there is a lot of evidence and witnesses which prove existence of such phenomena even if modern science cannot explain their nature and test these events.
References
- Hines, T. (1988). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence. Prometheus Books.
- Jones, M. D. (2006). PSIence: How New Discoveries in Quantum Physics and New Science May Explain the Existence of Paranormal Phenomena New Page Books; 1 edition.
- Kelly, L. (2005). The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal. Thunder’s Mouth Press; 1st Thunder’s Mouth Press Ed edition.
- Lawrence, T. R. (1995). How Many Factors of Paranormal Belief Are There? A Critique of the Paranormal Belief Scale. The Journal of Parapsychology, 59 (1), 3-7.