 Robert Todd Carroll
A 2005 Gallup poll indicates that belief in clairvoyance is at 26%, the same as it was in 1990, but down from 32% in 2000. |
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clairvoyance or second sightClairvoyance is an alleged psychic ability to see things beyond the range of the power of vision. Clairvoyance is usually associated with precognition or retrocognition. The faculty of seeing into the future is called "second sight" if it is not induced by scrying, drugs, trance, or other artificial means. People can predict the future. We do it all the time, but we usually, if not always, do it by taking into account our experience, knowledge and surroundings. Some predictions by psychics come true. So do some predictions by non-psychics. No doubt much of our anticipation of the future is unconscious and second nature, but it is based on quite natural and mundane abilities not on mysterious or supernatural powers. further reading The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal, edited by Kendrick Frazier (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991). Frazier, Kendrick and James Randi, "Predictions After The Fact: Lessons Of The Tamara Rand Hoax," in Science Confronts The Paranormal, ed., Kendrick Frazier (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1986), first published in the Skeptical Inquirer 6, no.1 (Fall 1981): 4-7. Randi, James. Flim-Flam! (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books,1982), especially chapter 13, "Put Up or Shut Up," where he gives accounts of tests done on several psychics who have tried to collect the $10,000 Randi used to offer to anyone who can demonstrate any psychic power. So far, no one has collected, even though the offer is now $1,000,000! |
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©copyright 2007 Robert Todd Carroll |
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updated 12/03/07 |
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