Abstract
AN introduction by Prof. Wm. McDougall gives reasons for the publication of a new journal, the Journal of Parapsychology, and making clear its object. Throughout the ages, people have asked: Are mental processes always and everywhere dependent upon material and physical organizations? What are the relations of mind and matter? Do the volitions and beliefs of men make any difference to the historical course of the events of the world? Is the physical co-extensive with the mental and the powers and potentialities of mind to be defined by the laws of the physical sciences? For the most part, the psychology studied in the universities has not concerned itself experimentally with these problems, and such work as has been undertaken has generally been the leisure-tune pursuit of interested amateurs. Prof. McDougall thinks that all those phenomena vaguely denoted by the phrase, 'psychical research', ought to be the study of trained scientific workers in the universities, both in the interests of the development of knowledge and of the public. A beginning was made at Duke University in 1930 to study what the researchers called 'extrasensory' perception. In order that the experiments made in one laboratory may be repeated by other workers, it seemed desirable that there should be a journal. The need for multiple repetitions by different observers of all experiments purporting to give positive results is greater in this field than in others. The word parapsychology is chosen to denote the more strictly experimental part of psychical research. The journal is published quarterly, and the first number is dated March 1937 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Subscription 3 dollars a year).
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Journal of Parapsychology . Nature 140, 272 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140272b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140272b0