Can Extrasensory Perception (ESP) be Incorporated into Science?

ESP-or extrasensory perception has long eluded science. Despite this people continue to believe in it, in large numbers. Many people claim to have experienced it or know someone who has. Yet scientists remain skeptical.

Information about the external world is conveyed to our brains through our senses-sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These senses are activated in one of two ways-through direct physical contact (touch-smell-taste) or by energy transfer over distances. We see because electromagnetic waves (photons) travel from one place to another. Hearing works in a similar way-information travels from one point to another by sound waves which move through the air.

While you can see something far away, the information about that object has to travel from the object to your eye. This isn't much different than how a radio works. The radio station transmits a signal, which is also a kind of electromagnetic wave, which travels through the air and is picked up by your radio. There is nothing "magical" about this process, energy moves through space in a cause-and-effect fashion.

Many people, however, claim to be able to see into the future. Others may claim to read minds, or be able to see into buildings or rooms they've never physically entered. These types of claims fall into the realm of extra-sensory perception, since the five basic senses aren't used. Information becomes available to a person in some way that is unknown to science.

Scientists, at least in the United States, are not impressed by ESP. First of all the concept of ESP does not fit into the world view of most scientists. As a result they come to the table already skeptical, and many will just dismiss it out of hand.

But to their credit, some scientists have tested claims of ESP. Unfortunately they have not come up with any scientific confirmation that ESP exists. Believers say that the process of scientific testing, in and of itself, interferes with extra-sensory perception. With the possible exception of results obtained at the now defunct Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (which has since been replaced with the International Consciousness Research Laboratories), scientists have not been able to detect telepathy or ESP phenomena.

Scientists might be a little more open-minded in other countries. In Britain, for example, five major universities actually have parapsychology departments.

To sum up, extra-sensory perception simply does not fit into the classical scientific world view. If ESP is real, however, this shouldn't matter. Scientific testing should discover any effects, if they exist, by conducting appropriately designed experiments. A positive result would force scientists to revamp their theories, but so far there hasn't been any. Believers say this is because the testing itself is flawed. If the testing is flawed, is there some way that ESP could be understood in terms of modern science?

The Quantum Theory
It turns out there is. Quantum mechanics is a major branch of the science of physics. It describes the properties and behavior of small particles such as atoms, nuclear particles, electrons, and photons (light). What's amazing about quantum theory is that it predicts that particles can become "entangled". Once they do, they can interact over vast distances.

When two particles become entangled, they become connected or linked. This link does not depend on any energy traveling from one particle to the other. Think about what this means when talking about the senses. Earlier we mentioned that sight and sound kind of work like a radio station transmitting its signal to your car radio or radio at home. Information or energy has to travel from one place to another. To see something, a photon has to travel from the object you're looking at to your eye.

But with extra-sensory perception, there is no known signal. Someone suddenly "knows" something about the future. Maybe it comes in a dream. Or someone uses remote viewing to "see" into another room. There is nothing connecting the information from the other room or the future to the mind in the present.

Or is there? Quantum entanglement may not necessarily be the answer, but it opens the door to the possibility that ESP can fit within modern science. Quantum entanglement proves that particles can become connected over vast distances of space. Currently, scientists don't know how to use quantum entanglement to share information or whether that's even possible. But they do know, and it is actually an experimental fact-that particles to become linked together in this funny way. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance". To a scientists mind, it sure seems spooky that two particles-on different sides of the universe-could be talking to each other without a signal passing between them.

What this means is that perhaps quantum entanglement or something like it yet to be discovered underlies the phenomenon of ESP. Interestingly, quantum entanglement also sheds light on the idea that scientific testing interferes with ESP. Quantum entanglement, while it happens, is fragile in a sense. If one of the two particles interacts with a third particle, the original connection between the two entangled particles can be broken. In other words, the entanglement is destroyed by outside interactions.

Could it be that telepathy and ESP work in the same way? Perhaps ESP works by a similar type of deep yet fragile connection. When a scientist attempts to test a subject, the scientist may break the "telepathic entanglement" between the subject and the object of interest.

Quantum entanglement may not prove the existence of ESP, but it points the way to a plausible scientific explanation. Most scientists will remain skeptical, but people continue to believe. Perhaps someday this question can be resolved scientifically.

Image from StockXpert.com