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EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION (ESP).
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| An awareness that some people claim to experience independently of, and beyond, their usual sensory abilities is termed extrasensory perception (ESP). Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting are the known and common sensory processes. Believers in ESP claim that it is one of several kinds of psychic phenomena for which there is no obvious explanation. The field of study called parapsychology includes the investigation of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis, a phenomenon similar to ESP. An example of psychokinesis is the falling of dice in a particular way, supposedly influenced by an individual's power of concentration. |
| Three main types of ESP are generally described. They are clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition. Clairvoyance, which means "clear seeing" in French, is said to be a supernormal awareness of events, objects, or people obtained without the use of the known senses and not necessarily known to any other person. Telepathy is said to be the direct transference of thoughts or mental states from one person to another, also without use of the usual sensory channels. Precognition is said to be the perception of some future event. |
| Questions about whether or not ESP really exists have been debated by
scientists since the late l9th century. Most experiments that offer supporting evidence
involve card guessing. But setting up experiments to test for it is difficult. One of the
best-known investigators of such phenomena was the psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine of the
United States. One of the tests he used involved the Zener cards. These cards bear five
different symbols: a cross, a star, a circle, a wave, and a rectangle. A pack consists of
25 cards. The subject of the experiment tries to name cards laid face down on a table.
Results of this and other experiments have proved inconclusive. Most scientists vigorously
dispute the existence of ESP. Want to learn how to use your ESP
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