Word: esp
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...According to Webster's: "After S. A. Maverick (1803-70), a Texas cattle owner who did not brand his calves, 1) An unbranded animal, esp. a motherless calf; 2) a refractory individual who bolts his group and initiates an independent course." Garner's own definition: "A sort of freewheeling slick...
...Hume in the first half of the 18th century: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.") Now convinced that there is no scientific basis for ESP (extrasensory perception), Price challenges its champions to put people who claim to read cards at a distance or penetrate into the future to some practical work, for example, "designing a procedure to give a ten-day warning of a nuclear bomb explosion...
...frauds, possibly worked by "arguing that much good to humanity could result from a small deception designed to strengthen religious belief." If the findings of experimenters like Rhine and Soal are valid, says Price, they are "of enormous importance . . ." "As scientists." he asks, "what sort of evidence for ESP should we demand?" His answer: "Just one experiment that does not have to be accepted simply on a basis of faith in human honesty." His recommendation: apply Hume's precept with a controlled test before a committee of twelve prominent men, all but one hostile to parapsychology, "so that scientists...
From his laboratories at Durham, N.C., where for more than 25 years he has been testing theories and assembling statistics about "ESP-prone" subjects, Dr. Rhine fired an angry volley at Price's article, asked "whether a hundred or more research scientists ... are so stupid as to indulge in a gigantic hoax involving the hiring of confederates and such...
...MENTIONING MY BOOK "NEW WORLD OF THE MIND" (THANK YOU) , YOU QUOTE ME AS SAYING, OF ALL THINGS, THAT I DO NOT BELIEVE IN MY WORK MYSELF. THE REPORTER GOT HIS NOTES BADLY TWISTED ON THAT ONE. 2) HE SAID I "ADMITTED" I CANNOT "PROVE" MY THEORIES (SUCH AS ESP, FOR EXAMPLE) BY CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS: ON THE CONTRARY, i "ADMITTED" THAT WE CAN AND DO. ON THAT HE WAS COMPLETELY TURNED AROUND...