Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathyPodmore, Frank
Philosophy
Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
Podmore, Frank
Apparitions; Telepathy
In the second division, (_b_), of our experiments come those in
which a glass screen was placed over the subject's hands. For the
first four of these we used a framed window pane which happened
to be handy. Then we obtained and used a sheet of 32 oz. glass,
measuring 22 by 10 inches and 1/6 inch in thickness. This was
supported on two large books placed beyond the subject's hands on
each side, and in this position the upper surface of the glass
was 2-1/4 inches above the surface of the table, so that there
was ample room for the hands to rest underneath without touching
the glass. Mr. Smith held his hand in the usual position over
the selected finger, above the glass and not touching it. Under
these conditions we tried 21 experiments with P., of which 18 were
successful, and 6 with Miss B., all successful. In the case of the
3 failures with P., no effect was produced on any finger. In one
successful case, the time taken was long, and we interrupted the
experiment by premature testing in the way explained above.
Division (_c_) includes those experiments in which Mr. Smith did
not approximate his hand to that of the subject at all, but merely
looked at the selected finger from some place in the same room as
the subject, but out of his sight. The distances between him and
the subject varied from about 2-1/2 to about 12 feet. Under these
conditions we tried 37 experiments with P., 18 in 1890, of which
6 were failures, and 2 only partially successful, and 19 in 1892,
of which 10 were failures. The proportion of success was, it thus
appears, much less than under the previously described conditions,
but still much beyond what chance would produce. Of the 6 failures
in 1890, one was a case in which Mr. Smith made a mistake as to
which finger we had selected, but succeeded with the one he thought
of. In another case the left thumb instead of the right thumb
became insensitive. In the other 4 cases no finger at all was
affected.
Of the 10 failures in 1892, no effect was produced in 4 cases;
in another the right (viz., the little) finger of the wrong
hand became insensitive;[56] in 4 cases an adjoining finger was
affected--once only slightly--instead of that selected, and in the
remaining case a finger distant from the selected one was slightly
affected.
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