Psionics

For other uses, see Psion (disambiguation).

In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering (especially electronics) to the study (and employment) of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis.[1] The term is a blend word of psi (in the sense of "psychic phenomena") and the -onics from electronics.[1][2][3][4] The word "psionics" began as, and always remained, a term of art within the science fiction community[5] and—despite the promotional efforts of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.—it never achieved general currency, even among academic parapsychologists. In the years after the term was coined in 1951, it became increasingly evident that no scientific evidence supports the existence of "psionic" abilities.[6]

  1. ^ a b Williams, William F. (2000) [1999 by Facts On File]. Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy (Reprinted ed.). Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 279–298. ISBN 1579582079. OCLC 44604048.
  2. ^ "psionic". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  3. ^ Joyce, Judith (2011). The Weiser Field Guide to the Paranormal: Abductions, Apparitions, ESP, Synchronicity, and More Unexplained Phenomena from Other Realms. San Francisco, California: Weiser Books. p. 157. ISBN 978-1609252984. Psionic is a word invented in the 20th century as an umbrella term to describe human paranormal behavior. It refers to all powers of the mind—from the passive (telepathy or clairvoyance) to the active (telekinesis or pyrokinesis). Psionics is the study of all these powers.
  4. ^ Gardner, Martin (1957), Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Expanded/revised ed.), New York: Dover Publications, p. 346.
  5. ^ Nicholls, Peter: Entry, "Psionics" in Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1995), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 971. This brief entry states that "psionics" is "a common item of s[cience] f[iction] terminology, referring to the study and use of psi powers, under which head it is discussed."
  6. ^ Cordón, Luis A. (2005). Popular Psychology: An Encyclopedia. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood. p. 182. ISBN 0313324573. The essential problem is that a large portion of the scientific community, including most research psychologists, regards parapsychology as a pseudoscience, due largely to its failure to move beyond null results in the way science usually does. Ordinarily, when experimental evidence fails repeatedly to support a hypothesis, that hypothesis is abandoned. Within parapsychology, however, more than a century of experimentation has failed to conclusively demonstrate the mere existence of paranormal phenomenon, yet parapsychologists continue to pursue that elusive goal.