Beyond Supernature: A New Natural History of the Supernatural - Softcover

Watson, Lyall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553344560 ISBN 13: 9780553344561

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 1987

Synopsis

A thought-provoking look at the world of the supernatural that shows how many paranormal events can be explained by what we already know—or don’t know—about the natural world.

Scientist and rationalist Lyall Watson, the author of the million-copy bestseller Supernature, reveals the inconsistencies, blank spots, and “soft edges” in current scientific theory that make the existence of the supernatural not only an intriguing possibility—but a necessary and perfectly logical part of our explanation of the workings of the universe.
 
Examining breakthroughs in science from biology to biofeedback, from quantum physics to paraphysics, the author proposes a revolutionary synthesis of nature and supernature. He offers surprising insights into such “unexplainable” phenomena as telepathy, reincarnation, synchronicity, poltergeists, evolutionary intelligence, and other mind-bending questions challenging science today. Beyond Supernature is a groundbreaking new chapter in the never-ending search for reality. It is a book for anyone who can still look at the world with both common sense and a sense of wonder.

About this title

About the Author:

Lyall Watson was a noted naturalist and the author of over 20 books, including Supernature, Beyond Supernature, and Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell. Born in Johannesburg, he earned degrees in botany and zoology from Witwatersrand University, and a doctorate in ethology from the University of London. He died in 2008.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

INTRODUCTION
 
As a biologist, I am fascinated by the soft edges of science, by the fleeting glimpses we get of strange shadows just beneath the surface of current understanding.
 
I tried in Supernature to redefine this fringe, to reconcile nature with what seems to be supernatural. And helped, up to a point, to create a sort of demilitarised zone into which both scientists and enthusiasts could go without abandoning either their sense of proportion or their sense of wonder.
 
But that was fifteen years ago and much has happened since. The publication of Supernature made me a focus for anomalous experience – and gave me the freedom to explore it at will. I have tried, along the way, to keep contact with those who share my excitement by putting out position papers in the form of six further books – each looking at the loose ends of the world in a slightly different way.
 
The time has come now, however, to go back to the beginning once again and see where we stand, almost a generation on.
 
During the last few years there has been a strong reaction against research into the unusual. Critics of anything paranormal have established influential committees with the express purpose of stopping such research altogether. They have succeeded, in at least one case, in destroying reputations by sending magicians, posing as psychics, to ingratiate themselves with a group of researchers, with the express intent of deceiving them at every opportunity. These tactics prove nothing, except perhaps a degree of intolerance which is blatantly unscientific. There are few fields which would be proof against such invasions.
 
Given wide public interest in the supernatural, it was probably inevitable that it should become a big business and suffer from all the distortions of the marketplace. I am ruefully aware of having helped to create this situation and accept my share of responsibility for fuelling enthusiasms which have, in some cases, got out of hand. Our culture, however, is prone to such excesses.
 
There is, when you look at it closely, no such thing as the supernatural. All we have are reports of experiences which seem to be beyond natural explanation – but we do have these in astonishing abundance. And the reports have become so frequent and so widespread that they are very difficult for anyone with real scientific curiosity to ignore.
 
I am fascinated by the fact that people all over the world have, and not just in our cultish time, come to accept the existence of some sort of paranormal reality. They hold beliefs in the existence of things such as spirits, of miraculous happenings, reincarnation, communication with the dead and telepathy amongst the living – and these beliefs are so persistent and so much alike that it is tempting to look for common cause.
 
Where do such ideas come from and what is it that sustains them, even in the face of official incredulity and scorn? Is it possible, even if the supernatural does not exist, that we need somehow to invent it?
 
I am not wedded to the proposition that the supernatural must exist. If one defines supernatural experience simply as – the experience of something unusual, something which exceeds the limits of what is deemed possible – then there is clearly a vast field of experience, of repeated experience, from all over the world, just waiting to be explored. The fact that such reports are, by their very nature, largely anecdotal, has led to their being discarded as unacceptable to science. Which is a pity and a waste, because I suspect that answers to some of the riddles of the paranormal might well lie in the pattern and content of such reports.
 
The greatest barrier to scientific acceptance of anything unusual remains its elusiveness. Which is a problem that leaves parapsychology – for the moment the most formal and least disreputable approach – an immature science without basic principles or consistent findings, hoping still to produce the elusive repeatable experiment. Failure so far to do so in the laboratory makes it easy for some orthodox scientists to dismiss the supernatural as meaningless; but it is difficult for anyone like myself, who has been involved in the field, that is outside the confines of the lab, to deny the common and powerful reality of experience that breaks the rules.
 
My own experience of the unusual in action in a wide variety of cultures, suggests very strongly that there is something well worth pursuing. I have watched the rise of interest in the occult – and the inevitable backlash – with fascination. I have shared the high expectations of those trying to get to scientific grips with telepaths and metal-benders; and suffered with them the disappointment of discovery that the phenomena are strangely, almost wilfully, elusive. I understand the disillusion which has resulted, but must say that nothing has happened in the last fifteen years to alter my certainty that we stand to learn important things about ourselves from scrutiny of those areas in our lives that can be almost commonplace, but nevertheless defy easy description.
 
I believe that what the supernatural very badly needs is a new and fresh and thorough overview. A cross-cultural survey of the paranormal. An ethnography of the unusual. A broadly based and well-funded professional operation designed to retrieve and catalogue and classify all unusual events everywhere.
 
This is unfortunately not it. This is nothing more than my own personal attempt to make sense of what I have seen and heard in recent years. It is an attempt to define and describe the range of unusual experience a little more precisely. An attempt which I sincerely believe to be necessary, because I remain convinced that there are things going on around us which cannot easily be squeezed into forms that fit the accepted mould.
 
So, despite the cavils of self-appointed committees for the suppression of curiosity, I continue to pursue ghosts on the edges of perception. I persist in pointing out inconsistencies in natural history – not because these necessarily mean anything in themselves, but because they could lead to better understanding of what is usual through a new and more open-minded analysis of the pieces that don’t quite fit.
 
And as with Supernature, I offer this new survey to all those who can still look at the world with wide eyes – and wonder.
 
Lyall Watson                   
Ballydehob, Ireland; 1985
 
 
Part One
 
LIFE
 
“There is one common flow, one common breathing, All things are in sympathy.”
HIPPOCRATES in De Alimento, Fifth Century BC
 
The life sciences are in a curious state.
 
Ever since the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, they have been dominated by molecular biology. We have cracked the genetic code which determines the sequence of amino acids in proteins. We know most of the details involved in protein synthesis from these acids. We have started to unravel the mysteries of those special proteins known as enzymes which knit assorted biochemicals into the complex machinery of viruses and bacteria. And we begin to understand, in principle at least, the astounding regulations which govern the workings of a living cell.
 
This prowess, rewarded and reinforced by several Nobel Prizes, has produced a kind of academic euphoria – a feeling that, at last, we are on the brink of a full explanation of all the phenomena of life.
 
Nothing could be further from the truth.
 
Our ability to ask, and answer, questions about the mechanics of life has drawn attention away from our continuing inability to understand the real nature of living things. Our impressive achievement at physical and chemical levels, conceals an almost total lack of progress in coming to terms with general biology.
 
We know a great deal about the parts of living things, but next to nothing about the process which assembles those components into a functional whole.
 
All life possesses properties which are peculiar, which cannot be understood in terms of the properties of the isolated parts. The whole creature is always much more than the sum of its parts. It contains structures and exhibits behaviour which cannot be predicted from a study only of the known ingredients. There is something missing from the mechanistic model, something which seems to have no roots in even the most sophisticated biophysics or biochemistry.
 
Life remains mysterious. Biology is rife with unsolved, perhaps insoluble, problems.
 
Classical physics was revolutionised in 1927 by Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which made it clear that certain microphysical events could never be completely known. That, despite our best intentions – to a very real extent, directly because of these intentions – some things could be predicted only in terms of probabilities. Biology has yet to produce its Heisenberg, yet to come to terms with such weakening of the traditional laws of cause and effect.
 
In this first section, I want to look at a few of the consequences of this imbalance in understanding. And show how it might begin to be restored by concentrating more on the form and shape of whole organisms than on the details of their structure.
 
There are certainly some astonishing things going on.
 

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0553344560
• ISBN 13: 9780553344561
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304