Para Science

The field of parascience is generally defined by participants and members in the scientific community to embrace the study of the possible existence of psychic and extrasensory powers in people and the existence of life after death and physical manifestations of such metaphysical matters in the physical realm, such as in the form of ghosts. In the academic community of theorizing and research the idea of pursuing para science is still a contentious and not particularly popular one, as the general consensus among scientists and researchers is that the practices associated with parascience have failed to produce any tangible methods according to the widely adhered-to standards of the scientific method. Practitioners of parascience in part must face the difficulty of synthesizing beliefs in entities and occurrences that arose from an intellectual moment apart from the modern day emphasis in science on provability and data gathering, and in many cases arise from folk culture or its modern equivalent in urban myth. Para science presents the challenges and opportunities of dealing with beliefs usually perceived as non- and even anti-scientific in a scientific setting and attempted to understand the subjects of parascience in the context of a physically manifest and observable world.

The 19th century saw a large increase in the growth of interest among educated and socially well connected people in beliefs that would now fall under the heading of para science, including the exhibition of supernatural powers in contexts such as the observation of the ritual known as a seance or in the investigation into the existence of ghosts which were believed to haunt certain houses or places. This upward trend in the practice of parascience, though it was not yet referred to as such, is speculated by historians and sociologists to be a reaction to the corresponding rise in the sophistication and uses of science then being offered and the corresponding growth in technology and industry. The belief in psychic abilities and supernatural entities was viewed as being somewhat separate from the world dominated by scientifically based methods and thus possessed an emotional attraction for many people. The academic research that was conducted into the existence of such parascience phenomena was then known as psychical research. In the nineteen-thirties the term parascience was adopted to indicate that research in the field would from that point on be adhering more to experimental procedures for gathering and testing data. Another large step for the study of para science, specifically within the area of the United States, took place in 1957 with the establishment of the Parapsychological Association, which in 1969 became attached to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, largely through the efforts of the famed researcher in anthropology Margaret Mead. With this firm basis of professional support established for research into parascience, the nineteen-seventies proved to be a high point for the academic study of para science, in part due to widespread interest throughout popular culture in occult phenomena. By the 1980s, however, para science was experiencing a downward shift.

Paranormal Activity

The concept of paranormal phenomena derives from the persistent controversy over beliefs that are widely held through the general population of a culture or within specific communities in that culture to be true and observable occurrences but cannot be verified through the scientific method or by comparison to the body of information already proven through science. Occurrences that might otherwise fall within the realm of supernatural or religious belief become prone to interpretation as paranormal activity when placed within the context of a culture that privileges the combination of empirical observation and thinking based on the precepts of the scientific method over other sources of information. From a historical perspective, the idea that certain kinds of knowledge could be defined as paranormal dates back the 1910s. The 19th century had seen an expansion in scientific thinking and the implementation of science to create technology and conduct natural research that was coupled with and perhaps responded to by an increased interest in occurrences that would now be defined as paranormal activity. In the 20th century, the scientific community began to respond to the interest of unproven or supernatural phenomena such as psychic powers for gathering information or in the existence of ghosts by formulating the paranormal category to place such things in a scientific context without giving them the benefit of the doubt.

The scientific community has long been exercised by the question of the existence of certain kinds of phenomena that cannot be currently proven through available sources of data or methodological tools, which nonetheless cannot be judged to constitute paranormal activity. These hypothesized ideas include dark matter and dark energy, which do not meet the definition of paranormal phenomena in the sense that proposals exist for reconciling them with currently known and recognized scientific facts. The phenomenon that are identified as paranormal activity, by contrast, are commonly derived not from the speculations that arise in the scientific community itself, but from urban myths or folkloric beliefs. Another common source for ideas that are classified as paranormal by researchers are those firmly asserted to be proven in incidents or anecdotes that are given by individual people but cannot be connected to or proven through subsequent data gathering or comparisons to already available data.
The members of the category generally defined as being paranormal which most strongly and aptly fit the requirements for meeting the definition that was introduced to make use of the term for the purposes of science are those that relate to claims made for the existence of ghosts and other manifestations claimed to exist or to be observable in the physical world which show the persistence of a deceased soul or spirit. Commonly observed varieties of paranormal activity are sounds, sights or even perceived feelings that are felt by the observer to be without any possible explanation other than that of the existence of ghosts. The belief in such paranormal activity is both widespread in the general community and considered unprovable by science.