Someone wrote a book on the paranormal! Sadly though, the author of this article feels that it’s shocking to know that in the book these phenomena (ooooh? What? what??) are real.
It’s so funny and annoying at the same time when smart people approach a complex phenomenon – let’s say the paranormal and the realm of the psychic – and then conclude something totally beside the point. Well, beside any sort of interesting point that we humans could do something with.
Please answer me this question: Why do all of our supposedly most insightful investigations feel that announcing that something is “real” or “really works” is a conclusion?
What about its implication, meaning, role in the social, cultural, political? What about it as a phenomenon and what it says about identity, humanity, the other, the economic? Wasn’t your investigation started because the phenomenon, as such, existed? Isn’t that “real?”
I just don’t understand how anyone can be satisfied with the claim “it’s really real” being synonymous with insight.
But then again, I don’t understand why the tools of scientific investigation (objectivity, experimentation) have been globalized to the point where one has difficulty imagining an alternative way of “finding out” that would be considered legitimate.