"It may be objected that brain waves, like any other waves, must obey physical laws. Therefore, transmission of thought must be easier or more certain the nearer the agent and recipient are to each other, and should die out altogether before great distances are reached. Also it can be urged that if brain waves diffuse in all directions they should affect all sensitives within their radius of action, instead of impressing only one brain. The electric telegraph is not a parallel case, for there a material wire intervenes to conduct and guide the energy to its destination. These are weighty objections, but not, I think, insurmountable. Far be it from me to say anything disrespectful of the law of inverse squares, but I have already endeavored to show we are dealing with conditions removed from our material and limited conceptions of space, matter, form. Is it inconceivable that intense thought concentrated toward a sensitive with whom the thinker is in close sympathy may induce a telepathic chain of brain waves, along which the message of thought can go straight to its goal without loss of energy due to distance? And is it also inconceivable that our mundane ideas of space and distance may be superseded in these subtle regions of unsubstantial thought, where "near" and "far" may lose their usual meaning?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Crookes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William Crookes
Sir William Crookes (June 17, 1832 – April 4, 1919) was an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, in London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer in the development of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube, and was controversial in his advocacy of research into psychic abilities and other paranormal phenomena.
35 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William Crookes →
Related Quotes
"Which was first, Matter or Force? If we think on this question, we shall find that we are unable to conceive of matte…"
"The task I am called upon to perform today is to my thinking by no means a merely formal or easy matter. It fills me …"
"The most helpful quality which has aided me in psychical problems and has made me lucky in physical discoveries (some…"
"I am not disposed to bewail the limitations imposed by human ignorance. On the contrary, I feel ignorance is a health…"
"I will point out a curious, inveterate, and widespread illusion — the illusion that our earthly bodies are a kind of …"
"The human creature represents the most perfect thinking and acting machine yet evolved on this earth, developing thro…"
"It is curious that the popular conceptions of evil and malignant beings are of the type that would be produced by inc…"
"Popular imagination presupposes spiritual beings to be utterly independent of gravitation, while retaining shapes and…"
"A view of the constitution of matter which recommended itself to Faraday as preferable to the one ordinarily held app…"
"I have raised a question which may be regarded as heretical. At the time when our modern conception of chemistry firs…"