About the Author
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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.
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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
rtunity. 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 dided 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 in 1953, they
have been dominated by molecular biology. We have cracked the
genetic code which determines the sequence of amino s in
proteins. We know most of the details involved in protein
synthesis from these s. We have started to unravel the
mysteries of those special proteins known as enzymes which knit
assorted bios 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 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.
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