Analysis Of The Seven Experiments That Could Change The World By Rupert Sheldrake

One of the key questions raised by Rupert Sheldrake in the Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, is are we more than the ghost in the machine? It is perfectly acceptable to Sheldrake that humans are more than their brain, and because of this, and in actual reality “the mind is indeed extended beyond the brain, as most people throughout most of human history have believed.” (Sheldrake, Seven Experiments 104) Sheldrake proposes that the concept of the mind existing outside of the body can be proved by a simple scientific experiment. The experiment is simply determining whether or not people can sense or know someone is staring at them with their backs turned away. Sheldrake conducted his own experiments using this method and found that “The overall results from ten different experiments (involving more than 120 subjects) were 1,858 correct guesses as against 1,638 incorrect guesses; in other words 53.1 percent of the guesses were correct, 3.1 percent above the chance level of 50 percent.” (Sheldrake, Seven Experiments 119) How significant is this number? To the average person this seems like a rather insignificant difference, but Sheldrake sees this as “highly significant statistically” (Sheldrake, Seven Experiments 119) If Sheldrake is correct, and the 3.1 percent significant, what are the

David Marks is one such critic, and he has some convincing critics of Sheldrake’s claims. Mark’s describes the psychologist Tritchner’s feeling on the subject to reinforce his criticisms. Trichner’s students were telling him that they could feel when other students were looking at them in class. “Tritchner described the feeling as “a state of unpleasant tingling, which gathers in volume and intensity until a movement which shall relieve it becomes inevitable” (Tritcher 895). Tritchner decided that he would investigate the claims made by his