Way back in 1927 J.W.Dunne published the findings of his work on dreams in ‘An Experiment with Time’.
The data for his research he collected from volunteers keeping both a nightly updated diary and a log of their dreams updated at the instant of waking.
He correlated the two and was particularly looking for any incidence of prescience.
Now everyone’s had dreams where they believe they’ve predicted something…maybe a horse winning or the result of a football match…or more depressingly a family death. But has anyone on the board predicted by the medium of dreams an event or occurrence of something so out of the ordinary that it can’t be explained?
So anyone may dream of a football result, it’s wrong, then they dream of another, it’s wrong and so on until the day (night) they dream of a result that’s right and kid themselves they were privileged to a piece of the future but conveniently ignoring/forgetting all the times they got it wrong.
But has anyone ever kept a log of real and dream events in a disciplined way that demonstrates to their satisfaction that we do, indeed, wander backwards and forwards in time whilst asleep?
Or maybe has anyone dreamed something predictive that is difficult to explain for whatever reason?
Interesting…I myself have been interested in Dunne’s ideas-and there have been many reports of prescient dreams. One subject was the American aeronautical engineer Igor Sikorski-he had dreams in the early months of 1900, or airplanes he would design in the 1930’s. There was also the case of the Italian priest John Bosco-founder of the Salesian Order. He had tons of dreams, in one of which he saw the city of Brasilia (constructed in the 1950’s)-he had these dreams in the 1860’s.
Are there precognitive dreams , or are they simply expressions of the will? Who knows?
I respect the idea of premonition-sharing and logging. If I should suddenly have a sense that “something is about to happen,” it makes more sense to record it, now, and thus have an objective record of it, rather to wait until after the plane crashes, the earthquake hits, or the cat barfs, and try to claim, lamely, “I saw it coming.”
It approaches the proper scientific method. It collects data in a meaningful way.
Obviously, there are severe problems with a simple mass collection of data with no controls. The critical problem will always be of “false positives,” i.e., mere coincidence. Tens of thousands of people probably dreamed about car crashes last night (as it happened, I did.) And there are thousands of car crashes every subsequent day. Obviously, some of these will match up.
A really big premonition registry could be checked for numbers going beyond the statistical level of coincidence. My bet is that this will not be found.
A true football/soccer fan is likely to, and getting one right is not at all difficult, since there are only a dozen of them if you count the possible ties as two each, but bookies don’t even care which team got which nil in a 0-0 tie is only, so make it nine. And from my extremely limited viewing of footie I feel safe to say that expecting one team to score more than two points is for the insane. So if my dream told me that Arsenal will beat Manchester United 1-0 in their next match I have an 11% chance of my dream being right. Then if I ignore the 89% of times I was wrong I will proclaim myself a seer of the highest magnitude and people will pay to watch me nap.
I can see that the spirit of enquiry and intelligent debate is strong in you, Quicksilver.
But please bear in mind that your reference to the wiki article I linked in my original post is not definitive and binding and a healthy exchange of ideas and experiences with regard to apparently prescient dreams is not invalidated by what Paul Davies (or anyone else referred to in the article) writes.
The scientific world is littered with examples of things “asked and answered” that have ultimately been shown to have been far from “answered”.
I suspect a universe where time and space are absolute would’ve been an asked and answered back in the time Newton was laying down his laws but Einstein showed that this is indeed far from the case.
So in the example of dreams, a possible explanation for apparent prescience is that the subconscious mind is analyzing a mass of data and putting together a scenario that the conscious mind wouldn’t easily draw given the same ‘input’.
An instance of this may be a family death foretold in a dream where the conscious mind had no idea but the subconscious had put together various pieces of evidence regarding the state of mind of said family member and the road ‘accident’ that saw them off was far from accident - but it took the subconscious to see the clues and predict that the possibility was that the family member would be ripe for deliberately driving off the edge of the cliff whereas the ‘real’ world still thinks it was simply a misjudgement. All the dream foretold was death for that person and so no-one in the ‘conscious’ world will ever know what really was the cause.
I often wonder if this is the explanation for the apparent success of those practicing water divination or dowsing. Maybe with their subconscious ‘eyes’ they see the lay of the land, geology, plant life types and condition and other clues that their conscious mind can’t and so can tell where water (or even oil or other naturally sought targets) may be found. The subconscious mind triggers subtle muscle twitches in their hands which makes the dowsing rod react.
Going back to the time-travel aspect of my original post I was hoping to expand to extract stories of actual time travel. We can all travel forward in time relative to everyone else. Astronauts will have experienced less of a passage of time than those who have never traveled at great speed, for example. OK, the difference is probably nano-seconds but they have returned from their flight and the world has moved on in time relative to themselves.
Some people claim to have traveled to times in the past…not just individuals but groups. Now while the possibility of travel into the past is certainly problematic in scientific terms I’d be interested in the stories of those who have experienced it.
This is usually referred to as time-slip:
So I was hoping to get a discussion going on all manner of related ‘time’ issues…with Quicksilver’s permission…
That’s a really interesting post, Trinopus.
I believe it’s been demonstrated that the number of people on trains, for example, is on average less for ones that crash than for ones that, errrr, don’t. Now I can’t substantiate that ‘fact’ but I impart it in good faith.
As you say if a trend can be identified in the dreams of disasters then who knows…maybe some of them could be averted. As I say above in my reply to Quicksilver, the subconscious mind may be analyzing all manner of data in a way that’s not obvious to the conscious mind.
You are right that collecting mass data like this is difficult, especially if there’s an interpretive element to it, but you have an interesting point.
I’m sorry, but if you cannot back up a claim of fact with at least a minimum amount of evidence then all the good faith in the world is useless. Have you even made an effort to find out if this belief of yours is correct or not?
Hey, don’t get mean. I did justify myself by saying I can’t recall where I got this from but a simple search on this very board shows others have said the same…so there must be an article out there somewhere. Whether it’s fact or not I’ve no idea…I just read it and imparted in in good faith. If it transpires to be false then hey, sue me. I never said it was fact. But if it is…mmmmm…interesting.
Next time I write an article for Nature I’ll properly research it but this is just a message board. OK a great message board, but one where the requirement for at least three sources, two of them primary sources with a bibliography, index, glossary, appendix, references, plaudits, price list, directions etc etc are simply going to stop the flow and enjoyment.
What Czarcasm said, science cites are not the only requirement, but the ones that begin by claiming that they are just looking for a “healthy exchange of ideas” should be aware of the **health **status of those ideas that claim to support strange phenomena, this being the 21st century, one does not need to check for scientific journals (they are necessary though when some ideas being pushed are not supported and someone right away demonstrates that is not interested in learning, but on just asking questions ad nauseam) as less harder to get sources reporting on the current state of affairs on a subject can be found:
So, overall this issue is not much supported or respected in the circles that look for what the experts report, the challenge then is to show that there is **healthy **research out there that supports this subject.
I apologize for the dismissive tone of my previous email.
From a stictly practical and analytical standpoint, what is the compelling reason to give such serious weight and consideration to the passing thoughts or images of one’s mind and senses when they are at their most vulnerable, certainly impressionable, state?
Why should dreams or waking dreams or hallucinations or near death experiences be granted extra-ordinary validity when compared to everyday experiences of a fully conscious state? We do not normally consider the thoughts and ideas of mental function impaired by alcohol or drugs to be more rational or insightful, do we? Should we be studying Johnny Walker wisdom and LSD trips as well?
