Everywhere that you read a review of Extraordinary Knowing, you’re going to read how author Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer’s world was rocked by an event she couldn’t explain, and why she devoted the rest of her life to researching how it could have happened.
The event that occurred was the theft of her daughter’s harp. It was a rare and expensive instrument, and her daughter was heartbroken. Dr. Mayer, affectionately known as Lisby, did all she knew to do to retrieve the harp. There were the usual reports to the police and searches at pawnshops and so forth, to no avail. Finally, one day, a friend said to her, “If you really want that harp back, you should be willing to do anything,” and that led to a dare that she accepted. She contacted a dowser.
“It’s not just about the water.”
Lisby lived in Oakland, California. Armed with a map of her city, the dowser, from his mobile home in Arkansas, pinpointed the exact location where the harp was stashed. It wasn’t enough to get a search warrant, so Lisby hung “wanted” posters about the harp on street signs up and down that block, and in a few days she got a call, and in a week, the harp was safely back in her hands. As the diehard skeptic said,
“This changes everything.”
Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind is about the scientific investigation of intuition, premonitions, hunches, ESP, remote viewing, dreams, prayer, the collective unconscious, and the possibility of God’s hand in our lives, or what Lisby calls
anomalous knowing,
and why, in the face of empirical evidence and personal experience, science still can’t talk about it, much less admit its existence. 
I generally don’t abuse my books, but I found myself dog-earring pages all through Extraordinary Knowing so that I could easily find certain passages again. I have to admit, this book isn’t for everyone. My focus sometimes waned when reading the scientific and statistical data, but then I’d become fascinated again when the author described personal experiences with psychics she sought out in her research, or described the Ganzfeld Experiments. It’s a good book for anyone who is skeptical but open-minded, as well as believers who are interested in real evidence.
I generally don’t abuse my books, but I found myself dog-earring pages all through Extraordinary Knowing so that I could easily find certain passages again. I have to admit, this book isn’t for everyone. My focus sometimes waned when reading the scientific and statistical data, but then I’d become fascinated again when the author described personal experiences with psychics she sought out in her research, or described the Ganzfeld Experiments. It’s a good book for anyone who is skeptical but open-minded, as well as believers who are interested in real evidence.
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Sounds exactly the sort of book I'd be interested in. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteIt IS exactly the kind of book that would interest you. It's the book I quoted from for a comment in your blog recently. It said:
ReplyDeleteWhat I wanted to tell you, though, was that there was something the other day that reminded me of you. It was about science:
"Normal science doesn't make room for observations that don't fit its own basic assumptions. Normal science is about solving problems that arise inside those assumptions. It is the problems that refuse to fit that lead to scientific revolution."
And on the next page:
"...long before normal science gets disrupted, we're likely to find, on the edges of normal science, a persistent coterie of scientists who have happened across some observations that won't fit, and it nags at them. Their work becomes increasingly concerned with making it make sense. They develop experimental programs. They establish labs and accumulate research. Meanwhile, normal science proceeds as usual, barely noticing what's piling up at its edges."
And I thought, "That's Rom."
I do wish you would read it.
I really like this Kindle. All I had to do was visit Amazon, buy the book, and it's here in seconds.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have the feel of a 'real' book but - no postage, no waiting, no sneaky postmen waiting until I go out so they can put a card through the door instead.
Now all I have to do is read it.