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Australian Sheep-Goat Scale
The Australian Sheep-Goat Scale (ASGS) is a questionnaire conceived by Michael Thalbourne to determine the extent to which the respondent believes in the paranormal. The description "Australian" is given because the test was devised in Adelaide, South Australia, and to distinguish it from other nations' instruments (such as the Icelandic Sheep-Goat Scale). A person who believes in some aspect of the paranormal is termed a "sheep", and a disbeliever a "goat" (after the New Testament simile about Christ separating the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (). The version of the scale most commonly used in research (Thalbourne, 1995) has 18 items, such as "I believe in the existence of ESP", "I have had at least one dream that came true and which (I believe) was not just a coincidence", "I believe in life after death" and "I believe in the existence of psychokinesis (or PK)—that is, the direct influence of mind on a physical system, without the mediation of any k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Thalbourne
Michael Anthony Thalbourne (24 March 1955 – 4 May 2010, Adelaide, South Australia) was an Australian psychologist who worked in the field of parapsychology. He was educated at the University of Adelaide and the University of Edinburgh. His books include: ''A glossary of terms used in parapsychology'' (2003), ''The common thread between ESP and PK'' (2004), and ''Parapsychology in the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the future of Psychical research, Psychical Research'' (2005).Michael A. Thalbourne and Lance Storm (2005)Parapsychology in the twenty-first century: essays on the future of psychical researchMcFarland, p. 382. Education and career Thalbourne obtained his B.A. (Hons) at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, in 1976, and his PhD in parapsychology at Edinburgh University in 1981. From 1980 through 1987 when it closed Thalbourne researched at the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University in St. Louis. Thalbourne was a Visiting Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptozoology
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as ''cryptids'', a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor of folklore studies. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. Scholars have noted that the subculture rejected mainstream approaches from an early date, and that adherents often express hostility to mainstream science. Scholars have studied cryptozoologists and their influence (including the pseudoscience's association with Young Earth creationism), noted parallels in cryp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anomalistic Psychology
In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity (or otherwise) of the reported phenomena. Early history According to anomalistic psychology, paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological and physical factors which have given the false impression of paranormal activity to some people. There were many early publications that gave rational explanations for alleged paranormal experiences. The physician John Ferriar wrote ''An Essay Towards a Theory of Apparitions'' in 1813 in which he argued that sightings of ghosts were the result of optical illusions. Later, the French physician Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont published ''On Hallucinations: Or, the Rational History of Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism'' in 1845 in which he claimed sightings of ghosts were the result of ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coincidence
A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims, or it may lead to belief in fatalism, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan. In general, the perception of coincidence, for lack of more sophisticated explanations, can serve as a link to folk psychology and philosophy. From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. Usually coincidences are chance events with underestimated probability. An example is the birthday problem, which shows that the probability of two persons having the same birthday already exceeds 50% in a group of only 23 persons. Etymology The first known usage of the word is from c. 1605 with the meaning "exact correspondence in substance or nature" from the French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcissism
Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a continuum that ranges from normal to abnormal personality expression. While there exists normal, healthy levels of narcissism in humans, there are also more extreme levels of narcissism, being seen particularly in people who are self-absorbed, or people who have a pathological mental illness like narcissistic personality disorder. It is one of the traits featured in the dark triad, along with Machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy. History of thought The term "narcissism" comes from the Roman poet Ovid's '' Metamorphoses'', written in the year 8 AD. Book III of the poem tells the mythical story of a handsome young man, Narcissus, who spurns the advances of many potential lovers. When Narcissus rejects the nymph Echo, who was cur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rasch Model
The Rasch model, named after Georg Rasch, is a psychometric model for analyzing categorical data, such as answers to questions on a reading assessment or questionnaire responses, as a function of the trade-off between the respondent's abilities, attitudes, or personality traits, and the item difficulty. For example, they may be used to estimate a student's reading ability or the extremity of a person's attitude to capital punishment from responses on a questionnaire. In addition to psychometrics and educational research, the Rasch model and its extensions are used in other areas, including the health profession, agriculture, and market research The mathematical theory underlying Rasch models is a special case of item response theory. However, there are important differences in the interpretation of the model parameters and its philosophical implications that separate proponents of the Rasch model from the item response modeling tradition. A central aspect of this divide relate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visual Analogue Scale
The visual analogue scale (VAS) is a psychometric response scale that can be used in questionnaires. It is a measurement instrument for subjective characteristics or attitudes that cannot be directly measured. When responding to a VAS item, respondents specify their level of agreement to a statement by indicating a position along a continuous line between two end points. __TOC__ Comparison to other scales This continuous (or "analogue") aspect of the scale differentiates it from discrete scales such as the Likert scale. There is evidence showing that visual analogue scales have superior metrical characteristics than discrete scales, thus a wider range of statistical methods can be applied to the measurements. The VAS can be compared to other linear scales such as the Likert scale or Borg scale. The sensitivity and reproducibility of the results are broadly very similar, although the VAS may outperform the other scales in some cases. These advantages extend to measurement instrument ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Extraterrestrial intelligence (often abbreviated ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerged when the Copernican Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was a planet revolving around the Sun, and other planets were, conversely, other worlds. The question of whether other inhabited planets or moons exist was a natural consequence of this new understanding. It has become one of the most speculative questions in science and is a central theme of science fiction and popular culture. Intelligence Intelligence is, along with the more precise concept of sapience, used to describe extraterrestrial life with similar cognitive abilities as humans. Another interchangeable term is '' sophoncy,'' first coined by Karen Anderson and published in the 1966 works by her husband Poul Anderson. Sentience, like consciousness, is a concept sometimes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Astrology
Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamic world, and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paranormal
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Notable paranormal beliefs include those that pertain to extrasensory perception (for example, telepathy), spiritualism and the pseudosciences of ghost hunting, cryptozoology, and ufology. Proposals regarding the paranormal are different from scientific hypotheses or speculations extrapolated from scientific evidence because scientific ideas are grounded in empirical observations and experimental data gained through the scientific method. In contrast, those who argue for the existence of the paranormal explicitly do not base their arguments on empirical evidence but rather on anecdote, testimony, and suspicion. The standard scientific models give the explanation that what appears to be paranormal phenomena is usually a misinterpretation, m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basic Limiting Principle
A Basic Limiting Principle (B.L.P.) is a general principle that limits our explanations metaphysically or epistemologically, and which normally goes unquestioned or even unnoticed in our everyday or scientific thinking. The term was introduced by the philosopher C. D. Broad Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English people, English epistemology, epistemologist, history of philosophy, historian of philosophy, philosophy of science, philosopher of sc ... in his 1949 paper "The Relevance of Psychical research to Philosophy": "There are certain limiting principles which we unhesitatingly take for granted as the framework within which all our practical activities and our scientific theories are confined. Some of these seem to be self-evident. Others are so overwhelmingly supported by all the empirical facts which fall within the range of ordinary experience and the scientific elaborations of it (including under thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychokinesis
Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Psychokinesis experiments have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no good evidence that psychokinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience. Etymology The word ''psychokinesis'' was coined in 1914 by American author Henry Holt in his book ''On the Cosmic Relations''. The term is a compound of the Greek words ψυχή (''psyche'') – meaning "mind", "soul", "spirit", or "breath" – and κίνησις (''kinesis'') – meaning "motion" or "movement". The American parapsychologist J. B. Rhine coined the term ''extra-sensory perception'' to describe receiving information paranormally from an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
