George Nugent Merle Tyrrell (1879 - 29 October 1952), best known as G. N. M. Tyrrell, was a British mathematician,
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
Tyrrell was a student of Guglielmo Marconi and a pioneer in the development of radio. In 1908 he joined the
Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to co ...
. He conducted numerous experiments in telepathy and was interested in
apparitional experience
In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.
In academic discu ...
s. He attempted to explain ghosts by a psychological theory.
Tyrrell proposed that ghosts are a
hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinati ...
of the subconscious mind of a person, to explain collective hallucinations for more than one person, he proposed it as a telepathic mechanism. Tyrrell was the president of the Society for Psychical Research 1945-1946.
Although a believer in telepathy, Tyrrell was a critic of physical mediumship. He stated that it has been the "happy hunting ground of tricksters and charlatans."
Tyrrell created the term
out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...
in his book ''Apparitions.''
A review in ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' for ''Science and Psychical Phenomena'' praised Tyrrell for his "obvious sincerity" but suggested the book was "full of flaws" which aroused suspicion of Tyrrell's critical faculties.
Published works
* Grades of Significance (1931)
* ''Science and Psychical Phenomena'' (1938)
* ''Apparitions'' (1943)
''The Personality of Man'' (1946)Finger, Frank. (1948). ''Reviewed Work: The Personality of Man: New Facts and Their Significance by G. N. M. Tyrrell''. ''
The Quarterly Review of Biology
''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. It was established in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. In the 1960s it was purchased by the Stony Brook Foundation when the editor H. Bentley Glass be ...
'' 23 (1): 93-93.
* ''Homo Faber: A Study of Man's Mental Evolution'' (1951)
* ''Man the Maker: A Study of Man's Mental Evolution'' (1952)