''An Experiment with Time'' is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne about his

precognitive dream Precognition (from the Latin 'before', and 'acquiring knowledge') is the purported psychic phenomenon of seeing, or otherwise becoming directly aware of, events in the future. There is no accepted scientific evidence that precognition is ...

s and a theory of

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

which he later called "Serialism". First published in March 1927, the book was widely read. Although never accepted by mainstream science, it has influenced imaginative literature ever since. Dunne published four sequels: ''The Serial Universe'', ''The New Immortality'', ''Nothing Dies'' and ''Intrusions?''

Description

Overview

''An Experiment with Time'' discusses two main topics. The first half of the book describes a number of precognitive dreams, most of which Dunne himself had experienced. His key conclusion was that such precognitive visions foresee future personal experiences by the dreamer and not more general events. The second half develops a theory to try and explain them. Dunne's starting point is the observation that the moment of "now" is not described by science. Contemporary science described physical time as a fourth dimension and Dunne's argument led to an endless sequence of higher dimensions of time to measure our passage through the dimension below. Accompanying each level was a higher level of consciousness. At the end of the chain was a supreme ultimate observer. According to Dunne, our wakeful attention prevents us from seeing beyond the present moment, whilst when dreaming that attention fades and we gain the ability to recall more of our timeline. This allows fragments of our future to appear in pre-cognitive dreams, mixed in with fragments or memories of our past. Other consequences include the phenomenon known as

deja vu Deja or Dejah may refer to: * Deja News, an archive of messages posted to Usenet discussion groups and its successor ''deja.com'' * Andreas Deja (born 1957), German animator * Dejah Mulipola (born 1998), American softball player * Dejah Thoris, a ...

and the existence of life after death.Priestley (1989)

Dreams and the experiment

Following a discussion of brain function in which Dunne expounds mind-brain parallelism and highlights the problem of subjective experience, he gives anecdotal accounts of precognitive dreams which, for the most part, he himself had experienced. The first he records occurred in 1898, in which he dreamed of his watch stopping at an exact time before waking up and finding that it had in fact done so. Later dreams appeared to foretell several major disasters; a volcanic eruption in

Martinique Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island and an Overseas department and region, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of ...

, a factory fire in Paris, and the derailing of the Flying Scotsman express train from the embankment approaching the Forth Railway Bridge in Scotland. Dunne tells how he sought to make sense of these dreams, coming slowly to the conclusion that they foresaw events from his own future, such as reading a newspaper account of a disaster rather than foreseeing the disaster itself. In order to try and prove this to his satisfaction, he developed the experiment which gives the book its title. He kept a notepad by his bedside and wrote down details of any dreams immediately on waking, then later went back and compared them to subsequent events in his life. He also persuaded some friends to try the same experiment, as well as experimenting on himself with waking reveries approaching a hypnagogic state. Based on the results, he claimed that they demonstrated that such precognitive fragments were common in dreams, even that they were mixed up in equal occurrence with past memories, and therefore they were difficult to identify until after the event they foresaw. He believed that the dreaming mind was not drawn wholly to the present, as it was during wakefulness, but was able to perceive events in its past and future with equal facility.

The theory of Serialism

Having presented Dunne's evidence for precognition, the book moves on to a possible theory in explanation which he called Serialism. The theory harks back to an experience with his nurse when he was nine years old. Already thinking about the problem, the boy asked her if Time was the moments like yesterday, today and tomorrow, or was it the travelling between them that we experience as the present moment? Any answer was beyond her, but the observation formed the basis of Serialism. Within the fixed spacetime landscape described by the recently published theory of

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. ...

, an observer travels along a timeline running in the direction of physical time, ''t''₁.

Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

was also a newly emerging science, though in a less-developed state. Neither relativity nor quantum mechanics offered any explanation of the observer's place in spacetime, but both required it in order to develop the physical theory around it. The philosophical problems raised by this lack of rigorous foundation were already beginning to be recognised. The theory resolves the issue by proposing a higher dimension of Time, ''t''₂, in which our consciousness experiences its travelling along the timeline in ''t''₁. The physical brain itself inhabits only ''t''₁, requiring a second level of mind to inhabit ''t''₂ and it is at this level that the observer experiences consciousness. However, Dunne found that his logic led to a similar difficulty with ''t''₂ in that the passage between successive events in ''t''₂ was not included in the model. This led to an even higher ''t''₃ in which a third-level observer could experience not just the mass of events in ''t''₂ but the ''passage'' of those experiences in ''t''₂, and so on in the infinite regress of time dimensions and observers which gives the theory its name. Dunne suggested that when we die, it is only our physical selves in ''t''₁ who die and that our higher selves are outside of mundane time. Our conscious selves therefore have no mechanism to die in the same kind of way and are effectively immortal. At the end of the chain he proposed a "superlative general observer, the fount of all ... consciousness".

Publishing history

''An Experiment with Time'' was first published by

A & C Black A & C Black is a British book publishing company, owned since 2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing. The company is noted for publishing '' Who's Who'' since 1849. It also published popular travel guides and novels. History The firm was founded in 18 ...

in March 1927. Dunne continued to update it and many new editions and impressions were published over his lifetime. After Black had brought out the second edition, Dunne changed publisher to Faber & Faber, with whom he would remain. The third edition incorporated major new material and was published by Faber's in 1932; this and subsequent editions were published in the US by Macmillan. The final version which he had a hand in was published as a "reprint" in 1948. Faber continued printing paperback editions until at least 1973, and others have appeared since.

Reception

Academic

Initial reactions from the scientific and scientifically-minded community were broadly positive. ''

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 ar ...

'' carried a review by Hyman Levy. They accepted that Dunne was a sober and rational investigator who was doing his best to take a scientific approach. They acknowledged that if his ideas about time and consciousness were true then his book would be truly revolutionary.Jones (2020) However opinions differed over the existence of dream precognition, while his infinite regress was almost universally judged to be logically flawed and incorrect. Philosophers who criticised ''An Experiment with Time'' on much the same basis included

J. A. Gunn John Alexander Gunn (1896–1975) was a philosopher who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool and worked there as a fellow. He went on to be appointed as a professor at the University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is ...

, C. D. Broad and M. F. Cleugh. Physicist and parapsychologist G. N. M. Tyrrell explained:

Mr. J. W. Dunne, in his book, ''An Experiment with Time'', introduces a multidimensional scheme in an attempt to explain precognition and he has further developed this scheme in later publications. But, as Professor Broad has shown, these unlimited dimensions are unnecessary, ... and the true problem of time—the problem of becoming, or the passage of events from future through present to past, is not explained by them but is still left on the author's hands at the end.

Later editions continued to receive attention. In 1981 a new impression of the 1934 (third) edition was published with an introduction by the writer and broadcaster Brian Inglis. The last (1948) edition was reprinted in 1981 with an introduction by the physicist and parapsychologist Russell Targ. A review of it in ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publish ...

'' described it as a "definitive classic". Mainstream scientific opinion remains that, while Dunne was an entertaining writer, there is no scientific evidence for either dream precognition or more than one time dimension and his arguments do not convince.

''An Experiment with Time'' became well known and was widely discussed. Not to have read him became a "mark of singularity" in society. Critical essays on Serialism, both positive and negative, appeared in popular works. Among others, H. G. Wells included "New Light on mental Life" in his collection of articles ''Way The World is Going'', J. B. Priestley gave an accessible account in his study ''Man and Time'' and

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

wrote a short essay, "Time and J. W. Dunne", later included in his anthology ''Other Inquisitions''.

Sequels

Besides issuing new editions of ''An Experiment with Time'', Dunne published sequels exploring different aspects of Serialism. ''The Serial Universe'' (1934) examined its relation to contemporary physics in relativity and

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, q ...

. ''The New Immortality'' (1938) and ''Nothing Dies'' (1940) explored the metaphysical aspect of Serialism, especially in relation to immortality. ''Intrusions?'' (1955) contained autobiographical accounts of the angelic visions and voices which had accompanied many of his precognitive dreams. It was incomplete at the time of his death in 1949; it was completed with the help of his family and finally published some years later. It revealed that he believed himself to be a spiritual medium. He had deliberately chosen to leave this material out of ''An Experiment with Time'' as he judged that it would have affected the scientific reception of his theory.

Literary influence

The popularity of ''An Experiment with Time'' was reflected in the many authors who subsequently referenced him and his ideas in literary works of fiction. He "undoubtedly helped to form something of the imaginative climate of those nterwaryears".Stewart (2008) One of the first and most significant writers was J. B. Priestley, who based three of his " Time plays" around them: '' Time and the Conways'', '' Dangerous Corner'', and '' An Inspector Calls''. Dunne's theory strongly influenced the unfinished novels '' The Notion Club Papers'' by J. R. R. Tolkien and ''

The Dark Tower Dark Tower may refer to: Literature * ''The Dark Tower'' (series), a fantasy series created by Stephen King **'' The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower'' (2004), the seventh novel in the series ** ''The Dark Tower'' (comics) * ''The Dark Tower'' (L ...

'' by C. S. Lewis. Tolkien and Lewis were both members of the

Inklings The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who p ...

literary circle. Tolkien used Dunne's ideas about parallel time dimensions in developing the differing natures of time in ''The Lord of the Rings'' between " Lórien time" and time in the rest of

Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth i ...

.Flieger (2001) Lewis used the imagery of serialism in the afterlife he depicted at the end of '' The Last Battle'', the closing tale in the Chronicles of Narnia. Other contemporary writers who used his ideas, whether as a narrative or literary device, included John Buchan (''

The Gap in the Curtain ''The Gap in the Curtain'' is a 1932 borderline science fiction novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. Part of the action is autobiographical, featuring the agonies of a contemporary up-and-coming politician. It explores the theory of serial ...

''), James Hilton ('' Random Harvest''), his old friend H. G. Wells (''The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper'' and '' The Shape of Things to Come''),

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...

(''The Bear Fell Free'') and Rumer Godden (''A Fugue in Time''). Literary figures less overtly influenced included T.S. Eliot,

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

and Flann O'Brien. Following Dunne's death in 1949, the popularity of his themes continued. Philippa Pearce's 1958 childhood fantasy '' Tom's Midnight Garden'' won the British literary Carnegie Medal. The writer

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

undertook his own dream experiment in 1964, following Dunne's instructions, and it strongly influenced his subsequent novels, especially '' Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle''.Lanchester, John
"Nabokov’s Dreams"
''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review ...

'', Vol. 40, Nr. 9, 10 May 2018, p. 18.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* *Jones, Darryl. (2020) "J. W. Dunne: The Time Traveller". In: Ferguson, T. (ed) ''Literature and Modern Time''. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-29278-2_9 * *

External links

JW Dunne: dreaming the future
research blog. {{DEFAULTSORT:Experiment with Time J. W. Dunne 1927 non-fiction books Books about the paranormal English-language books English non-fiction books Philosophy of time