Please note: this is an old version of the PEAR site
The current site is
at WWW.Princeton.edu/~pear/
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena
Engineering and Consciousness
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program was established at
Princeton University in 1979 by Robert G.
Jahn, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to pursue
rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with
sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to contemporary
engineering practice. Since that time, an interdisciplinary staff of engineers,
physicists, psychologists, and humanists has been conducting a comprehensive
agenda of experiments and developing complementary theoretical models to enable
better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of
physical reality.
I. Human/Machine Anomalies
The most substantial portion of the PEAR program examines anomalies arising
in human/machine interactions. In
these experiments human operators attempt, solely by volition, to influence the
behavior of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid
devices to conform to pre-stated intentions. In unattended calibrations these
sophisticated machines all produce strictly random outputs, yet the experimental
results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to
the influence of the human operators. Over the laboratory's history, thousands of such experiments,
involving many millions of trials, have been performed by over a hundred
operators. The observed effects are usually quite small, of the order of a few
parts in ten thousand, but they are statistically repeatable and appear to be
operator specific in their details. In contrast, the results of given operators
on widely different machines tend to be similar in character and scale. Pairs of operators with shared intentions
are found to induce further anomalous characteristics in the outputs. The
devices also respond to group activities of larger numbers of people, even when
they are unaware of the machine's presence. These human/machine anomalies can be
demonstrated with the operators located thousands of miles from the laboratory,
exerting their efforts hours before or after the actual operation of the
devices. Elaborate analytical methods have been developed to extract as much
understanding from these results as possible, and to guarantee their integrity
against any experimental or data processing flaws.
II. Remote Perception
In another class of studies, the ability of human
participants to acquire information about spatially and temporally remote
geographical targets, otherwise inaccessible by any known sensory means, has
been thoroughly demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted
experiments. The protocol requires one participant, the "agent", to be stationed
at a randomly selected location at a given time, and there to observe and record
impressions of the details and ambience of the scene. A second participant, the
"percipient", located far from the scene and with no prior information about it,
tries to sense its composition and character and to report these in a similar
format to the agent's description.
Even casual comparison of the agent and percipient narratives produced in
this body of experiments reveals striking correspondences in both their general
and specific aspects, indicative of some anomalous channel of information
acquisition, well beyond any chance expectation. Incisive analytical techniques
have been developed and applied to these data to establish more precisely the
quantity and quality of objective and subjective information acquired and to
guide the design of more effective experiments. Beyond confirming the validity
of this anomalous mode of human information acquisition, these analyses
demonstrate that this capacity of human consciousness is also largely
independent of the distance between the percipient and the target, and similarly
independent of the time between the specification of the target and the
perception effort.
III. Theoretical Models
All scientific research requires generic and
specific theoretical models for constructive dialogue with the empirical data.
The stark inconsistencies of the human/machine and remote perception results
with established physical and psychological theories place extraordinary demands
on the development of competent new models to represent these processes. In
particular, the primary importance of operator intention, the operator-specific
aspects, the absence of traditional learning patterns, and the lack of explicit
space and time dependence clearly indicate that no direct application or minor
alteration of existing physical or psychological frameworks will suffice.
Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded model of reality, one that
allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience of
the physical world, will be required. Such a model has been proposed and developed under the major
premise that the basic processes by which consciousness exchanges information
with its environment, orders that information, and interprets it, also enable it
to bias probabilistic systems and thereby to avail itself of some control over
its reality. This model regards many of the concepts of observational quantum
mechanics, most importantly the principles of complementarity and wave
mechanical resonance, as fundamental characteristics of consciousness, rather
than as intrinsic features of an objective physical environment. In this view,
the "anomalous" phenomena observed in the PEAR experiments become quite normal
expectations of bonded human/machine and human/human systems, and the door is
opened for all manner of creative consciousness/environnment interactions.
Extended Activities
From this well established program of research, a
number of related activities radiate outward into other locales and disciplines:
- The PEAR laboratory is one component in an interdisciplinary research and
educational enterprise at Princeton University, termed the Human Information
Processing (HIP) Group. This program brings together faculty, staff, and
students in engineering, computer science, psychology, and philosophy for
collaborative study of the role of human cognition, perception, and creativity
in a number of contemporary human/machine technologies. A popular
undergraduate course is team-taught by the HIP group, who also supervise
student projects on relevant topics.
- The PEAR staff coordinates the International Consciousness Research
Laboratories (ICRL) , a consortium of
distinguished research scholars from several nations and disciplines, who
share active commitments to better understanding of the role of consciousness
in their respective fields of anthropology, archaeology, biology, engineering,
physics, psychiatry, psychology, and the humanities. This group conducts a
number of collaborative projects and convenes semi-annually to exchange
research progress.
- With the assistance of the ICRL group, PEAR facilitates an Academy of Consciousness
Studies to stimulate consciousness research and education across a larger
multi-disciplinary family of interested scholars around the world. The first
Academy convocation, a two-week summer workshop held in 1994 on the Princeton
University campus, brought together some thirty-five outstanding scientists,
physicians, educators, and practitioners from nine countries for an intense
program of presentations, discussions, and planning sessions. These
participants are now extending research, teaching, and application of the
concepts developed at the workshop into their own fields and institutions.
- Several members of the PEAR staff serve as officers of the Society of
Scientific Exploration (SSE) , a unique
international and interdisciplinary professional organization devoted to open
but critical discussion and publication of research in many areas of frontier
science not adequately covered by more conventional scientific organizations.
SSE holds annual international meetings in the U.S., bi-annual meetings in
Europe, and a variety of topical symposia. It also publishes the archival
Journal of Scientific Exploration, a reservoir of documentation for much of
the contemporary scholarly research on consciousness-related anomalies.
Implications and Applications
This composite array of internal and
external PEAR activities is motivated by three overarching goals:
Basic Science
Accommodation of the observed anomalies within a
functional scientific framework will require the explicit inclusion of
consciousness as an active agent in the establishment of physical reality.
This expansion of the scientific paradigm demands more courageous theoretical
structures than exist at present, guided by more comprehensive empirical data
than is now available, acquired via more cooperative interdisciplinary
collaborations than are currently practiced. PEAR has enduring roles to play
in all three aspects of this search.
Technological Applications
Despite the small scale of the observed
consciousness-related anomalies, they could be functionally devastating to
many types of contemporary information processing systems, especially those
relying on random reference signals. Such concern could apply to aircraft
cockpits and ICBM silos; to surgical facilities and trauma response equipment;
to environmental and disaster control technology; or to any other technical
scenarios where the emotions of human operators may intensify their
interactions with the controlling devices and processes. Indeed, the
extraordinarily sophisticated equipment that generates much of the fundamental
data on which modern science is based cannot be excluded from this potential
vulnerability. Protection against such consciousness-related interference
could become essential to the design and operation of many future information
acquisition and processing systems. On the positive side, since these same
research results provide important technical evidence of the precious process
of human creativity, they offer the promising possibility of a new genre of
human/machine systems that will enable more creative performance in all manner
of applications from medicine to management, from manufacturing to
communications, from education to recreation.
Cultural Implications
Beyond its scientific impact and its
technological applications, clear evidence of an active role of consciousness
in the establishment of reality holds sweeping implications for our view of
ourselves, our relationship to others, and to the cosmos in which we exist.
These, in turn, must inevitably impact our values, our priorities, our sense
of responsibility, and our style of life. Integration of these changes across
the society can lead to a substantially superior cultural ethic, wherein the
long-estranged siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of
intellect and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of
human experience will be productively reunited.
PEAR Staff
Bob is a Professor of Aerospace Sciences and
Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, who has taught
and published extensively in advanced space propulsion systems, plasma
dynamics, fluid mechanics, quantum mechanics, and engineering anomalies.
Brenda is formally trained as a
developmental psychologist but regards herself as a generalist whose principal
task is the integration of the multiple scholarly vectors that bear on PEAR's
various activities.
Roger is an experimental psychologist
who oversees the design of PEAR's experimental protocols and controls, and
aids in statistical modeling and data interpretation.
G. Johnston Bradish, Technical Facilitator
John is an electrical
engineer who is responsible for the design, construction, and maintanance of
PEAR's experimental technology.
York H. Dobyns, Analytical Coordinator
York is a theoretical
physicist who designs and implements PEAR's data processing and analytical
strategies, and contributes to the development of its theoretical models.
Michael Ibison, Visiting Scholar
Michael, a visiting mathematical
physicist from England, aids in the design of PEAR's experiments, data
interpretation, and theoretical models.
Arnold Lettieri, Communications Director
Arnold is responsible for
PEAR's extensive correspondence with the media and other individuals and
organizations who have professional or personal interest in our work. He may
be contacted by email for further
information.
Laurie Gamble, Administrative Assistant
Laurie maintains the
organizational framework that permits PEAR's many activities to function in a
systematic fashion.
Literature
Many archival publications and
technical reports describing PEAR's experimental and theoretical studies are
available on request. In addition, the book Margins of Reality (Harcourt Brace,
1988), now published in several languages, summarizes the research results and
interprets them in a multidisciplinary context that allows exploration of their
wider cultural implications. (This may be ordered directly from the publisher at
465 South Lincoln Dr., Troy, MO 63379, or by phone at 1-800-543-1918.)
To request publications, or for further information about any PEAR programs,
please contact:
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
C-131, Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
(609) 258-5950 (phone),(609) 258-1993 (fax)
pearlab@princeton.edu (email)
Please email comments or questions about this site to the webmaster for the PEAR page.
Sponsors
The internal and external programs of the PEAR laboratory have
been supported by a number of visionary and generous persons and organizations,
among them: Richard Adams, the Fetzer Institute, the Institut fur Grenzgebiete
der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, the Lifebridge Foundation, the James S.
McDonnell Foundation, the Ohrstrom Foundation, Laurance Rockefeller, and Donald
Webster, along with various other philanthropic agencies and individuals. We
welcome the interest and participation of any persons or organizations that
share our convictions about the importance of this work and its potential public
benefits.
"Not once in the dim past, but continuously
by conscious mind
is the miracle of the Creation wrought"
Arthur Eddington
