From—“Frequency of Psionic Talents on Post-Plague Earth,” by Ruta-Helena Chatawba. Pages 102-127, in Advances in Philosophy Following the First Two Earth Expeditions, Kathleen Murti, ed. University Press, A.C. 867.

Introduction

Wizardry and magic were widely practiced when mankind was young, and for a long time were not differentiated from the purely physical manipulation of material objects. “Nature” had not yet been differentiated in man’s mind, nor had superstition been recognized as separate from knowledge. in the 1st century A.D., alchemy arose out of this more or less undifferentiated mass of human activities. Alchemy strove primarily to produce eternal life and transmute “base metals” into gold. These goals made it particularly susceptible to fraud. At the same time, alchemy produced an incidental but increasing catalog of observed and measured qualitative data on the chemical properties of substances. Thus, out of alchemy grew the organized and rational science of chemistry, which may best be dated from the 18th century and the work of Priestley, Scheele, and Lavoisier. And with the rise of chemistry, the superstitious and groundless—or at least unattainable—facets of alchemy gradually died.

The “field” of wizardry and magic, which was more or less related to alchemy, took much longer to produce a science, psionics. Psionics as a term first appeared in the 20th century literary phenomenon called science fiction, in stories using the premise that some areas of magic and wizardry contained elements of reality.

As an actual science, psionics might be said to have its true early roots in mathematics, specifically in the area of complex numbers. By itself, however, this led only to interesting speculations that would bear no fruit until bridged to physical reality by developments in mathematical physics some decades later.

Meanwhile empirical research had been taking place, though it stretches the term to call it science. Sporadic early studies of telepathy began at Stanford and Harvard Universities in the United States of America as early as A.D. 1915. These produced little, however, beyond statistical evidence that telepathy occurred and that it tended to be weak and unreliable. They did not establish mechanisms, or even establish conditions and limitations of occurence.

Mid-20th century psychological and psychiatric studies on the well-documented but unexplained performances of so-called “idiot savants” were not productive. A psychic photographer named Ted Serios was studied in the seventh decade of the 20th century, primarily by the Psychiatry Department of the University of Colorado School of Medicine. These studies established the phenomenon as genuine, and also tentatively established some operating rules. But the physical theory and instrumentation were lacking to explore them.

Except for the statistical studies of telepathy, information and evidence remained very largely anecdotal, however, until the 21st century. Even then, progress was seriously limited by a lack of adequate physical theory to accommodate and make scientific sense of observations. And by a lack of serious interest, at least by funding agencies, during a seventy-year period of social, economic, and geopolitical instabilities that indeed threatened civilization itself at times.

Most of the progress in psionics during that time was with telepathy, the psionic potential seemingly most frequent in the population and most amenable to cultivation using strictly empirical means and simple biofeedback equipment. But this hardly qualified as scientific research; the explanations remained speculative. What it did accomplish was to make limited telepathic skills sufficiently common and well recognized that psionics became accepted as a legitimate, if crude, science. A 2072 study at Oxford University, with cooperation from a number of other universities planetwide, showed a highly significant correlation (P < 0.003) between demonstrable telepathy and family. It did not, however, clearly establish that the correlation was based on genetic inheritance and not on other family influences.

In A.D. 2090, a Chair of Psionics was founded at the University of Damascus, with Dr. Timur Karim Kazi as chairman. In 2094, Kazi invented the psi tuner, and during the short period ending with the Great Death of 2105, interest burgeoned. But even the psi tuner was an intuitive invention whose principles were only loosely understood.

Beginning with the first reported case of the “Burning Plague,” or “Great Death,” on 18 July, 2105, within 15 to 20 days the human population of planet Earth was reduced from approximately 7.184 billion to an estimated 10 to 20 million, of which it is further thought that perhaps fewer than two million, worldwide, were still alive two years later.

The evidence is compelling that mortality was not uniform worldwide. Certain genetic stocks had substantially, or even much higher survival than others, though it is arguable that genetics was not the principal cause of that higher survival. On the other hand, evidence strongly suggests that persons with appreciable telepathic talent survived with much greater frequency than average, perhaps due to the linkage of a gene for plague resistance with one for telepathic sensitivity. More compelling, indeed almost indisputable, is evidence that functional telepaths—those who are routinely and reliably able to discern the thoughts of those around them—are far more frequent in existing Terran populations than in populations before the plague. . . .