Postscript

CHAPTER TEN

I've presented each device herein as an example of a particular class or type of mind machines machine. You may know of others.

I also tried to constrain the machines I discussed not only to those which I had built and tested myself, but also those that could be built and operated by anyone who could read and follow instructions. Furthermore, none of them require personalized instruction or train-

Mind Machines You Can Build

ing. This approach has always been the hallmark of scientific inquiry as opposed to mysticism where the operator must be personally trained by an adept.

Therefore, I didn't discuss such weird and won­derful machines as the Drown machine and the De La Warr machine. According to reports, both apparently work. However, I have not seen one, built one, or oper­ated one. In addition, both machines require training by experts in their use. Not everyone can operate them by reading an instruction manual. I didn't exclude them on the basis that the American Medical Association has declared them to be hoaxes. I had no basis for deciding whether they were real or shams.

However, the fact that something has been pooh-poohed by experts was, is, and never will be any reason for me to pooh-pooh it, too. An expert is another human being just like thee and me. Said expert merely has acquired a mass of expertise that thereafter he must jealously guard because it may be the only prop support­ing the person.

Here's the way to treat an " expert": Listen to them to get the benefit of their expertise. They'll tell you what can be done; and it undoubtedly can. When they tell you it can't be done, try to do it anyway. When they begin to pontificate on subjects outside their field of expertise, they pack no more clout than you or me. I don't claim

Postscript

to be an expert on anything. I'm still learning. I'm an amateur and proud of it. If there were more amateur scientists, perhaps science would advance more rapidly.

Some readers may feel I've included some strange machines herein that they consider mystical and whose results they consider extremely subjective. Be advised that I deliberately eliminated from consideration a very large number of devices that are not understood and produce questionable physical responses.

By now, you've realized that these eight strange machines share several characteristics:

1. In light of everything we've been taught about the Universe, these machines shouldn't work. But they do work demonstrably and repeatedly for a significant number of people. These devices are maddening be­cause they work well and reliably for some people and not for others. On some days, they won't work at all even for adepts.

2. They can be built and operated successfully using only written instructions without any personal contact with the inventor or advocate.

3. They produce repeatable results with a large enough percentage of subjects that the factor of random chance cannot possibly be expected to affect the results or play a part.

Mind Machines You Can Build

4. No accepted theory explains why each of them works. In fact, there are no hypotheses concerning why or how some of them work at all. This doesn't keep them from working.

5. They are ignored by the professional commu­nity of scientific investigators. Most scientists claim these devices are hoaxes but have never spent any time inves­tigating them with the same level of rigor they apply to their own field of interest.

6. Because the causes for the operation of these machines are unknown, they are and should become legitimate targets of investigation by those who are inter­ested in expanding the horizons of human knowledge and our understanding of the Universe.

7. In the cases where these machines have utility, what they do can be done at least as well by other devices whose operation we more or less understand. For ex­ample, many geological tools are available to help us locate underground water. Yet dowsing rods have been used for centuries and are indeed depended upon through­out the world today. A razor blade may be re-sharpened by a whetstone and leather strop. A mass spectrograph will not only identify the elements present in a metallur­gical sample but provide quantitative data as well. How­ever, utility isn't at question here. The bothersome ques­tion is, "Why do the damned things work in the first place?"

Postscript

My basic thesis in this book has been that we don't know why they do or don't do, what they do or don't do, but that they do indeed do it. Therefore, we should make a serious attempt to find out why.

And if that isn't the basic purpose of legitimate scientific inquiry, then what is?

Please note carefully that 1 do not advocate any particular religious doctrine or cult of worship in connec­tion with any of these machines. Some religious cults and "mental expansion sciences" may have adopted one of them for their purposes. Some readers may identify one or more of the strange machines herein as being the favorite tools or toys of such groups. So what? This doesn't mean that it should not be investigated, particu­larly if it works. Divorced from cult context, the critical question remains: Does it work or doesn't it? And, if it does, why?

I'm not selling the modern technological equiva­lent of snake oil. I'm merely trying to get these strange machines out in the open where inquiring minds can learn of them. Faith has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the operation of any of the devices in this book. I do not maintain that you have to believe in anything except that these machines can be investigated by scien­tific protocols and explained in a fashion that is not inconsistent with the rest of the Universe.

Mind Machines You Can Build

Since anyone can build and test them according to the instructions herein, no one has any excuse to claim at the outset that these devices are hoaxes or that they depend upon suggestibility or gullibility. If they work because of suggestibility, they should therefore have some utility in psychology because the suggestibility is trans­ferred not by personal contact but remotely through written symbols on paper: this book. And if this is in­deed the case and if suggestibility is the reason the devices work, we'd better find out why they work by such remote-control suggestibility!

I have nothing to gain by writing this book except a percentage of the book's sales price called a book roy­alty. Book royalties rarely make authors rich. If they did, there would be far more wealthy authors. If making a million dollars had been my aim, I would have approached the subject quite differently in a highly sensationalistic style and manner. As it was, I tried to present the infor­mation in as straightforward a manner as I could.

On the other hand, I do have something to lose by writing this book. In more than forty years of writing, I've built a reputation that has some semblance of truth­fulness, sobriety, and careful research. I've never espoused far-out causes except ones that I knew perfectly well were within the capabilities of science and technology like going to the Moon and industrializing space. I do not wish to destroy that hard-earned and carefully preserved

Postscript

reputation now. In fact, the possibility that I might do so as a result of this book has been of concern to me through­out its preparation.

This is why I reported only on strange machines that I have personal experience in building and/or op­erating. My formal academic science education continu­ally reminds me that I should report publicly those phe­nomena that I have carefully observed and thereafter bare myself to peer review and criticism. The problem is that while there are many scientists in the world, there are few who have any experience in strange machines and are therefore qualified to express opinions about them. So I'm laying myself wide open to criticism from experts who aren't but who think they are.

Our limited knowledge of ourselves and our Universe has grown over the past five centuries. In the eighteenth century, electricity and magnetism were mys­tical phenomena. In the past, things we accept today were greeted with jeers and outright derision. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson who was then President of the Ameri­can Philosophical Society (the equivalent of today's American Association for the Advancement of Science) reacted to a report of a discovery of a meteorite by two Connecticut astronomers with the statement, "I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than stones fall from heaven." In the nineteenth cen­tury, much of what is now twentieth-century science was

Mind Machines You Can Build

laughed at. The reknowned physicist and former Presi­dent of the British Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, stated in 1900, "X-rays are a hoax."

We can probably expect no less from our reknowned twentieth century savants when it comes to phenomena that may well represent twenty-first century science.

On the basis of a long study of the history of science and technology, however, I am convinced that somewhere among these strange machines lies the foun­dation of the science and technology of the twenty-first century.

Far too many people are still operating under the obsolete philosophy of materialism that was developed during the nineteenth century and dominated far too much in the twentieth. One of the beliefs of materialism is that we know everything there is to know about the Universe. But scientific inquiry itself proves this asser­tion wrong every day.

Science is not a static body of knowledge. It grows. Here is a direction in which it can grow without requiring millions of dollars of support in terms of grants. It can grow under the aegis of amateurs. In fact, it must. This will, however, infuriate some of the professional scien­tists who may fear that, in spite of their skepticism, there just might be something here after all.

Postscript

RCA engineer Harry Swartzburg stated, "The validity of a science is its ability to predict." Well, maybe these proto-sciences we're talking about aren't that far along yet. But they're getting there. I can now write a book describing some strange, unexplained machines so you and thousands of others can build them and see for yourself. That's a start. In fact, it's the first step in any potentially new field of science.

Scientific fields of endeavor begin with such unexplained phenomena as those we've discussed in connection with strange machines. From the basic laws of motion (dynamics) to the most modern theories of nuclear structure and cosmology, each advance began with the actions of an individual whose curiosity was piqued by a strange and perhaps even accidental or fortuitous phenomenon. They also had the belief that a reason for the phenomenon existed and could be learned.

Therefore, the reason(s) why these strange de­vices and others work can and will be discovered. In the process of doing this, new and unsuspected fields of science and knowledge will be uncovered.

Maybe this will be done by a reader of this book.

However, if I've piqued your curiosity and caused you to investigate some of the amazing machines re­ported herein, then I've done what I set out to do.

But, please, a few words of warning to those who will enthusiastically undertake experiments with these machines and others that they may come upon:

Mind Machines You Can Build

Don't write to ask me details of how to build or operate the strange machines of this book. I've told you everything I knew when I started working with them and therefore everything you need to know to get started. Go back and read the text carefully again. "If at flrst you don't succeed, try reading the instructions."

And don't demand things of me. I'm just an amateur like you. We all are. I don't get paid for inves­tigating strange machines. Nor am I in the business of selling them and thereby keeping customers happy. These machines are simple and safe enough that you can and should try them your way and do a few experiments on your own.

Don't complain to me if something doesn't work because, after all, even with the most complex of these machines, you're out only a few dollars and a few hours' time. What did you expect? I told you at the start that maybe it wouldn't work but that there was a good prob­ability it would because it worked for me. The only promise held forth by this book was that perhaps it would be found entertaining. At worst, it could be infu­riating.

But I hope you've learned a little something about science, scientific investigation, and the conduct of scien­tific experiments along the way. And maybe something about how abysmally ignorant we are about the Uni­verse.

Postscript

Don't write me enthusiastically about a machine somebody else has invented that performs miracles unless you yourself have built it, tested it, and confirmed the results without personal contact with the inventor.

Don't write to me about the wonderful machine that you've invented, that you've tried on thousands of people, and that you've personally taught hundreds of people to operate. Sorry, but it doesn't count. Close, but no cigar! The world is full of miracle machines that won't and don't work at all out of the hands of the inventor. (And I've seen hundreds of these, too.)

But if you've invented a strange machine, written it up, published the description and the experimental results, had people build and operate it from that written description without personal contact with you, and got­ten reports that it works, I'll gladly read your letter.

The same holds true if you've built a strange machine from someone else's written instructions and had it work.

Totally independent verification is a key element.

Don't complain to me that there's no place to publish your work. Look harder. Even the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences has published some pretty strange, off-beat, and off-the-wall papers. Not all scientific organizations are as stuffy and priest-like as you may have gathered from what I've written here. A lot of good and honest scientists are around. There are also

Mind Machines You Can Build

many places to publish your work. Maybe that fact that it's continually rejected is no reflection upon the subject matter but on the way you've written it up.

I'm a skeptic or I wouldn't have gotten involved with strange machines more than a third of a century ago. And you'd better be a skeptic, too, lest the rude hand of reality rise up and smite thee right in the middle of thy cherished beliefs.

But don't just read about these and other strange machines and then dismiss them skeptically. Build them and try them. Test them. Then and only then do you have the right to an opinion on any given one of them, but not about the ones you haven't built and tested.

Don't worry about the experts. They'll tell you only what can't be done. It's up to you to go ahead and do it if it really is possible. You'll never know unless you try. Remember that the history of science and technology is littered with the solemn pontifical pronouncements of experts.

"The theory of germs is a ridiculous fiction," said Pierre Pochet, professor of physiology in Toulouse, France, when he learned of the germ theory of disease developed by Louis Pasteur, who was a crystallographer, not a doctor. Others even refused to look at his data.

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will be forever shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon," said Sir John Eric Erichsen in 1837; he was later to become Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria.

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The most famous "expert statement" of all came from Charles H. Cuell, Commissioner of the U.S. Of­fice of Patents, who urged President William McKinley to abolish the Patent Office in 1899 with the assertion, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

1 wonder what the experts are going to say about the strange machines of this book? Frankly, 1 don't expect anything different than what they've said in the past.

No matter what they say, many phenomena re­main unexplained. Innovation comes from individuals who see a consistency in these phenomena that have been missed or dismissed by others. This sort of inno­vation ought to be encouraged, even at the risk of seem­ing to encourage charlatans. The great leaps forward in our understanding of the Universe and ourselves have come from just such activities in the past. Once the leaps have been made, the cautious scientists must then care­fully fill in the added decimal places.

You're hereby challenged to make the great scien­tific breakthrough of the twenty-first century. Maybe it starts with something from this book, and I will be mightily pleased if it does. But I don't disabuse myself; probably it won't.

But even if you don't make the great scientific breakthrough, you'll have some fun!

Mind Machines You Can Build

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