Psych Phot

Psychic Photography:

This makes for interesting reading: an account of a man who could make Polaroid pictures with his mind. There's an account of the attempt by skeptics to prove he was faking (none of which succeeded); but the author is credulous.

What is most striking about the Serios thoughtographs is the power of their imagery as a manifestation of the creative process. In these strange pictures, real objects or places appear to have merged with (or been altered by) the material of Serios's unconscious. Some of them juxtapose target images (of familiar buildings, monuments, houses, and hotels) with what appear to be images of day residue, haunting shadows of unfamiliar forms and structures. Others seem to incorporate both past and future events in an odd, shadowy collage. On one occasion, for example, the target image appeared superimposed on a second image that resembled the space probe Voyager 2. After the session, Serios, a space buff, confessed that he had been preoccupied with the progress of the space mission at the time and was unable to clear it completely from his mind.

Other images could have been obtained only as a result of knowledge or perspectives unavailable at the time. For example, after seeing magazine photographs taken from Voyager 2 of Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, Eisenbud suddenly recognized some of Serios's previously unidentified thoughtographs as images of the moons of Jupiter. That made sense, as Serios had long been obsessed with Voyager 2; what did not make sense, however, was that those thoughtographs had been produced years before the Voyager 2 pictures were taken. He also occasionally produced pictures that would be possible only from a midair perspective, including an exposure showing part of Westminster Abbey, and an image of a Hilton hotel in Denver.

This seems to run afoul of a few different problems. Does philosophy contain anything that might explain them?

Well, yes, actually it does. Space-time persistence theorists believe that -- in spite of our experience of 'living through' time -- we are in fact a static, four-dimensional object, extended in three physical dimensions plus time. Something that was significant to that object "later" is still a part of the single object, in the way that one face of a cube is still part of the same cube as the opposite face. I know a doctor of physics and metaphysics who is quite certain this is correct.

I'm not convinced, myself. Without going so far as persistence, you can still argue that the mind can move freely in the four dimensions: for example, how many of us have sat in our chair at work on Monday morning and imagined being at a cookout the previous Saturday? Your conscious mind can readily "image" that time and place for you; it may be that your unconscious mind can reach forward. It may not be reaching for a certain future that you 'already inhabit,' as the persistence theorists believe; perhaps it is only reaching to a likely future.

Or possibly it's all bunk; but how then to make an image of Voyager's pictures of the moons of Jupiter years before anyone has seen them?