Reflections HERE DOES all this leave us? At the start we promised a Wien fabric of many implausible threads, and I think that has been fulfilled. Also sustained is our promise to advocate nothing, save possibly that we keep our eyes and minds and hearts open to this very new, yet very old, field. Certainly, the experiments are no more than suggestive, the models only vaguely promising, the applications and implications highly speculative. Ui- timately, of course, the choice — and in 4a field such as this, it has to be a personal choice — must be between the assignment of all the inexplicable to mere chance, which is somehow bedazzling hyper- romantic minds to delusion of order where there is none, or the acknowledgment of a legitimate, potentially coherent and useful, albeit very elusive, phenomenological domain. Some 45 years ago, Albert Einstein confessed this same dilemma in his preface to Upton Sinclair’s book, Mental Radio: ... The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which a mature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world; his good faith and dependability are not to be questioned. . . .1° One might turn to historical analogies for insight, for there are certainly many examples of originally inexplicable phenomena gradually congealing into an established science and then into a use- ful technology. Take the field of electricity and magnetism men- tioned earlier. At the same time the Greeks were consulting their Delphic Oracle, they were also rubbing amber to get static electrical effects, using lodestones to navigate their boats, and observing an occasional lightning bolt in the sky. They had no Maxwell’s equa- tions, not even a Coulomb’s law, let alone television sets or hydro- electric generators. Those came much later. Again at Princeton, the physicist Joseph Henry was repeatedly criticized by his peers for undertaking experiments that violated es- tablished scientific principles and common sense, yet we now live by many implementations of those same unreasonable ideas. The choice between assignment of the mysterious to thoughtless chance, or to a more purposeful higher order, has occupied many thinkers and authors through the ages. One of my favorite opinions on the subject is voiced by Schiller’s epic hero Wallenstein at the time of his impending tragic death: Es gibt keinen Zufall; und was uns blindes Ohngefahr nur diinkt, gerade das steigt aus den tiefsten Quellen. (“There is no such thing as chance; and that which seems to us blind accident, actually stems from the deepest. source of all.”)°® Some day in the future the question may be posed whether it is proper and productive for a university such as Princeton to involve itself to any significant Alppmoved FeneRetesss e220 0244/4 8 : Possible applications of psychokinesis: a cartoonist’s view field as psychic research, and there will doubtless be many opinions on this. My own is not at all fully formed, but there has hung on my wall for the past six years a statement which may have some rele- vance at that time: in the long history of civilization there are always strong pressures in favor of low-level sorts of conformity — pressures against unorthodoxy, indi- viduality, and self-won responsibility. And all the while from left and from right aggressive voices proclaim that truth and virtue are theirs alone. But there is one place above all where it is (or should be) possible for men to think and act as their own reasoned judgment and best conscience dic- tate — namely, a university. Here it is that the willingness to think other- wise, to dream, to question, and to dare should flourish. If an utter stranger to our civilization should ask: “Where in your soci- ety can a person disagree with impunity with accepted practices, dogmas and doctrines?” the answer should be, ‘‘The universities. That is part of their being. Their role is to conserve the best of the past and to look for- ward from it. On both counts they are committed to freedom for the indi- vidual, the dignity of the human person, and tolerance toward dissent within broad and agreed upon limits.” This is signed by the U.S. Ambassador to India and president emeritus of Princeton University, the Honorable Robert F. Goheen °40,8° At the very least, Carol and I do hope that you have enjoyed shar- ing our own brief exposure to the psychic tapestry; that the colors have not been too garish for your taste, or the pattern too bizarre; and that some of you may now care to hold the cloth in your own hands, and attempt your own interpretation of its message. 5 Robert G. Jahn’ 51, *55 has been dean of Princeton’ s School of Engineering and Applied Science since 1971. At the invita- tion of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he visited several re- search centers in the U.S.S.R. this past fall to lecture on his principal field: pulsed, high-power plasma discharges, which are of interest for deep-space propulsion, plasmadynamic lasers, basic studies in arc phenomena, materials testing, and other industrial processes. He is a member of the Univer- sity Research Board and serves as chairman of the Council on Environmental Studies, chairman of the Committee on Athletics, and faculty adviser to the football program. His extra-Princeton assignments include heading the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Associated Univer- sities, Inc. (the oversight and policy-making body for the Brookhaven National Laboratory and National Radio As- tronomy facilities), as well as membership on a number of committees of NASA and the National Academy of Sciences. December 4, 1978 e S-11
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