Dreaming the Future by Clifford A. Pickover, Prometheus, $28, ISBN
157392895X
ONE of the great entertainments for sceptics is the yearly analysis of
popular psychics鈥� predictions prepared by science and medical writer Gene Emery.
All the media attention these guys get doesn鈥檛 make their pronouncements any
more true.
Clifford Pickover鈥檚 new study of divination throughout the ages doesn鈥檛 go
for such easy pickings as that. He doesn鈥檛 indulge in comparing failure
rates.
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Instead what Pickover has done in Dreaming the Future is to chart the
many ways we have tried to deal with our insecurity about the future. Here
you鈥檒l find astrology, the I Ching, Tarot cards, numerology and the mathematical
constructs known as magic squares and dowsing rubbing shoulders with prophets
from Nostradamus to Edgar Cayce.
Pickover also reports on the experiments he conducts on
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/esp.html, notably the ESP test that
removes a card visitors select mentally. It鈥檚 a great example of how people want
to believe, because, although the trick is quite simple, a surprising number of
his e-mail correspondents believe it must be truly psychic.
Despite his general scepticism, Pickover has a respect for divination quite
unlike most sceptics writing on the subject. This is because it taps into one of
his other favourite subjects, time travel. Perhaps only Pickover could write
such a recursive book, which ends with his speculations about what divination
will be like in the future.