Precognition

Precognition (from the Latin præ-, "before" and cognitio, "acquiring knowledge"), also called prescience, future vision, future sight is an alleged psychic ability to see events in the future.

As with other forms of extrasensory perception, there is no evidence that precognition is a real ability possessed by anyone and precognition is widely considered pseudoscience. However, it still appears within movies, books, and discussion within the parapsychology community, with claimed precognition of earthquakes sometimes covered by the newsmedia.

Scientific investigation of extrasensory perception is complicated by the definition which implies that the phenomena go against established principles of science. Specifically, precognition would violate the principle that an effect cannot occur before its cause. There are established biases affecting human memory and judgment of probability that sometimes create convincing but false impressions of precognition.

Belief in precognition has been related to superstition. A 1978 Gallup poll found that 37% of Americans surveyed believed in precognition. According to psychologists Tobacyk and Milford, belief in precognition was greater in college women than in men, and a 2007 Gallup poll found that women were more prone to superstitious beliefs in general.

A 2013 study discovered that greater belief in precognition was held by those who feel low in control, and the belief can act as a psychological coping mechanism.

In the early 20th century J. W. Dunne, a British aeronautics engineer, experienced several dreams which he regarded as precognitive. He developed techniques to record and analyse them, identifying any correspondences between his future experiences and his recorded dreams. He reported his findings in his 1927 book An Experiment with Time. In it he alleges that 10% of his dreams appeared to represent some future experience. He also persuaded some friends to try the experiment on themselves, with mixed results. Dunne concluded that precognitive dreams are common and that many people unknowingly have them. The book went on to develop an explanatory theory of time and consciousness which he called Serialism. In 1932 he helped the Society for Psychical Research to conduct a more formal experiment, but he and the Society's lead researcher failed to agree on the significance of the results. Dunne's work was nevertheless widely read and "undoubtedly helped to form something of the imaginative climate of those [interwar] years".

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