What Is Parapsychology, and Why Is It Not Accepted as a Science?
What Is Parapsychology? Why Is Parapsychology Not Accepted as a Scientific Discipline?
What Is Parapsychology? Why Is It Not a Scientific Field?
What is parapsychology? The term has been translated into Turkish as “Ruh Bilimi” (Science of the Spirit) by the Turkish Language Association. Parapsychology is a French-derived term composed of two words. The Greek word “para” means beyond the known, the unknown. When this word is combined with psychology, the term parapsychology emerges—often mistakenly associated with financial concepts by many people.
What is parapsychology?
It is defined as the field that examines phenomena which psychology, with its current structure and terminology, cannot adequately explain; that begins where psychology ends; that cannot be resolved through scientific methods based on sensory perception; that does not fit within the concept of the third dimension; and that studies extraordinary, mysterious, and unconventional experiences of individuals who refuse to be confined to ordinariness. In essence, it can also be described as a field that comes into play where science reaches its limits.
Parapsychology as a Scientific Contradiction
The question whose answer contains a major contradiction is: What is parapsychology?
Is it not a great paradox for the scientific community to place the Latin word “para”—meaning beyond—next to psychology, defining it as “the science that begins where psychology ends,” yet still refusing to include parapsychology even among sciences limited to the material level? On one side, there is psychology, which studies human behavior and is accepted as a scientific discipline. On the other side, there is a field introduced as “parapsychology” to address phenomena that psychology struggles to define or explain—yet one that is described as not truly a science, despite dealing with realities far beyond conventional knowledge.
So what is parapsychology really? Is it merely an unofficial field consulted only when necessary and out of desperation?
Parapsychology appears as a non-scientific science—a field added onto an accepted scientific discipline when explanations fall short, yet not fully embraced as legitimate. From this perspective, the reluctance of the scientific community to accept parapsychology as a science also reveals its own limitations. A mechanism that accepts as scientific reality only what is seen, heard, and touched invents an auxiliary field to explain what it cannot, yet still refuses to acknowledge it as part of the scientific framework. In fact, these details themselves provide a clear answer to the question “What is parapsychology?”
Why Is Parapsychology Not Accepted as a Scientific Discipline?
This question can be approached from several angles. Parapsychology does not conform to the framework of modern science as it is currently taught and defined. Just as the color red would not be accepted in a strictly black-and-white illustration, parapsychology does not fit into the rigid boundaries of modern scientific standards.
For modern science, acceptability is limited to the five sensory organs. To accept a result as a scientific fact, it must be possible to touch it, see it, smell it, taste it, and hear it. However, parapsychological research lacks fixedness and objectivity. In other words, results may not be the same for everyone. Let us explain this with a simple example that many people have experienced or at least heard about.
Four friends are sitting in a room late at night. One of them suddenly reacts in fear after seeing something through an open door and asks the others, “Did you see that too?” The others did not see anything. The same person sees the image again inside the room and even points at it, yet the others still see nothing and may even mock him.
Is Psychology Sufficient?
The first scientific field to examine this incident would be psychology. Even if neurology is involved, psychology would still be forced to provide an objective explanation. In cases where objectivity cannot be established, psychology may offer diagnoses that can extend as far as schizophrenia, yet it can never fully reveal the truth. Only by chance—if one were to consult a psychologist with an interest in parapsychology—might a faster resolution be reached.
The described event actually falls directly within the scope of parapsychology. However, for modern science to accept parapsychology as a science, all four friends would need to see the same unknown image simultaneously and in the same way. Moreover, the event would need to be repeatable at will. Parapsychology, on the other hand, evaluates each individual separately and examines variations in extrasensory perception.
Changes related to a person’s spiritual structure cannot occur identically in everyone at the same time. Even if all individuals were to see the same thing, it would still need to be repeatable and experienced in the same way by others. Therefore, such phenomena can never fully align with a scientific system based solely on the five senses.
Why Is Parapsychology Not a Scientific Discipline?
For parapsychology to be accepted as a complete scientific discipline, either science itself must be redefined, or current science must be able to make experiences beyond the five senses visible, audible, tangible, tasteable, and smellable for everyone. Unfortunately, this is not possible with current technological developments.
Note: In countries where the term parapsychology has entered academic literature, parapsychology research centers and laboratories are actively operating. There are many private and official institutions offering parapsychology education. Are these efforts truly made only out of curiosity? Are all these initiatives carried out for a field that is not accepted as science?
For years, intelligence agencies—most notably the CIA—benefited from individuals such as Uri Geller and many others. They researched parapsychological phenomena, telepathy, telekinesis, time, spiritual abilities, and the future—within a field they do not officially accept.
So, despite all this, is parapsychology a science? Can parapsychology be accepted as a scientific discipline? In terms of meaning, parapsychology simply refers to perception beyond ordinary limits. It can also be used to describe the current state of such phenomena.