Weird Science: An Expert Explains Ghosts, Voodoo, the UFO Conspiracy, and Other Paranormal Phenomena

by Michael White

Book Overview

In days of yore, humans believed that lightning bolts were evidence of the gods' wrath; today, of course, we know they are actually a discharge of atmospheric electricity.Might there also be reasonable, rational, scientifically based explanations for phenomena we currently attribute to the supernatural? Yes, says Michael White, author of books on subjects ranging from Stephen Hawking to genetic research to Isaac Asimov, as well as hundreds of articles...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380805057
• ISBN13: 9780380805051
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Quill
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Informative and Interesting

Michael White's 1999 "Weird Science" is a book about scientific and pseudo-scientific opinion on time travel, UFOs, ESP, ghosts, zombies, spontaneous human combustion, faith healing, cults, stigmata, miracles, out-of-body experiences, alchemy, and various other paranormal phenomena. White offers few answers, but gives a reasonably balanced discussion of observed data and plausible theories. He describes the poisons and psychoactive chemicals that create zombies, but says that alien abductions are fiction. He says that ghost sitings -- like alien abductions -- are only experienced at night. No reason is known, although White considers the possibility that ghostly apparitions are holographic scenes stored in some physical matrix. He doesn't put much stock in out-of-body or near-death experiences, considering them adequately explained by science. He accepts time travel (and precognition) only in the context of worm holes and massive spatial anomalies, and rejects telekinesis, poltergeists, and spoon bending because electromagnetic brain waves don't have sufficient power to move furniture around. (Non-electromagnetic energy might be channeled, but no such force has been persuasively demonstrated -- unless you accept miracles and the power of prayer. Still, a few PSI and chi phenomena do seem to be repeatable. Maybe one will yet win James Randi's $1M prize.) Quantum mechanics is still a mystery, and White doesn't rule out the possibility of multiple universes forking off from every [observed?] particle collision. He is less generous with Biblical miracles, claiming that the parting of the Red Sea was really traversal of a papyrus swamp known as the Reed Sea. Whatever, it's an interesting book. Not astonishing or inspiring, but worth a scan. Maybe physics is all there is, but it's fun to keep an open mind. Or to think about Robert Heinlein's 1959 story "All You Zombies," with one time traveller as his/her own mother, father, daughter, and mentor (p. 161). [Computists' Weekly.]

what can be? or, can it? what a wonderful work, this book is

This is one of those rare finds where the title means just what it says. Science is weird. If you have ever asked yourself the question, is there anyone out there? You just might be surprised at the answer. Mr. White, using a slightly bent and twisted sense of intelligent humor defines exactly how, or even if, these popular notions about space and life are possible. He answers, with pure logic, intelligence, and the latest knowledge, all of those theories advanced by every extra terrestial nut that has ever put forth the contents of another book without the slightest shred of proof behind it. He, further postulates, using scientific knowledge, exactly what it would take to beome life as we know it, or even life as we could not know it. He attacks each new subject with the same patience and logic necessary to make informed conclusions, not sell books or create hysteria. It is a pure pleasure to read exactly how we do, and how impossible sometimes it is, for what we might like to think is out there, to really be there. This book would b e worth three times the asking price. It is written in everyday terms, is extremely interesting, is fun and puts your mind into the stated scientific conclusions as if you were actually there. It is a total pleasure to read from cover to cover. I found it impossible to put down. I take my literary hat off to mr. White. I highly recommend this book for all who want to know why, and when you learn why and how, you want to learn when and why, which leads to learning if, which leads to . . . . ?