An Experiment with Time

J. W. Dunne

Description

A book by the British aeronautical engineer J. W. Dunne (1875-1949) on the subjects of precognitive dreams and the nature of time. First published in March 1927, it was very widely read, and his ideas were promoted by several other authors, in particular by J. B. Priestley. He published three sequels; The Serial Universe, The New Immortality, and Nothing Dies.

Sujets

• Spirituality
• Dreams

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644683
• Langue: English

Extrait

An Experiment with Time
by J. W. Dunne

First published in 1927
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.





AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME


by J. W. DUNNE
INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION
An Experiment with Time was published first inMarch of 1927. It has passed through two editionsand a reprint, without any substantial alteration. Forthis (third) edition I have thought it advisable tooverhaul the book from beginning to end. I haveinserted about eighty pages of new matter (includinga new chapter, XI a ), and I have done my best tosimplify still further the arguments in the analyticalchapters. The most important addition, however, isAppendix III, which deals with a new method ofassessing the value of the evidence obtained. Thisamounts, in effect, to a new experiment of very greatpotency.
The general reader will find that the book demandsfrom him no previous knowledge of science, mathematics,philosophy, or psychology. It is considerablyeasier to understand than are, say, the rules of ContractBridge. The exception is the remainder of thisIntroduction. That has been written entirely forspecialists, and is in no way a sample of what is tocome.
Multi-dimensional worlds of the kind beloved bymystics, and dating back to the days of the Indian philosopher Patañjali, have never appealed to me.To introduce a new dimension as a mere hypothesis( i.e. , without logical compulsion) is the most extravagantproceeding possible. It could be justified onlyby the necessity of explaining some insistent factwhich would appear, on any other hypothesis, miraculous.And a new and still more marvellous miraclewould need to be discovered before we could ventureto consider the possibility of yet another dimension.Even then the major difficulty would remain to beovercome. For why should the, say, five-dimensionalobserver of a five-dimensional world perceive thatworld as extended in only three dimensions?
The universe which develops as a consequence ofwhat is known to philosophers as the 'Infinite Regress'is entirely free from the foregoing objections.
This 'Infinite Regress', I may explain to the uninitiated,is a curious logical development whichappears immediately one begins to study 'self-consciousness'or 'will' or 'time'. A self-conscious personis one 'who knows that he knows'; a willer is one who,after all the motives which determine choice havebeen taken into account, can choose between those motives ; and time is——but this book is about that.
The usual philosophic method of dealing with anyregress is to dismiss it, with the utmost promptitude,as something 'full of contradictions and obscurities'.Now, at the outset of my own perplexing experiences,I supposed that this attitude was justified. But theglaring regress in the notion of 'time' was a thingwhich had intrigued me since I was a child of nine (I had asked my nurse about it). The problem hadrecurred to me at intervals as I grew older. I hadtroubles enough without this one, and I wanted itout of the way. Finally, I set to work to discover what were the contradictions and where were the obscurities.I spent two years hunting for the supposed fallacy.None, I think, can have subjected this regress to afiercer, more varied or more persistent attack. Theseassaults, to my great surprise, failed. Slowly and reluctantlyI acknowledged defeat. And, at the end, Ifound myself confronted with the astonishing factsthat the regressions of 'consciousness', 'will' and'time' were perfectly logical, perfectly valid, and thetrue foundations of all epistemology.
It was not, however, until years later that it dawnedupon me wherein lay the full significance of anyregress. A regress is merely a mathematical series.And that is merely the expression of some relation.But the relation thus expressed is one which does notbecome apparent until one has studied the second term of the series concerned. Now, the second term of theregress of time brings to light relations of considerableimportance to mankind. It is the existence of theserelations that the regress asserts. But the informationthus disguised is entirely lost if we confine our studyto the opening term alone. Yet that is what mankindhas been doing.
As soon as I realized this I sat down and wrote thebook. It contains the first analysis of the Time Regressever completed. Incidentally, it contains the firstscientific argument for human immortality. This, Imay say, was entirely unexpected. Indeed, for a largepart of the time that I was working, I believed thatI was taking away man's last hope of survival in agreater world.
J. W. Dunne
March 15th, 1934
EXTRACT FROM A NOTE ON THE SECOND EDITION
It has been rather surprising to discover how manypersons there are who, while willing to concede thatwe habitually observe events before they occur, supposethat such prevision may be treated as a minorlogical difficulty, to be met by some trifling readjustmentin one or another of our sciences or by theaddition of a dash of transcendentalism to our metaphysics.It may well be emphasized that no tinkeringor doctoring of that kind could avail in the smallestdegree. If prevision be a fact, it is a fact which destroysabsolutely the entire basis of all our pastopinions of the universe. Bear in mind, for example,that the foreseen event may be avoided. What, then,is its structure?
I would suggest that we are lucky, on the whole, tobe able to replace our vanished foundations by asystem so simple as the 'serialism' described in thisbook.
Anyone who hopes to discover an explanation evensimpler would be well advised to examine his ownstatement of the difficulty to be faced—viz., that we'observe events before they occur'. Let him ask himselfto what time-order does that word ' before ' refer.Certainly not to the primary time-order in which the occurring events are arranged! He may see then thathis statement (and every expression of his problemmust bear that same general form) is in itself a directassertion that Time is serial.
If Time be serial, the universe as described in termsof Time must be serial, and the descriptions, to beaccurate, must be similarly serial—as suggested inChapter XXV. If that be the case, the sooner webegin to recast physics and psychology on such lines,the sooner may we hope to reckon with our presentdiscontinuities and set out upon a new and sounderpathway to knowledge.
J. W. Dunne

PART I

DEFINITIONS
CHAPTER I
It might, perhaps, be advisable to say here—sincethe reader may have been glancing ahead—thatthis is not a book about 'occultism', and not a bookabout what is called 'psycho-analysis'.
It is merely the account of an extremely cautiousreconnaissance in a rather novel direction—an accountpresented in the customary form of a narrativeof the actual proceedings concerned, coupled witha statement of the theoretical considerations believedto be involved—and the dramatic, seemingly bizarre character of the early part of the story need occasionthe reader no misgivings. He will readily understandthat the task which had to be accomplished at thatstage was the 'isolating' (to borrow a term from thechemists) of a single, basic fact from an accumulationof misleading material. Any account of any such processof separation must contain, of course, some descriptionof the stuff from which the separation waseffected. And such stuff very often is, and in thiscase very largely was—rubbish.
There does not appear to be anything in these pagesthat anyone is likely to find difficult to follow, providedthat he avoids, in Chapters XVII, XIX, XXI, XXIII, XXIV and XXVI, those occasional paragraphsenclosed within square brackets which havebeen written more particularly for specialists. AndPart V may require reading twice. But there are afew commonplace semi-technical expressions whichwill crop up now and again; and it is always possiblethat other people may be accustomed to attach tothese words meanings rather different from those whichthe present writer is hoping to convey. Any such misunderstandingwould result, obviously, in our beingat cross-purposes throughout the greater part of thebook. Hence it might be advisable for us to come tosome sort of rough preliminary agreement, not as tohow these terms ought rightly to be employed, but asto what they are to be regarded as meant to mean inthis particular volume. By so doing we shall, at anyrate, avoid that worst of all irritations to a reader—atext repeatedly interrupted by references to footnoteor glossary.
That the agreement will be entirely one-sided willmake it all the easier to achieve.
CHAPTER II
Briefly, then:
Let us suppose that you are entertaining a visitorfrom some country where the inhabitants are all bornblind; and that you are trying to make your guestunderstand what you mean by 'seeing'. You discover,we will further assume, that the pair of youhave, fortunately, this much in common: You areboth thoroughly conversant with the meanings of allthe technical expressions employed in the physicalsciences.
Using this ground of mutual understanding, youendeavour to explain your point. You describe how,in that little camera which we call the 'eye', certainelect