Of Knowing and Not Knowing: Elvis, Haldane, and Excessive Self-Confidence

Everywhere and in all times people have reported sightings of apparitions and ghosts, hants and inexplicable happenings. These are dismissed by neurologists as results of glitches in neural functioning, by psychiatrists as manifestations of schizophrenia or of heightened suggestibility, by physicists as consequent to curious refractions of light. But the explanations are usually asserted instead of substantiated. I wonder.

My impression is that a great many people have had experiences that do not fit the scientific world view, but do not speak of them for fear of being thought mad. A few are not so reticent. JBS Haldane, the noted geneticist, once “went into his home and saw himself sitting in his own chair smoking his favorite pipe. ‘Irregular’ was his word for the phenomenon, ‘indigestion’ his explanation. He walked across the room and sat down on his own image.”* “Indigestion” of course makes not the slightest sense.

Examples abound, quietly. A woman of my acquaintance, perfectly sane, recounts having watched a window in a room at night open by itself. My father told me of driving one night with a friend in hill country, whereupon a large truck appeared suddenly over a crest, soundless, lights blazing, too close to avoid. They drove through it without effect. “Did you see what I saw?” asked my father of his friend. “Yes,” replied the friend, shaken. They did not, he said, tell anyone.


Many people have told me of having had premonitions, as for example that someone was going to die under certain circumstances, after which it happened. Others tell of having felt a sudden, terrible fear, as though something immensely evil were nearby. Most have experienced what we call déjà vu. The plausible reason is always ready to hand: chemical imbalances, the effect of stress, fragmentary memories of similar events, what have you.












I reflected that it probably thought it understood its world, which consisted of power supplies, magnetic-core memory, address buses, and the arcana of assembly-language programming. I’d estimate that humanity just about knows where the potato chips are.

*JBS: The Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane, by Ronald Clark, p.111

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