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GURNEY, EDMUND (1847—1888)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 733 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GURNEY, See also:EDMUND (1847—1888) , See also:English psychologist, was See also:born at Hersham, near See also:Walton-on-See also:Thames, on the 23rd of See also:March 1847. He was educated at See also:Blackheath and at Trinity See also:College, See also:Cambridge, where he took a high See also:place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship. His See also:work for the See also:schools was done, says his friend-F. W. H. See also:Myers, " in the intervals of his practice on the piano." Dissatisfied with his own executive skill as a musician, he wrote The See also:Power of See also:Sound (188o), an See also:essay on the See also:philosophy of See also:music. He then studied See also:medicine with no intention of practising, devoting himself to physics, See also:chemistry and See also:physiology. In 188o he passed the second M.B. Cambridge examination in the See also:science of the healing profession. These studies, and his See also:great logical See also:powers and See also:patience in the investigation of See also:evidence, he devoted to that outlying See also:field of See also:psychology which is called " Psychical See also:Research." He asked whether, as universal tradition declares, there is an unexplored region of human See also:faculty transcending the normal limitations of sensible knowledge. That there is such a region it was See also:part of the See also:system of See also:Hegel to declare, and the subject had been metaphysically treated by See also:Hartmann, See also:Schopenhauer, Du See also:Prel, See also:Hamilton and others, as the philosophy of the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney's purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and See also:ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the See also:staple of the evidence of metaphysicians.

The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a See also:

colour of truth to the See also:ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human See also:personality after the See also:death of the See also:body. Like See also:Joseph See also:Glanvill's, the natural See also:bent of Gurney's mind was sceptical. Both thought the current and traditional reports of supernormal occurrences suggestive and See also:worth investigating by the See also:ordinary methods of scientific observation, and See also:inquisition into evidence at first See also:hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the "seances "of professed spiritualistic " mediums " (1894-1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was See also:left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (See PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the See also:time, and experiments were made in " thought-transference " and See also:hypnotism. See also:Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes of Phantasms of the Living, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney's remarkable essay, Hallucinations. The See also:chief consequence was to furnish evidence for the See also:process called "See also:telepathy," involving the provisional See also:hypothesis that one human mind can affect another through no recognized channel of sense. The fact was supposed to be established by the experiments chronicled in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and it was argued that similar experiences occurred spontaneously, as, for example, in the many recorded instances of " deathbed wraiths " among civilized and See also:savage races.

(See also:

Tylor, See also:Primitive Culture, i. See also:chapter xi., especially pp. 449-450, 1873. See also:Lang, Making of See also:Religion, pp. 120-124, 1898.) The dying See also:man is supposed to convey the See also:hallucination of his presence as one living See also:person experimentally conveys his thought to another, by " thought - transference." Gurney's hypnotic experiments, marked by great exactness, patience and ingenuity, were under-taken in 1885-1888. Their tendency was, in Myers's words, " to prove—so far as any one operator's experience in this protean subject can be held to prove anything—that there is sometimes, in the See also:induction of hypnotic phenomena, some agency at work which is neither ordinary See also:nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor See also:suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject's mind." These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the See also:idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, "Hypnotism and Telepathy," Proceedings S. P. R. vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, See also:Janet, Richet, Hericourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with " the relation of the memory in the hypnotic See also:state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory." The result of Gurney's labours, cut See also:short by his See also:early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a See also:mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating See also:humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom See also:bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings.

In controversy " he delighted in replying with easy See also:

courtesy to attacks envenomed with that odium plus quam theologicum which the very allusion to a See also:ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire." In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, See also:good See also:temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author of Tertium Quid (1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one- sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at See also:Brighton on 23rd See also:June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine. (A.

End of Article: GURNEY, EDMUND (1847—1888)

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