Why Imagining "Cognition All the Way Down" Does Nothing to Explain Morphogenesis

About two years ago biologist Michael Levin authored (with philosopher Daniel C. Dennett) an essay with the title "Cognition All the Way Down." In the essay Levin and Dennett start out by following some of the worst speech customs of materialist biologists.  But then the two start pushing something sounding different from the usual materialist claptrap: a novel-sounding idea of "cognition all the way down."  Suddenly, out of the blue, we read the following: "Thinking of parts of organisms as agents, detecting opportunities and trying to accomplish missions is risky, but the payoff in insight can be large."

Were Levin and Dennett actually trying to suggest that cells are agents? It's hard to tell, because we then read them write as if what they're talking about are agents that aren't really agents. It's just the kind of language misuse we would expect from the kind of guys who frequently talk about the "selection that isn't really selection": so-called natural selection, which isn't really selection at all. Selection means an act of choice by a conscious agent, but proponents of so-called natural selection are not talking about any such thing when they refer to "natural selection." 

The paragraph below makes rather clear that what Levin and Dennett are talking about are "agents that aren't really agents," and "selves that aren't really selves," namely unconscious things that will be misleadingly referred to as agents or selves:

"Notice how ‘you’ can be a single cell or a multicellular organism – or an organ or tissue in a multicellular organism – and still be gifted with informational competences composed out of the basic ‘nuts and bolts’ of information-processing structures. Agents, in this carefully limited perspective, need not be conscious, need not understand, need not have minds, but they do need to be structured to exploit physical regularities that enable them to use information (following the laws of computation) to perform tasks, beginning with the fundamental task of self-preservation, which involves not just providing themselves with the energy needed to wield their tools, but the ability to adjust to their local environments in ways that advance their prospects."

The title "Cognition All the Way Down" refers to cognition, but what Levin and Dennett refer to in the article is not really cognition at all. When I do a Google search for "cognition" the first result I get is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses." Levin and Dennett are not referring to any such thing in this article. When they refer to cognition, they seem to refer to some "cognition that isn't really cognition," and when they use the word "know" they seem to refer to some "knowing that isn't really knowing."  And when the two refer to cells as "cognitive systems," they seem to mean "cognitive systems that are not really cognitive systems." 

In a later essay by Michael Levin co-authored with Rafael Yuste entitled "Modular Cognition," there is the obtuse claim that evolution hacked its way to intelligence. Because hacking is an activity carried out by intelligent agents, you cannot explain the origin of intelligence by claiming that before it existed there was hacking.  In the essay Michael Levin continues to use weird language in which words such as "agent" and "cognition" and "know" are abused and distorted.  We have a very strange diagram entitled "Tiers of Biological Cognition," in which cells and protein networks are included.  "Cognition" is a useful word in the English language, and it is an abuse of language to start using it to refer to microscopic low-level things that the vast majority of scientists believe to be no more cognitive than a stone. It is also an abuse of language when the authors state that "networks of cells began to work as a society" during the morphogenesis leading from a single cell to a full-grown baby.  A society is a group of conscious, understanding minds, which cells are not. 

In the last paragraph of the essay, Levin and Yuste make what seems to be a claim that they're not just being metaphorical. They state, "With that in mind, we call on biologists to embrace the intentional stance: treating circuits, cells and cellular processes as competent problem-solving agents with agendas, and the capacity to detect and store information – no longer a metaphor, but a serious hypothesis made plausible by the emergence of intelligent behaviour in phylogenetic history."  But this seems like a quarterback's pump-fake, because they seem very much to be using terms such as "problem-solving agents" and "agendas" in a purely metaphorical sense.  They seem to be referring to agents that aren't really agents, agendas that aren't really agendas, and intentions that aren't really intentions. 

But it certainly could be possible for some thinker to propose some theory similar to "cognition all the way down" without using metaphorical or tricky language that fools us and confuses us by talking about agents that aren't really agents and intentions that aren't really intentions and cognition that isn't really cognition.  Sticking his neck out and proposing an idea that would seem very heretical to the average biologist, a thinker could maintain that protein molecules are literally conscious agents with real lives and minds of their own, and that cells are literally conscious agents with real lives and minds of their own. Would such a radical proposal help explain the great mystery of morphogenesis, the mystery of how a newly fertilized speck-sized ovum is able to progress to become a full-sized human body (something a billion times more organized than that ovum)?  No, it would not. 

Let us first consider how great is the mystery of morphogenesis. To explain the magnitude of the mystery,  I must first explain why a common conception of the origin of a full human body is very much mythical.  That mythical conception (deplorably promoted by many biologists for ideological reasons) is the idea that a human body arises because a body blueprint is read from DNA. DNA contains no such blueprint for building human bodies, nor does it contain any recipe or program for building any of the organs or cells of a human body.  The only information in DNA is very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids belong in particular protein molecules. DNA does not specify how to make a human body, and does not even specify how to make any organ or any cell of a human body.  Humans have about 200 types of cells, and DNA does not specify how to make any one of these cells. DNA does not even specify how to make one of the organelles that are the building blocks of cells. 

So the idea that a human body arises from a blueprint for such a body found in DNA is purely mythical.  At the end of the post here, you can read quotes by more than 20 distinguished science authorities (mostly biologists) stating that DNA is neither a blueprint nor a recipe nor a program for building a human.  If such quotes do not convince you, you need merely consider the elementary fact that blueprints don't build things. Complex things get built with the help of blueprints only because there are conscious blueprint readers that read blueprints and get ideas about how to act to construct things.  Within the womb of a human being, there is nothing like any conscious agent capable of reading and acting on incredibly complex instructions for building a human body if they existed.  So even if there was a blueprint for making a human in DNA, that would not explain the origin of a full human body; for there would be nothing below the neck capable of reading and understanding such instructions for the incredibly complex job of building the hierarchically organized and immensely dynamic reality of a human body.  Blueprints don't build things. 

So the mystery of morphogenesis is one that is currently a thousand miles over the heads of today's biologists.  When a biologist mutters something about DNA to try to make it sound like he understands the progression from a speck-sized ovum to the vast organization of a full-grown human body,  he is like some elementary school student trying to persuade you that he understands the Second World War because he has memorized the year it started and the year it ended. 

The organization of a human body is profoundly hierarchical. Subatomic particles are organized into atoms, which are organized into molecules such as amino acids, which are organized into peptides and polypeptide chains, which are organized into protein molecules with elaborate three-dimensional structures, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, with organ systems and a skeletal system being organized into a full human body.  We certainly cannot explain such a marvel of hierarchical organization by referring to DNA (or its component genes), one reason being that DNA does not contain any information structured in a very hierarchical way. 

Would it lessen this great mystery if we imagined conscious protein molecules and conscious cells? No, it would not.  The first reason it would not is that we would not explain the origin of cells by imagining "cognition all the way down." A cell cannot be imagined as merely some random merging of protein molecules that clung to each other. A cell is a fantastically complex orderly arrangement of protein molecules, one that is specialized for some particular task in the body, and one that is often somehow capable of the wondrous feat of self-replication.  Cells are so complex that they have been compared to factories. Each cell type requires a specific and extremely complex organization of millions of protein molecules, in order for the cell to do its job in the human body, and in order for the cell to be able to reproduce. 

Let us imagine conscious protein molecules. Could such molecules somehow know or figure out how to make a cell? No, this would be like thinking that building materials in a Home Depot (such as bricks and pipes and wood planks) could somehow figure out how to make a ten-story building suitable for housing humans.  If you were a protein molecule floating about in a body,  you would know nothing about the incredibly complex task of building a functional cell, one capable of self-reproduction.  Living your "protein molecule life" you would also know nothing about any such complex topics as cells or the human body or the type of cells that humans need to function on planet Earth.  If you and some other protein molecules were to join together for companionship or mutual self-preservation, the resulting agglomeration would never be a functional human cell.  The chance of such random combination of protein molecules leading to a functional or self-reproducing human cell (of a type that would be useful in a human body)  would be like the chance of a million random keystrokes producing a brilliant book that would make the best-seller lists. 

So we cannot explain how human beings get about 200 types of functional cells by imagining conscious protein molecules inside the body.  "Cognition all the way down" does not explain the origin of cells. But what about the origin of organs and organ systems in a human body? Would we help to explain such things by imagining that cells in the body are conscious?

The answer is no. To help explain why,  let me raise a question: which is it that appears within a human womb during pregnancy:

(1) A child's body that is optimized for survival inside the womb?

(2) Or, a child's body that is optimized for survival outside of the womb, in an environment radically different from the environment of the womb, a body having a whole set of features and appendages that are useless inside the womb, but useful outside of the womb?

The correct answer to this question, of course, is (2).  Consider a male newborn baby. He has the following features:

(1) arms that are very useful outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(2) legs that are useful for walking around outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(3) eyes that are useful for seeing things outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (where everything is so dark that nothing can be seen even if you have eyes);

(4) ears that are useful for seeing things outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb;

(5) a penis and testicles that will one day be useful for reproducing outside of a womb, but are useless inside a womb;

(6) a mouth that is useful for eating and speaking outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (where a developing baby gets all nutrients through an umbilical cord); 

(7) a nose and lungs that are useful for smelling and breathing outside of a womb, but useless inside a womb (babies take their first breath after being born).

If we imagine conscious cells inside the womb, we have no explanation as to why such conscious agents would ever band together to make a human body that is optimized for living not within a womb but in the utterly different environment outside of the womb. Such cells would know nothing about existence outside of the womb and would know nothing about the requirements of organisms outside of the womb.  We cannot imagine any leap of creativity or imagination in such cells that would cause such cells to assemble into a human body optimized not for living inside the womb, but for a totally different environment outside of the womb. Similarly, if there were people living on some extraterrestrial planet perpetually covered in very thick clouds, and such people had no knowledge of outer space or any bodies outside of their world, such beings would never build some kind of rocket like the Apollo 11 system, one capable of reaching outer space, traveling through outer space, and also capable of landing a spacecraft on the surface of a body very much smaller than their own planetary body.  

If cells in the human body were conscious, this would not at all explain how cells end up in the right place for there to arise a gigantically organized human body.  Such a cell would also lack any idea of what was the right place for it to go to, for the cell would not understand such grand ideas as human anatomy, and also would not understand what proper role it should play in such a grand scheme.  A conscious cell would also lack any senses, meaning it could never use visual information to navigate to the right place.  The cell would be like a blind, dumb and speechless man stumbling around in New York City, one that didn't know where its house or apartment building was. 

So the fanciful notion of "cognition all the way down" is worthless in explaining morphogenesis. Such an idea is of no value in explaining how inside a mother's womb there occurs the origin of any of the 200 types of cells in the human body, nor is such an idea of any value in explaining how the large-scale organization of a human body happens inside the womb. 

The fact that a biologist (Levin) has proposed an idea to explain morphogenesis that has no value in explaining it reminds us that our biologists are very much lost in the woods trying to explain morphogenesis.  The progression from the tiny speck of a newly fertilized ovum to the vast functional complexity and hierarchical  organization of a human body is a miracle of progression a thousand miles over the heads of our biologists.  Their failure to understand morphogenesis makes a mockery of all claims by biologists that they understand the origin of the human race. He who does not understand morphogenesis cannot credibly claim to understand the origin of the human species.  It makes no sense whatsoever to claim that you understand the origin of a whole species when you cannot even explain the physical origin of a single full-grown organism in that species.  Biologists understand neither the physical origin of any adult body nor the origin of any adult mind.  For reasons discussed at great length in the many posts here, the "it's all just your brain" claim biologists offer to try to explain the mind is as much of an "ivory tower old wives' tale" as the "DNA did it" myth they sometimes advance to explain the origin of a human body. 

The ball is getting bigger every decade

They Seemed to Ghost-Learn of Someone's Death

In the 2008 book After Death Communication by Emma Heathcote-James, we read on page 38 an account by Karen Browne saying that she saw her grandfather in her bedroom at 6:00 AM, saying that he was going away. She went back to sleep, and discovered in the morning that the same grandfather had died. Later she found the grandfather had unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack about 6:00 AM. 

On page 41 of the same book we have an account by a Mrs. Collins who was watching a Shirley Temple movie at a movie theater when something very strange happened.  Suddenly she could see the image of her cousin Beryl where the screen had been. It was 8:00 PM. Later in the evening she found that her cousin Beryl died around 8:00 PM on the same evening. 

In the same book on page 50 we read of a Mrs. Wyborn who saw a "very bright light at the foot of the bed and experienced a 'feeling of inexplicable happiness and well-being.' " She later learned that her mother had died "at the very time she had the experience." Another account on the same page tells us of a similar event, one involving a mysterious blue light seen at the time of someone's death elsewhere. 

In his 1985 book  Life First Class! Kenneth Thurston Hurst states that he suddenly awoke at 1:30 AM to see his mother, who lived 3000 miles away. He says, "She faded away." The next morning he received a telephone call telling him that his mother had died at 7:30 AM -- a time that was the same as the 1:30 apparition (given the differences in time zones). 

In her 2005 book Beyond These Four Walls,  Mary Rose Occhino states on pages 45-47 that her father saw an apparition of his mother in a mirror when he was shaving at 7:30 AM. He described the apparition to his wife, saying he did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. The wife then got a call from a Lily who said that the same woman (the father's mother) had appeared to a Rene to say goodbye. Upon arriving at a hospital where his mother had been for some time with a serious illness, the father was told his mother had died about 7:30, which was the same time the mirror apparition was seen. Apparently an apparition of the mother was seen by two witnesses. 

In an 1863 book we read this:

"Mrs.  Crawford,  in  the  'Metropolitan  Magazine'  in  1836,  tells us  that  the  then  Lord  Chedworth  was  a  man  who  suffered deeply  from  doubts  of  the  existence  of  the  soul  in  another world ;  and  that  he  had  a  friend,  very  dear  to  him,  as  sceptical as  himself.  Whilst  one  morning  relating  to  his  niece.  Miss Wright,  at  breakfast,  that  his  friend  appeared  to  him  the night  before,  exactly  as  he  appeared  in  life,  and  told  him  he died  that  night  at  eight  o'clock,  and  that  there  was  another world,  and  a  righteous  God  who  judgeth  all — and  whilst Miss  Wright  was  ridiculing  the  idea  of  the  apparition — a groom  rode  up  the  avenue  bringing  a  letter  announcing  the fact  of  his  friend's  sudden  death  at  the  time  stated  by  the spirit.  Mrs.  Crawford  adds,  ' The  effect  it  had  upon  the mind  of  Lord  Chedworth  was  as  happy  as  it  was  permanent ; all  his  doubts  were  at  once  removed,  and  for  ever. ' "

James S. Pollack wrote his extremely interesting book Dead and Gone around 1874, at a time before the Society for Psychical Research had clarified how common are so-called "crisis apparitions," in which an apparition of someone is seen when such a person suffers great danger, great injury or death.  On page 198 Pollack tells us this about someone he knew well: 

"A person well known to me, told me that she was staying in the house of an aunt, with her two cousins. One of them one morning was low-spirited and moody. At last, going up to her aunt, she burst into tears, and said, ' I saw grandfather last night.'  ' Nonsense, child, you know he is not here ; don't be fanciful.'  ' But I did see him.'  ' Then you were dreaming.'  ' Aunt, I was quite awake, and he came in at the window and stood at the foot of my bed : he looked just as he always looks, but I was frightened, and covered my head over with the blanket. When I looked up again he was still there, but the third time he was gone.' The grandfather died, as they heard afterwards, just at that very hour when she saw him."

 A wraith is defined as "a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death." The fact that such a word exists is testimony to how common it is to see an apparition at about the time when someone died. A writer named William Henry Harrison records getting a letter from a John Carson of London who states that a James Sutherland saw a wraith not just once but twice:

"A few years ago, Mr. James Sutherland, when in my employ in Melbourne as clerk, came into the shop from the back yard ; he was so much agitated that he was asked if anything was the matter with him. He replied, ' Yes, I have just seen Loutit's wraith.' The following morning the report reached Melbourne from Geelong, forty miles distant, that a holiday party pleasuring on the Bay had upset their boat. Mr. Loutit, a bank clerk, was drowned. The accident happened at the time Mr. Sutherland saw his intimate friend's appearance at 11 AM...The same gentleman, while in charge of a sheep- station for me, went to an out-station with two men to count the sheep looked after by a man and his wife. The party arrived in the evening and found the woman very ill, so they camped out some little distance from the hut. At daylight, one of the men asked Mr. Sutherland if he would go and see how the woman was. He answered, 'She is dead, I have just seen her wraith.' The man went to the hut, and found that the woman had just expired."

In the same book we have this account of a wraith:

"In the year 1857 I sailed as apprentice in the ship 'Tinto,' of Bridgewater, from Hull to Bombay. Our second mate (to whom what I narrate occurred) was a grave, and, for a sailor, unusually consistently serious and religious young fellow, of some twenty-four years — one who in several voyages with him, I never knew to even distort the truth...When I went into the berth my friend was, to my great surprise, leaning against the door, looking as white as a sheet, and apparently hardly saved from falling by holding on to the bunk. He appeared unable to reply to my queries at first, but on my fetching him a drop of spirits from the saloon he rallied, and then told me, that immediately on entering his cabin, he saw his father as plainly as he saw me, dressed as usual, standing in the middle of the floor. 'I knew in a moment,' said he, 'that it could not be himself, but was his spirit — and I know he is dead.' ' How long did he remain ? asked I. 'For about a minute,' he replied — ' in fact, until I heard you coming, and then he seemed to melt away suddenly. I was thinking of nothing less than him when I came in, for I thought of nothing but that ugly bank of clouds' — (a cloud bank on our port-beam that portended a squall all our watch). We took the exact time in writing when he saw the appearance ; it was, by the ship's chronometer, 8 minutes past 12 midnight, the 18th August (or rather 19th properly) 1857. Soon after reaching Bombay, a letter from home informed him that (computing for the difference of longitude) at that very day, hour, and minute, his father had died in his house at Patrington, passionately longing with his last breath that he might be allowed to see his son."

A nineteenth century author of quite a few books stated that he had often heard his mother tell the story of seeing her brother appear to her wordlessly and then leave.  Sensing something very eerie about the appearance, she soon found that the brother had been killed by a knife at about the same time she saw him.  A more famous author (John Henry Newman) gives the following account about a Catholic saint:

"It was a calm night, and suddenly a great light was poured down from heaven, which absorbed all the darkness, till the night became even more radiant than the natural day....While the Saint stood gazing on this vision he saw a fiery sphere traversing the brightness, and ascending up to heaven. It was borne by angels, and in it St. Benedict discerned what he recognized to be the soul of Germanus, bishop of Capua...Forthwith St. Benedict dispatched some one from the neighboring town to the city of Capua, where he learned that the holy Germanus had departed to a better life at the very hour at which the Saint had been favored with the vision."

The poet Byron stated that he heard a ship's captain say that at night he saw an apparition of the captain's brother, dripping with water.  The captain said the apparition vanished. The ship captain later found that the brother had drowned at a distant location, on the same night the apparition was seen. 

A nineteenth century work gives this account of a wraith:

"Prebendary Salter, A.M., curator of the son of the late Bishop Fisher, asserted to various acquaintances that he saw his father's apparition. His wife, awakened by her crying child, previously beheld the apparition at her bed's foot. Roused from sleep by Mrs. Salter, he perceived his father's form and dress. Both particularly noticed the peculiar usual plaiting of the shirt. In a short time a special messenger arrived to announce his decease."

In another nineteenth century work we have this account of an apparition of a church official seen by a famous queen who was not aware at the time that the official had just died: 

"The king was at Avignon on December 23, 1574, when Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, died there. The queen (Catherine de Medicis) retired to rest earlier than usual, having present at the time, among other persons of rank, the King of Navarre, the Archbishop of Lyons, the ladies de Retz, Lignerolles and Sauves, two of whom confirm this narrative. As she was saying ' good-night,' she leaped on her bed, put her hands in front of her face, and, with a violent cry, appealed for help to all who were present, pointing out to them the cardinal close to her bed who had held out his hand to her. She cried out several times : 'Monsieur le Cardinal, I have only to do with you.'  The king of Navarre sent one of his gentlemen to the cardinal's room, who reported that he had expired at that moment."

An account such as the one above is always inferior as evidence to an account written by the person who saw the apparition. That is why in my many posts about apparition sightings listed below, I have always tried to get the first-hand accounts in some book or paper written by the person who saw the apparition.  We have such an account in the book Burma Past and Present by Albert Fythce. On page 177 Albert tells us this:  

"A remarkable incident occurred to me at Maulmain, which made a deep impression upon my imagination. Believers in the supernatural are laughed at in these days of material science ; ghost stories are especially derided ; and yet, whilst I was residing at Maulmain I saw a ghost with my own eyes in broad daylight, of which I could make an affidavit. I had an old schoolfellow, who was afterwards a college friend, with whom I had lived in the closest intimacy. Years, however, passed away without our seeing each other. One morning I had just got out of bed, and was dressing myself, when suddenly my old friend entered the room.

I greeted him warmly ; told him to call for a cup of tea in the verandah ; and promised to be with him immediately.

I dressed myself in all haste, and went out into the verandah, but found no one there. I could not believe my eyes. I called to the sentry, who was posted at the front of the house, but he had seen no strange gentleman that morning. The servants also declared that no such person had entered the house. I was certain I had seen my friend. I was not thinking about him at the time ; yet I was not taken by surprise, as steamers and other vessels were frequently arriving at Maulmain. A fortnight afterwards, news arrived that he had died, six hundred miles off, about the very time I saw him at Maulmain. It is useless to comment upon this story. To this day I have never doubted that I really saw the ghost of my deceased friend."

According to her account here, in 1985 one day Kathleen Belanger had a strange feeling of dread. Later that day she saw her son with a big grin on his face. She was about to ask him a question when she suddenly found he was no longer there. Later that day she was notified that the same son had died in a logging accident. 

These are just additional examples of a phenomenon often reported in the West: that of someone seeing an apparition of a person he did not know had died, and later finding out that the person had died on the same day, often at the very hour the apparition was seen. You can read about  hundreds of such "wraith cases" by reading my posts below:

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

WhyTranshumanism Is Not Credible

Transhumanism is something that may be called a philosophy or a philosophical movement or a social movement or a thought trend. It can be called a creed, and it is even sometimes called a new religion. Transhumanism is basically the idea that it will be possible before long to use technology or science to make radical improvements in the fundamental nature of humans.  The more modest claims of transhumanists are that before long it will be possible to very significantly extend the human life span and significantly expand human intelligence. There are other more extravagant claims made by transhumanists, such as:

(1) The claim that humans will be able to achieve some huge increase in intelligence or thinking speed by modifying their brains or linking their brains directly to computers;

(2) The claim that humans will be able to achieve some huge increase in their knowledge by electronically uploading knowledge into their brains, or some similar process that will allow you to learn almost instantly skills or knowledge that would otherwise take months of school work or reading;

(3) The claim that humans may be able to achieve some kind of electronic immortality in which they upload their minds into some computer system or some "cloud" of computer systems;

(4) The claim that there will be some "Singularity" that involves computers vastly exceeding humans in intelligence, and that humans will be able to radically transform their minds by somehow linking with such super-intelligent computers.

A goofy gospel

The word "transhumanism" was coined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. He used it as the title of a brief essay  which sounded rather like support for the discredited idea of eugenics, with mention of humans becoming "managing directors" of their evolution.  Little use was made of the term "transhumanism" until the rise of Silicon Valley, the Internet and high-powered personal computers. Then quite a few people in Silicon Valley started speculating about the idea of using computers to radically enhance humanity.  The software industry is largely about upgrades: if you have a software startup, you start with a version 1.0 and then maybe every six months or so you issue an upgrade, so that a user may end up with version 1.5, version 2.0, version 3.0, and so forth.  It is no big surprise that in an industry so centered around technological upgrades we would have people speculating about doing technological upgrades of the human species. 

Among the biggest apostles of transhumanism (or people whose work is cited by transhumanists) have been the following:

• Eric Drexler, who since 1987 has predicted that self-replicating microscopic robots called nanobots would revolutionize the world, an idea that still seems in the category of science fiction;
• Ray Kurzweil, a person who made quite a few predictions about what we would have in 2019 that did not prove true (as discussed here);
• Nick Bostrom, a transhumanist apostle also famous for originating the pernicious speculation that humans are merely part of a computer simulation set up by extraterrestrials (he founded a World Transhumanist Assocation);
• Elon Musk, a very successful hi-tech figure who has claimed that we are probably living in a computer simulation.

Musk's silly reasoning to back up this claim was as follows:

"If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur. Therefore, we are most likely in a simulation, because we exist."

Let me explain why transhumanism is mostly bunk. The most notable claims of transhumanists are based on an uncritical acceptance of unjustified claims that brains are the storage place of human memory and that brains are the source of human intelligence.  Such claims are outdated old belief dogmas of a conformist belief community of neuroscientists.  Such claims are not backed up by evidence, and are are actually in conflict with many facts that have been established by neuroscientists themselves in recent decades. 

Although they have the very bad habit of constantly making groundless claims that brains explain minds, scientists have no understanding of how brains could create or be responsible for any of the most important aspects of the human mind. Specifically:

•  The idea of a single unified self arising from billions of different brain cells randomly firing in two separate hemispheres makes no sense. It is now widely confessed even in mainstream media that no neuroscientist has ever yet given a credible account of how neurons could produce any such thing as consciousness or self-hood.
• No neuroscientist has ever given a credible account of how neurons could produce conceptual understanding or abstract ideas. 
• Far from resembling an information storage system for storing learned data, the brain has none of the hallmarks of such systems. 
• No one has ever presented a credible theory of how human learned information and conceptual information and episodic memories could ever be translated into neural states or synapse states, and no examination of neurons or synapses has shown the slightest evidence that they store such information. 
• Brains seem to have nothing like a mechanism for reading or writing memories. 
• Information storage occurs through the repetition of symbolic tokens. In a book these tokens are letters (characters). In a computer these tokens are massively repeated binary numbers such as 1 and 0. No one has ever discovered any non-genetic learned information stored in any animal brain, nor has anyone discovered any of the massive token repetition that would exist if brains stored memories.  No one has ever been able to read the slightest bit of learned information from the brain of someone who recently died. 
• Scientists lack any credible explanation of how a brain could instantly retrieve a memory.  The brain lacks any of the things that allow instant memory to be retrieved in books and computers, things such as sorting, addressing and indexing.  

Such items are mainly just shortfalls in which neuroscientists have failed to produce the type of evidence they would need to produce to substantiate claims that brains produce minds and that brains store memories.  There are also many known facts and discoveries that discredit such claims, including the following:

• Common facts of human experience (such as our ablilty to instantly form permanent new memories) stand in opposition to widely spread but groundless claims that brains store memories through slow mechanisms such as "synapse strengthening." 
• The average lifetime of proteins in synapses (the reputed storage place of memories) is less than two weeks, 1000 times shorter than the maximum length of time that humans can remember things (more than 50 years). There is no place in the brain that is a credible site for the storage of memories that can last for decades. 
• Human minds and memories are well preserved even when half of a brain is surgically removed to stop severe epileptic seizures, which completely contradicts the claim that the human brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of memories. 
• There are many case histories of people with good minds and average or above-average intelligence even when almost all of their brains were destroyed by disease. 
• Inside the human brain there exists many types of severe signal noise which should make it impossible for the human brain to be the explanation for memory recall when can occur almost flawlessly in many people, and accurate human calculation such as occurs in savants.  Humans such as Hamlet actors who recite 1480 lines without error, Wagnerian tenors who perform similar recitation feats without error and religious memorists who perform even more impressive feats (such as remembering 5000+ lines) are all performing feats of recall that should be impossible given a brain in which each synapse transmits information with a reliability of 50% or less. 
• Because signal transmission is relatively slow in synapses and dendrites, human brains should be way too slow to explain instant human recall and very fast numerical calculation such as we see in mathematical savants. Some "math savant" humans with "hypercalculia" (such as Zerah Colburn and Jacques Inaudi) can or could do very complex and accurate math calculations "in their heads" at extremely high speeds. While some signals (such as pain signals and sensory signals) can travel at fast speeds, the cumulative effect of a huge number of synaptic delays (the delay caused when signals have to jump across chemical synapses) should mean that the average brain signal moves too slowly to allow for very fast thinking. 
• Abundant evidence for human extrasensory perception (evidence which has been systematically gathered and published for almost 200 years) suggests the human mind must involve something far beyond the brain, such evidence being inexplicable under any neural hypothesis. 
• Contrary to claims that brains produce minds, animals with tiny brains often perform as well in mental tests as organisms with large brains. Referring to birds such as ravens, a Science Daily article tells us, "Some birds are capable of astonishing cognitive performances to rival those of higher developed mammals such as primates." A scientific paper states that despite having tiny brains, mouse lemurs perform pretty much as well as primates with brains hundreds of times larger. 
• A large body of evidence for out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences (such as discussed here, here, here and here ) suggest that the human mind can operate outside of the brain, and that the mind can often keep operating well when the brain has shut down during cardiac arrest.

Because of such facts and many others, claims that brains store memories and that brains produce thinking and intelligence are untenable.  But such claims have been accepted "hook, line and sinker" by transhumanists, who generally do not seem to be serious scholars of the brain-mind issue.  Most transhumanists show no signs of being serious scholars of the low-level facts established by neuroscientists, and most transhumanists show zero signs of being serious scholars of the massive evidence suggesting mind is a spiritual phenomenon rather than a neural phenomenon. 

The fact that so many of the transhumanists come from a Silicon Valley background is ironic.  The birth of Silicon Valley and personal computers was a case of norm-defying rebels who bucked the conventional wisdom of mainstream authorities. Around 1977 quite a few or the powers-that-be in the computing industry were pooh-pooing the idea of desktop computers.  One such authority (Ken Olsen) famously said in 1977, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."  Personal computers were developed when some rebellious geniuses such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dared to recognize that mainstream authorities were pushing unfounded dogmas (such as the dogma that serious computers had to be at least as big as a refrigerator).  A video that visualizes this rebellious spirit was the famous 1984 commercial of Apple Computers:

But now we see many transhumanists from the high-tech industry advancing a philosophical program that is all based on a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of the unfounded dogmas of a conformist mainstream priesthood of neuroscientists.   Such uncritical kneeling to the pronouncements of authority figures is the opposite of the spirit which gave birth to the personal computer and the Internet. 

There is another way in which transhumanists show a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of unfounded claims of some biologists: their acceptance of common but extremely false claims about DNA.  As discussed here, there is no truth to claims that DNA is a blueprint or a recipe or a program for making a human being. Rather than containing high-level information such as instructions on how to make a human body or any of its organs or any of its cells, DNA only contains very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein.  The idea that a human body arises because a plan for body construction is read from DNA is a myth told by some biologists.  Not only does there not exist such a plan in DNA, but there does not exist below the neck in the body anything that could read and understand and carry out such fantastically complicated instructions if they happened to exist.  At the end of this post, you can read statements by 20+ science experts (mostly biologists and chemists) who deny that DNA is a blueprint or a recipe or a program for building a human. 

People in the high-tech industry should tend to understand better than the average person that HTML code for specifying the look and behavior of a web page is worthless without some extremely complicated software (a web browser) for interpreting such instructions, and also C++ code for specifying the look and behavior of an app or program is worthless without some extremely complicated software (such as compilers and operating systems) capable of interpreting and carrying out such instructions.  In the human body there does not exist anything comparable to code or instructions for constructing a human body or its organs or cells, and there also does not exist anything below the neck capable of understanding and executing such instructions if they happened to exist (something which would require interpretive and constructive capabilities far greater than in any web browser or a compiler or operating system).   

 

So how does the extremely hierarchical organization of the human body (with so many levels of vast organization and functional complexity) arise without such things,  with such a state of organization arising over nine months from a vastly simpler speck-sized ovum? How does a speck-sized ovum progress so that we end up with a human body in which subatomic particles are organized into atoms, and atoms are organized into amino acids, and amino acids are organized into protein molecules, and protein molecules are organized into organelles, and organelles are organized into cells, and cells are organized into tissues, and tissues are organized into organs, and organs are organized into organ systems with fantastically fine-tuned functional biochemistry? This is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of today's biologists, who don't even understand how a single eukaryotic cell is able to reproduce.  The fact that organisms most mysteriously achieve such states of physical organization (which are states more organized than in any electronic device) is a major additional reason for disbelieving in the idea that our minds come from our brains.  If our bodies arose through some mysterious process far beyond our understanding and far beyond explanation by physical science, we should have no qualms about thinking that our minds also arose through some mysterious process far beyond our understanding, far beyond any explanation known to physical science.

Returning to transhumanists, we find in some of their writings a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of mythical notions that DNA is a blueprint for building bodies, minds or both. An essay by philosopher Nick Bostrom is entitled "Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective." We read 27 references to "germ-line enhancements," and we read the eugenics-friendly claim that "In the case of germ-line enhancements, the potential gains are enormous."  There is no good evidence that manipulating any gene can produce an increase in memory or intelligence.  Studies with animals claiming that modifications of genes such as NR2B or GRIN2B or PDE4B or FOX2P can produce enhancements of learning or memory are examples of junk science. As discussed here, a careful examination of such studies (which use only mice or rats) will show that they are guilty of the Questionable Research Practices so common in modern neuroscience: a lack of pre-registration, a failure to follow a blinding protocol, and the use of way, way too small sample sizes. Given such far-too-small sample sizes, we should think that such studies have produced nothing other than false alarms. 

Transhumanists tend to state very chimerical claims very much lacking in realism. One transhumanist has an essay entitled "Why We Should Embrace Our Superintelligent AI Overlords," in which we read this very untrue and extremely ridiculous claim: "Most experts in AI believe that once we finally create an AI with human-level intelligence, the next day it will be an Einstein, and the day after that it will be equivalent to 100 Einsteins."  Another article by the same author is entitled, "How to Prepare Your Data and Brain to Have Your Mind Uploaded to a Computer."

A remarkably skimpy PhD thesis (only 25 double-spaced pages) by one author tells us about the hopes of one transhumanist. We read this in the PhD thesis entitled "Becoming gods":

"By genetically manipulating the human genome it may be possible to create beings which are as far removed from humans in intelligence and comprehension as humans are from chimpanzees. If this experiment succeeds then these newly created beings will have a much better chance than humans of realizing the unity of thought and being. It is argued that these beings might merit the name 'gods'."

The idea is extremely erroneous. There is nothing in the genome of humans (the same as human DNA) which accounts for the intellectual difference between a man and a chimp. There are no conceivable manipulations of DNA which could cause the appearance of some organism "as far removed from humans in intelligence and comprehension as humans are from chimpanzees."  Our transhumanists have fallen "hook, line and sinker" for the materialist myth that DNA is a blueprint for making a body. DNA merely contains low-level chemical information, and does not contain any high-level structural information. DNA does not even designate the structure of any cell, or specify how to make any cell or any of a cell's organelles.  

A 2019 study involved scanning the brains of 300+ people who had taken intelligence tests. The study found no clear link between brain parameters such as (grey matter volume or white matter volume) and intelligence or knowledge.   Another study found that men have 33% greater synaptic density than women, but there is no difference between men and women in intelligence or memory. The idea that we will build smarter humans by breeding humans with more neurons or thicker synapses is erroneous.

At the link here, you can read for free the first 5 issues of the transhumanist magazine H+.  If you read such magazines you will get the impression that transhumanism is mainly about far-out technological fantasies with the flavor of science fiction.  Transhumanism centers around very specific beliefs about the brain, but when reading such issues I get the impression that transhumanists are neither serious scholars of the brain nor serious scholars of human mental phenomena. Human mental phenomena in all its strangeness must be studied in depth in order to get a proper notion of whether brains can explain minds (for very many anomalous human experiences and anomalous case histories contradict conventional dogmas about the brain and mind). 

There is much talk in the H+ magazine issues about the Singularity (an imagined event when machines or humans become vastly more intelligent than present-day  humans). Such an imagined event is treated by transhumanists rather the way fundamentalists treat the Second Coming of Jesus.  In Issue 3 of H+ a leading Singularity theorist defines the Singularity as when humans will be able to create or become creatures of superhuman intelligence. He says he will be suprised if this does not happen by the year 2030.  This prediction seems as bad as Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book-title prediction that "the Singularity is near" (17 years later, there seem to be no signs of it nearing). In Issue 2 of H+ we read this statement by a prominent transhumanist: "The primary purpose of the Singularity will be seen, after the fact, to be Awesome Sex."  

Transhumanists love to speculate about a future state of higher human intelligence and perception (speculations with a science fiction flavor). But transhumanists strangely seem to have zero interest in studying the only types of reports we have in which humans said they briefly reached such a state of higher human intelligence and perception: reports from paranormal experiences such as near-death experiences. Maybe this is because such reports (very often involving people saying they observed their bodies from positions outside of their bodies) conflict with a central assumption of transhumanism, that the mind is merely the product of the brain.  A person who properly studies such reports and makes a full study of paranormal phenomena (reading the books listed at the front of this post) will tend to feel no need for the transhumanist fantasy of immortality by uploading your mind into some future "cloud" of networked computers. 

Telepathic Knockouts and Other Eerie Effects Reported by Boirac

Emile Boirac was the leader of an academy in France who tried without much luck to get the scientific world interested in very interesting effects he carefully observed in many experiments. On page 221 of his long and very interesting scholarly work Psychic Science: An introduction and Contribution to the Experimental Study of Psychical Phenomena, he describes one of these effects like this:

"When experimenting with them, I have always taken the precaution of bandaging the eyes hermetically, without saying a word or permitting any of the sitters to break the silence throughout the duration of the experiments. Further, in the majority of cases, I have allowed them to remain awake, doing nothing to modify the condition of their brain. I have simply said to them when they came to me : 'Will you kindly allow me to put on this bandage ; sit there, and when you think you feel anything, will you please tell me.' In these conditions I have obtained the most varied and precise effects in all parts of their bodies corresponding with the position and movements of my own right hand or left, placed opposite the various parts."

On page 174 he discusses experiments with a patient:

"I contrived to distract the attention of the subject in order to place my right hand, unknown to him, in front of one or other of his elbows, knees, feet, etc., and always observed the same phenomenon: attraction of the limb thus covered which seemed to cease to belong to the subject and to fall under the dominion of my will, until the time when some sort of abrupt movement would inform the subject of these involuntary movements and he would withdraw himself from my influence."

On page 175 he describes a later experiment with the same patient, saying such results were replicated in ten different experiments:

"Then without saying anything to the subject as to the kind of experiments I was going to carry out, I ask him to let me put on this bandage and to remain perfectly motionless on his chair for a few moments. Then drawing close to him without any noise I placed my right hand about three or four inches away from his left hand, and presently, in less than half a minute, this was attracted. The same effect was produced on the other hand, the right and left elbows, the right and left knee, the right and left foot, etc. It goes without saying that I did not follow any order, but intermixed the actions in as many ways as possible, in order that the subject might not guess by any reasoning what part of the body I was covering. And yet there was always concordance between the direction of my hand and the movement obtained."

On page 187 Boirac noted that the same effect was noted by a more famous investigator, M. Pierre Janet ("the magnetiser" refers to the hypnotist):

In his ' Note on some Somnambulistic Phenomena,' M. Pierre Janet indicated in passing, and without appearing to attach any importance to it, the phenomenon of magnetic attraction, doubtless because in the conditions under which he observed it, he could only see in it the effect of hyperesthesia of touch. ' In order to provoke general contracture, it is sufficient for the magnetiser to place his open hand a short distance in front of the body. Certain tremblings are noticed first of all, then the body rises and follows the hand as though it were really attracted by it.' "

On page 190 Boirac dismisses this "hyperesthesia of touch" idea, noting that the subjects in which he observed the effect were usually not hypnotized, that they showed no other signs of being super-sensitive to touch, and that his hand was four inches from their skin,  too far to be explained by such an idea. 

Boirac tried to explain the strange effect by the idea that there is some unknown force which emanates from a person's body, a force that can have strange effects on other bodies.  The often-claimed idea that humans have a mysterious energy aura is consistent with such a claim. The force may involve an interaction between one person's aura (extending a few inches beyond his body) and some other person's aura. 

But without postulating such a force, we can postulate that most of the accounts Boirac gives us of the effect are mainly examples of extrasensory perception (ESP).  There is a massive wealth of evidence ESP, such as the experiments of Joseph Rhine and the very well replicated ESP results in what are called ganzfeld sensory deprivation experiments.  Boirac's results seem like some early evidence for ESP.  Rather than some force emanating from his hand, the effect may have involved a mind-to-mind interaction, beginning with an experimenter who has in mind which way his hand is moving.  The sensory deprivation usually involved when the effect was produced (with the subject being blindfolded) reminds me of the sensory deprivation going on in the very successful ganzfeld experiments, in which subjects have halves of ping pong balls taped over their eyes. 

On pages 233-234 of Boirac's book we have a description of remote hypnosis, in which a subject who cannot see a hypnotist is put it into a hypnotic trance by the hypnotist.  We read this:

"Dockmann was sitting in the garden with a friend who was reading a newspaper; his back was almost turned to me and he began to roll a cigarette. I do not know how, but the idea came to me to try the experiment here described. and with all the force of my will, I immediately put it into execution. Concentrating my mind entirely on this one thought, I looked stedfastly in Dockmann's direction, and commanded him to stop all movements and go to sleep. Dockmann did not appear to perceive that I was looking at him, but his actions quickly slackened, and his eyes became fixed. The unfinished cigarette remained in his hands, he suddenly dropped his eyelids, and became motionless as a statue. His friend raised his head, perceived his condition, questioned him, but obtained no response. A singer seated at a neighbouring table became frightened and screamed aloud. I hastened and went down, and in a few moments, by breathing quickly on his eyes, awoke my improvised subject, who did not even seem to know what had happened to him."

Boirac reports successfully repeating the same experiment:

"I reached the Casino about half -past one. On this occasion Dockmann was sitting on the terrace by himself at a table writing a letter, bent nearly double, his nose almost resting on the blotting-pad. My table was five or six yards away; between us was a party of four, playing cards. I again concentrated myself with a nervous tension, which caused me to vibrate from head to foot, and, while looking quietly at Dockmann, I commanded him with all my power to cease writing and go to sleep. The action was slower than the night before. It might be said that the subject struggled against my will. After one or two minutes he gave visible signs of a thrilling sensation ; his pen remained suspended, as if he sought in vain for words ; he made a gesture with his hand as if throwing off some obsessing influence ; then he tore up the letter he had commenced and began to write another but his pen soon remained fixed on the paper and he went to sleep in that position. I went close up to him, with several others who had stopped their games; his whole body was contracted and hard as a piece of wood; we tried unsuccessfully to bend one of his arms ; the stiffness was only removed by 'means of passes ; the waking was accomplished by blowing on his eyes. When he had recovered the use of his senses, he begged me not to repeat these experiments ; he complained of having been much fatigued by the former one. He stated, moreover, that he had gone to sleep on these two occasions without having had the slightest suspicion that the sleep had been caused by me or by any one else."

Such a claim might seem unbelievable except for the fact that numerous similar claims were made in the late twentienth century. On page 104 of the book "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, we read a chapter discussing many examples of so-called "telepathic knockouts." During such events it would appear that a person was put into a state of deep sleep or unconsciousness solely because of the mental suggestion of some other person.  We read, "The ability to put people to sleep and wake them up telepathically from a distance of a few yards to over a thousand miles became the most thoroughly tested and perfected contribution of the Soviets to international parapsychology." After reading of countless successful experiments of such an effect, we read of such a test being successful at a distance of a thousand miles.  At a scheduled time, one scientist mentally commanded a subject a thousand miles away to fall asleep. We are told, "A thousand miles away Ivanova lost consciousness on schedule as she talked to Dr. Doubrovsky."  Since electromagnetic waves diminish with distance, the test seemed to prove that ESP does not work by some transmission of electromagnetic waves.

On pages 234-235 of his book, Boirac states this:

"I had the opportunity of witnessing, as often as I wished and in very varied conditions, the phenomenon of sleep and awaking provoked at a distance by a simple mental action. This phenomenon became as familiar to me and almost as easy to produce as sleep by suggestion, gaze or passes; it is impossible for me to relate here all the cases in which I have produced it."

In the next twenty pages of the book, Boirac does describe in great detail producing such a "telepathic knockout" effect with many varied subjects, quite a few of whom could not see him. On page 262 the author gives an account of a strange phenomenon widely reported in the literature of the paranormal: an ability for a person to read even when securely double-blindfolded, by passing his fingers over text or placing the text to his forehead or stomach.  The term "transposition of the senses" is sometimes used to describe this type of effect. Boirac describes this event, using the term "put to sleep" to mean "put in a hypnotic trance.":

"First of all, the subject was put to sleep, preferably by prolonged gaze. We then brought some gummed paper of which bands were made, which we moistened and pasted over the eyes in such a way as to secure the eyelids. This done we placed over all a thick bandage firmly tied behind the head, and the spectators were asked to pass to the subject all the written and printed papers they desired her to read. At the beginning the subject asked preferably to be given large print to read such as the titles of newspapers. She then passed her fingers over the papers, sometimes brought them up to her forehead or placed them on the epigastrium, and generally read unhesitatingly, without mistake, and with very fair ease. Sometimes, however, the subject declared herself unable to see anything; she then asked to be awakened and put to sleep again, and nearly always on the resumption, the experiment succeeded. Once fairly started, Mm. . V. deciphered as though making light of it, not only visiting  cards and printed lines, but also letters, notes writ in ink or pencil, in very fine characters often almost imperceptible. She even saw and described photographs. Finally if we placed a watch in her hands, whatever the time indicated, she saw and divined by passing her fingers over the glass, but she took the precaution to envelop the  case in a handkerchief, because, she said, the gold would cause her to feel a burning sensation."

On page 273 Boirac discusses an experiment with another subject who had his eyes bandaged:

"I began by placing two seats, one in front of the other, in the same direction, in such a way that the person seated on the first had his back turned to the person seated on the other. Then the subject being sent to sleep, his eyes bandaged, was seated on the second seat, I myself on the first. Then bringing my right elbow backward, I said to S. : 'Extend your right arm. take my elbow, press it tightly.' That being done 1 took at haphazard a newspaper from the table, unfolded : my knees, and slowly passing my fingers over the title. I said to S. : 'Read!'  I felt the subject's fingers cling convulsively to my elbow, and as my fingers passed over a character, S. spelt it out loud.... I again passed my fingers over the paper, but more rapidly, and he read without difficulty : ' L Independent des Pyrenees-Orientales.' The phenomenon was so strange, so incredible, that in spite of myself, I suspected a transmission of thought. Suddenly turning over the newspaper and closing my eyes, I ran my fingers over the upper part of the fourth page. He then read : ' Mineral waters,' but I had had time to see this advertisement. At that moment I passed my fingers underneath and from the side. The subject read : ' Automobile carriages.'  I opened my eyes and found this was printed there, unknown to myself, and that my hand had passed over it. A third person having come in, I asked him to place and direct my fingers over various advertisements taken at random on the fourth page, whilst I kept my eyes closed. S. read correctly each time. Since then, I have several times renewed this experiment of reading through the elbow."

The ability of a securely blindfolded person to read by passing his fingers over text was very abundantly documented by the Soviets and the Chinese, as I discussed in my posts here and here.  The same phenomenon was reported decades earlier in France, by Jules Romains in his book Eyeless Sight (discussed here). A 19th-century work states this: " Although  blind,  this  girl  can  read  by  passing  her  fingers  over  the  printed or  written  page,  and  can  describe  persons  whose  pictures  were  handed  to  her." A long article in the June 12, 1964 Life magazine was entitled "Seeing Color With the Fingers." It reported a great number of observations very similar to those reported by Romains.  You can read the article here, by scrolling down to page 102.  In 1964 Life magazine was as mainstream and respectable as the New York Times, and had been a trusted mainstream source for decades

An edition of the EdgeScience magazine (#47) published by the Society for Scientific Exploration has an article "Seeing Without Eyes" (page 9) which discusses evidence for clairvoyance like that gathered by Romains. It mentions work by Carol Ann Liaros in the 1970's, saying, "Liaros discovered that blind people could see the images on black-and-white photos (and could see the photos when they were turned over, face-down, and even their reallife colors)."  We read about many other examples of ESP and clairvoyance similar to that reported by Romains, most occurring in recent decades. 

Yesterday the Science News site had an article entitled "Here are the top 10 times scientific imagination failed."  Some of the biggest historical failures of scientific imagination are omitted, such as the failure to conceive that the main cause of mental phenomena could be something other than the brain (despite very abundant evidence suggesting such a thing), and the failure to take seriously centuries of extremely abundant observational reports of paranormal phenomena discussed in these 100+ posts, often documented extremely carefully and at the greatest length and detail by very careful and competent scientific observers, and sometimes well-documented photographically (such as here and here).  The Science News article conveniently sticks to "back in the days" failures of scientific imagination that occurred long ago, rather than looking at the extremely severe ongoing failures of scientific imagination that continue in the present day. 

Some of the real top 10 were not discussed

Postscript: Another interesting book by Boirac is his book "Our Hidden Forces." In that book we have the following very interesting account of an effect witnessed by Boirac when experimenting on a sleeping person:

"I slowly raised my hand ; and to my entire stupefaction, I saw the feet of the sleeping man rise in the air by muscular contraction, and follow the ascensional movement of my hand. Three times I repeated the experiment ; three times it succeeded, with the precision and the regularity of an instrument of physics. Enthusiastic at this result, I called for a witness, in the person of Madame B., and asked her to be as quiet as possible. The experiments were repeated, and were followed by the identical results. At this juncture Madame B. suggested: 'Try to do it by thought projection.' I then fixed my attentive eyes upon the feet of the sleeping man ; and, raising my gaze slowly, what was our astonishment to see his feet follow the movement of my eyes, now ascending, now stopping and descending as the gaze from my eyes did."

 A phenomenon in which a hypnotist can induce a trance in an unseen person is reported here and here.  On the page here we are told, "In 18 of 25 trials Janet and his colleague Gilbert were able to induce a trance in their hysterical subject Leonie at distances varying from 1/4 to 1 mile." The page here tells us the experiments of L. Vasiliev at the University of Leningrad were overwhelmingly successful in producing trances at a distance in subjects, with a 90% success rate, with most of the people trying to produce the trances being in different rooms, and the trance almost always occurring within a few minutes of the remote attempt to make the person entranced. .