Charles Panati | |
|---|---|
| Born | Charles Panati 13 March 1943 Baltimore, Maryland |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Nationality | American  |
| Period | Active: 20th Century |
| Genre | |
| Literary movement | Paranormal |
| Notable works |
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Charles Panati (born March 13, 1943) is a former college professor, industrial physicist, author and science editor of Newsweek . [1]
Panati was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After graduating from Villanova University (1961–65) with a B.S. in physics, Panati obtained a master's degree in Radiation Health Physics (1966) from Columbia University and worked in cancer research at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Panati is openly gay. [2]
After joining Newsweek in 1971, Panati became interested in parapsychology and published his first book, Supersenses: Our Potential For Parasensory Experience (1974), which described parapsychological research into extrasensory perception. The book was described in a review as a respectable survey of psi phenomena but "the skeptic will remain unconvinced... because the subject is not amenable to rational, empirical scrutiny." [3] Panati later met the Israeli psychic Uri Geller, who suggested Panati collect and publish 22 research papers by scientists around the world who had investigated the spoon-bender's alleged abilities. The Geller Papers (1976), edited by Panati, caused controversy when it was published. Several prominent magicians came forward to demonstrate that Geller’s so-called psychic talents could be easily duplicated by stage magicians. Science writer Martin Gardner wrote that Panati had been fooled by Geller's trickery and The Geller Papers were an "embarrassing anthology". [4] In Death Encounters (1979), Panati investigated the phenomenon of clinical death, in which subjects report being drawn toward a white light while wrestling with the will to live. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Wendy Thompson Warner wrote that, "His views on parapsychology have, rightly or wrongly, been the target of widespread skepticism in the scientific community." [5]
Panati has written a series of books about the origins of ordinary, everyday things, beginning in 1984 with The Browser’s Book of Beginnings. He wrote a second book, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things in 1987 that was praised as "excellent bathroom reading". [6] Subsequent books in the series were Panati’s Parade of Fads, Follies and Manias: The Origins of Our Most Cherished Obsessions in 1991, Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World’s Religions in 1996, Sexy Origins of Intimate Things in 1998, and Words To Live By: Origins of Common Wisdom Expressions in 1999.
His book Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things has been described as a "handy reference". [7] Panati's Sacred Origins of Profound Things received a positive review and was described as "an informative and entertaining book on the origins of religious ideas, sacred items, worship practices, holy symbols, and holidays." [8]
In 1981, Panati and his brother, Michael Hudson, wrote The Silent Intruder: Surviving the Radiation Age, a book that seeks to examine the interaction of radiation and human tissue. [5]
Panati has appeared as a guest on Oprah , Regis and Letterman .
Telepathy is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression thought-transference.
Uri Geller is an Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other illusions. Geller uses conjuring tricks to simulate the effects of psychokinesis and telepathy. Geller's career as an entertainer has spanned more than four decades, with television shows and appearances in many countries. Magicians have called Geller a fraud because of his claims of possessing psychic powers.
Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering to the study of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis. The term is a blend word of psi and the -onics from electronics. The word "psionics" began as, and always remained, a term of art within the science fiction community and—despite the promotional efforts of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.—it never achieved general currency, even among academic parapsychologists. In the years after the term was coined in 1951, it became increasingly evident that no scientific evidence supports the existence of "psionic" abilities.
Robert Evan Ornstein was an American psychologist, researcher and author.
Alectryomancy is a form of divination in which the diviner observes a bird, several birds, or most preferably a white rooster or cockerel pecking at grain that the diviner has scattered on the ground. It was the responsibility of the pullularius to feed and keep the birds used. The observer may place grain in the shape of letters and thus discern a divinatory revelation by noting which letters the birds peck at, or the diviner may just interpret the pattern left by the birds' pecking in randomly scattered grain.
The Way Things Work is a 1988 nonfiction book by David Macaulay with technical text by Neil Ardley. It is a whimsical introduction to everyday machines and the scientific principles behind their operation, describing machines as simple as levers and gears and as complicated as radio telescopes and automatic transmissions. Every page consists primarily of one or more large diagrams describing the operation of the relevant machine. These diagrams are informative but playful, in that most show the machines operated, used upon, or represented by woolly mammoths, and are accompanied by anecdotes from a mysterious inventor of the mammoths' (fictive) role in the operation. The book's concept was later developed into two short-lived animated TV shows, a Dorling Kindersley interactive CD-ROM, and a board game. A family "ride" involving animatronics and a 3-D film based on the book was one of the original attractions at the San Francisco Metreon, but closed in 2001.
Marcello Truzzi was an American sociologist and academic who was professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.
Arthur L. Herman is an American popular historian. He is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.
Martin Giles Palmer is a theologian, Sinologist, author and international specialist on all major faiths and religious traditions and cultures. He is the Founding President and Chief Executive of FaithInvest, an international not-for-profit membership association for religious groups and faith-based institutional investors, which empowers faith groups to invest in line with their values. FaithInvest grew out of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) of which Palmer was Secretary General from 1995 to 2019. Palmer is also the Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture (ICOREC).
Andrija Puharich — born Henry Karel Puharić — was a medical and parapsychological researcher, medical inventor, physician and author, known as the person who brought Israeli Uri Geller and Dutch-born Peter Hurkos (1911–1988) to the United States for scientific investigation.
Edward Hoagland is an American author best known for his nature and travel writing.
To cross one's fingers is a hand gesture commonly used to wish for luck. Early Christians used the gesture to implore the protection of the Holy Cross. The gesture is referred to by the common expressions "cross your fingers", "keep your fingers crossed", or just "fingers crossed".
S.O.S Soap Pad is a trade name for an abrasive cleaning pad, used for household cleaning, and made from steel wool saturated with soap.
This bibliography of George Washington is a selected list of written and published works about George Washington (1732–1799). A recent count has estimated the number of books about George Washington at some nine hundred; add scholarly articles with Washington's name in the title and the count climbs to six thousand.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's letters. It was published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who was assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection, from a large mass of materials, contains 354 letters. These were written between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters are of interest both for what they show of Tolkien's life and for his interpretations of his Middle-earth writings.
HP Newquist is an American author whose books cover topics from medicine and music to technology and terror. He is also a museum curator and musician, and has worked as a columnist, publisher, industry analyst, and video director.
Telekinesis is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing an individual to influence a physical system without physical interaction. Experiments to prove the existence of telekinesis have historically been criticized for lack of proper controls and repeatability. There is no reliable evidence that telekinesis is a real phenomenon, and the topic is generally regarded as pseudoscience.
In a writing career spanning 53 years (1939–1992), science fiction and popular science author Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) wrote and published 40 novels, 383 short stories, over 280 non-fiction books, and edited about 147 others.
Sylvia Cassedy was an American novelist and poet, who is best known for her children's and young adult fiction.
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