Lynne Kelly | |
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Born | 1951 (age 71–72) |
Nationality | Australian |
Alma mater | |
Occupations |
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Employer | La Trobe University |
Known for | |
Website | lynnekelly |
Lynne Kelly AM (born 1951) is an Australian writer, researcher and science educator. [1] [2] [3] [4] Her academic work focuses mainly on the study of primary orality, as well as the mnemonic devices used by ancient and modern oral cultures from around the world. [1] [5] She proposes a theory on the purpose of the Stonehenge megalithic, which she believes served as a centre for the transmission of knowledge among Neolithic Britons. [5]
She has been interviewed on different podcasts and radio programs about her work on primary orality, popular science and skepticism. [1] [3] [4]
Kelly holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Monash University, a Graduate Diploma of Computing from Deakin University, a Diploma of Education from Rusden State College, a Master of Education from Melbourne University and a Doctoral Degree from La Trobe University. [4]
Kelly's writing also includes educational resources for courses on mathematics, thinking skills and information technology, as well as a novel. Kelly has also published books for popular science audiences on spiders, crocodiles and skepticism. [1] [2]
She has previously worked as a teacher and she currently works as an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. [1] [3] [4] [6] [7]
A fundamental part of Kelly's research delves into the transmission of scientific and technological knowledge among small-scale oral cultures such as Aboriginal Australians, the Pueblo people and some African cultures. [8] [9]
Kelly's research indicates that oral cultures possess a large body of scientific knowledge on animal behavior, plant properties, the landscape, natural phenomena, location of sacred places and water sources. This knowledge is encoded in myths, rituals, chants and mnemonic devices. [8] [10]
According to Kelly's theory, the manner of accessing stored information would depend on whether the culture was mobile or more settled. Hunter-gatherer societies would depend on portable mnemonic devices and techniques that would allow them to use the landscape as a mnemonic tool, such as the method of loci. Kelly has observed similar techniques within the modern Australian Aborigines, who use features on the landscape as visual cues to retrieve information. On the other hand, societies that were less mobile but not completely settled would create local replications of the landscape to access information, such as circles of timber or stone, sequences of mounds and other prehistoric built environments. [7] [9] [11]
Kelly's research also indicates that both nomadic and sedentary societies rely on performance and entertainment as a part of their complex knowledge storage system. The use of songs and rituals is a vital component of retention techniques which further strengthens memorization, and it is ubiquitous among the cultures studied by Kelly. People participating in the performance would sing and tell stories while also touching a mnemonic object, moving around the site, or dancing, as a way to trigger kinaesthetic cues to access the knowledge. [9] [11]
Lynne Kelly has spoken against the portrayal of native peoples by the media, and sometimes even in academia, as having a close relationship with their environment but being at the same time simplistic and superstitious. These portrayals tend to focus only on their religion and rituals, and very rarely acknowledge their vast scientific knowledge. [8] [9] [10] [12]
In 2015, Kelly published a book under the title Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, which incorporates the research from her doctoral thesis When Knowledge Was Power. [13] This work explores the link between power and the control of knowledge in oral cultures, as well as the different mnemonic techniques and devices used by those cultures. Kelly also suggests a new theory on the purpose of the archaeological sites of Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge. [14]
In June 2016, Kelly's doctoral research was published for a general readership under the title The Memory Code. This work comprises the results of Kelly's research, spanning over almost a decade, into mnemonics of Indigenous peoples from around the globe. [15]
Kelly's work on Australian Aboriginals includes the identification of songlines with memory techniques. She has found research stating that up to 70% of these songlines contains knowledge about animals, plants and seasons. [15]
The book created much interest from the media and the public even before its release. [16] Since the publication of The Memory Code, Kelly has been invited to numerous radio shows and public lectures to discuss her work on indigenous knowledge, mnemonics and the application of memory techniques and devices in everyday life. [17] [18]
Kelly has been known for trying the same techniques she has researched to memorize long lists of categories and events, including succeeding to memorize all the countries of the world by population order; memorizing a historical chronology of prehistoric and historic events, and a guide of the 408 birds of the state of Victoria. She has memorized those lists and events using the loci method, the help of mnemonic devices, and by creating stories connecting the elements she is trying to memorize.
Kelly has received the support and orientation of Australian Aboriginal advisors for her research, particularly from her colleague Nungarrayi, who is Warlpiri. [15] More recently, Kelly's 2021 collaboration with Aboriginal co-author, Margo Neale, enhanced her knowledge on the complexity of Australian Songlines, the basis of many of her ideas on Indigenous knowledge systems. [19]
According to Kelly's theory, Stonehenge served the purpose of a mnemonic centre for recording and retrieving knowledge by Neolithic Britons, who lacked written language. The knowledge could have included pragmatic information on animal classification and behavior, geography and navigation, land management and crop cycles, as well as cultural knowledge on history, politics, genealogy and religion. [9]
In Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, Kelly suggests that knowledge may have been originally preserved by the nomadic Britons by using the landscape as a mnemonic tool, in a similar fashion to the memorization technique known as Method of loci. [9] [10] As the Britons started to settle, they would have needed to modify the way they stored their knowledge as they were not moving as much anymore, so they would have built Stonehenge in an attempt to replicate the landscape locally, allowing them to memorize and store knowledge. The circles and stones or timber posts would have represented the landscape, and each stone would have been associated with a segment of their knowledge system. [10]
Kelly's research also indicates that once the Neolithic Britons' society settled, the ceremonial spaces would have become more restricted and the rituals controlled by the elites. [8] [9] [10]
Kelly's theory on the purpose of Stonehenge would also explain certain physical features such as circles or lines of posts and ditches at other archaeological sites such as the Durrington Walls and Avebury, which previously had not been explained. [5] [8]
Kelly's theory is sustained by the record of archaeological changes and level of activity registered at Stonehenge. Those changes would be consistent with the social changes the Neolithic Britons would have experienced whilst transitioning from a hunter-gatherer society, where the knowledge was shared by the elders, to a sedentary society whose knowledge was restricted to the elites and transmitted via apprenticeship. This change in the control of knowledge would have eventually made Stonehenge unused and its primary purpose forgotten. [8]
Her theory is also consistent with her previous research on mnemonic techniques used by ancient and modern cultures and the use of temples, myths and legends to pass on and remember knowledge. As the chance of survival for oral cultures is strongly dependent on their ability to store and retrieve information, the great efforts and the participation of the entire community on the construction of a site as large as Stonehenge are explained and justifiable. [8] [15]
Kelly is also known for her contribution to popular science literature. In 2006, she published a book on crocodiles under the title Crocodile: evolution's greatest survivor. In this work, Kelly collects both folklore and human-crocodile interactions from across the world, as well as the biology, behavior and evolution of crocodilians. [7] [20] [21]
In 2009, Kelly published her book Spiders: Learning to Love Them, where she explores the biology and human perceptions around spiders, as well as offers a guide for spider identification. It is also a recount of the author's personal journey from disliking spiders to being fascinated by them. [22] The book won "Best book in the category of Natural History" in the 2009 Whitley Awards by the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. [23] [24]
Kelly has also been an active promoter of skepticism and educating the public on the importance of critical thinking and science. She has claimed to use magicians' tricks to advance skepticism. [3] She was a founding member of the Australian Skeptics, [3] and has spoken at their national convention in 2003, 2012 and 2015. [25] [26] [27] In 2004, she was awarded the Skeptic of the Year title by the organization. [28]
Kelly's interest in skepticism derives in part from her concern about how fake mediums and psychics exploit gullible or vulnerable people. [3] She has criticized television shows which present mediums and psychics as a fact, which in her opinion could undermine the understanding of science among teenagers. [3] Kelly also considers that a belief in the supernatural prevents people from appreciating science and the real wonders of the world, and causes unnecessary fear in young people. [3]
Kelly has also investigated psychics and cold reading techniques. Kelly has investigated the methods used by psychics to convince their clients of their alleged supernatural powers, and she even experimented performing astrology readings. She later developed her own divination system, which she named Tauromancy, which she uses to debunk psychics by showing how it is possible to create an illusion of a psychic reading just through psychology and by using the client's reactions to the reader's suggestions. Her method includes objects suggestive of magic, such as a purported handwritten and illustrated book with the history of the tradition, a mat, essences, rods and metal masks. [3]
Kelly has claimed that the effect of a successful reading is so powerful that even though she has revealed in advance to the customers that she is in fact not a real psychic, they refuse to believe that the information and personal details were obtained by mere cold reading techniques. [3] [29] On some occasions, Kelly has had to stop the reading as the client has become extremely emotional, with Kelly offering counselling instead, in which she has been trained. She has also said that intelligent people are easier to read as they have a larger pool of references to use to respond to her cues. [3]
In 2003 she wrote a novel for young adults titled Avenging Janie [30] which incorporated cold reading and a cult into the plot. [31] The book was well received. Writer John Marsden said of it, "It's good to be reminded that there are still new plots out there – and writers for young people brave enough to take them on." [32] Cold reading expert Ian Rowland said, "it really is an amazing piece of work." [33]
Kelly has also written a book on the paranormal from a skeptic's point of view, aimed at a non-skeptical audience, [34] titled The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal. In this work, Kelly explores a range of popular claims and stories about allegedly paranormal events such as crop circles, psychic detectives, and communicating with the dead, providing plausible scientific explanations for each of these phenomena. [3] [35]
A mnemonic device or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember.
A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. Although many people believe in psychic abilities, the scientific consensus is that there is no proof of the existence of such powers, and describes the practice as pseudoscience. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities.
Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Forer effect and due to confirmation biases within people.
Memorization is the process of committing something to memory. It is a mental process undertaken in order to store in memory for later recall visual, auditory, or tactical information.
A psychic detective is a person who investigates crimes by using purported paranormal psychic abilities. Examples have included postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. In murder cases, psychic detectives may purport to be in communication with the spirits of the murder victims.
Ian Pretyman Stevenson was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
A debunker is a person or organization that exposes or discredits claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. The term is often associated with skeptical investigation of controversial topics such as UFOs, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, or exploratory or fringe areas of scientific or pseudoscientific research.
In spiritualism, paranormal literature and some religions, materialization is the creation or appearance of matter from unknown sources. The existence of materialization has not been confirmed by laboratory experiments. Numerous cases of fraudulent materialization demonstrations by mediums have been exposed.
A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia. They mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dreaming. These routes serve as crucial connections between individuals and their ancestral lands, carrying intricate geographical, mythological, and cultural information.
The method of loci is a strategy for memory enhancement, which uses visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. The method of loci is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, journey method, memory spaces, or mind palace technique. This method is a mnemonic device adopted in ancient Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises. Many memory contest champions report using this technique to recall faces, digits, and lists of words.
The title mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc. Some mnemonists also memorize texts such as long poems, speeches, or even entire books of fiction or non-fiction. The term is derived from the term mnemonic, which refers to a strategy to support remembering, but not all mnemonists report using mnemonics. Mnemonists may have superior innate ability to recall or remember, in addition to relying on techniques.
Thoughtography, also called projected thermography,psychic photography,nengraphy, and nensha(Japanese: 念写), is the claimed ability to "burn" images from one's mind onto surfaces such as photographic film by parapsychic means. While the term "thoughtography" has been in the English lexicon since 1913, the more recent term "projected thermography" is a neologism popularized in the 2002 American film The Ring, a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring.
The art of memory is any of a number of loosely associated mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. An alternative term is "Ars Memorativa" which is also translated as "art of memory" although its more literal meaning is "Memorative Art". It is also referred to as mnemotechnics. It is an 'art' in the Aristotelian sense, which is to say a method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of human beings. It has existed as a recognized group of principles and techniques since at least as early as the middle of the first millennium BCE, and was usually associated with training in rhetoric or logic, but variants of the art were employed in other contexts, particularly the religious and the magical.
Stonehenge has been the subject of many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.
Exceptional memory is the ability to have accurate and detailed recall in a variety of ways, including hyperthymesia, eidetic memory, synesthesia, and emotional memory. Exceptional memory is also prevalent in those with savant syndrome and mnemonists.
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.
Memory sport, sometimes referred to as competitive memory or the mind sport of memory, refers to competitions in which participants attempt to memorize then recall different forms of information, under certain guidelines. The sport has been formally developed since 1991 and features national and international championships. The primary worldwide organizational bodies are the IAM and WMSC.
Joseph Francis Rinn (1868–1952) was an American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena.
The Merseyside Skeptics Society (MSS) is a nonprofit organisation that promotes scientific scepticism in Merseyside and the United Kingdom. Founded in 2009, the society has campaigned against the use of homeopathy, challenged the claims of psychics, and hosts regular events in Liverpool, podcasts, and an annual conference in Manchester, QED: Question. Explore. Discover.
Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there is a 2011 book about the paranormal by psychologist and magician Richard Wiseman. Wiseman argues that paranormal phenomena such as psychics, telepathy, ghosts, out-of-body experiences, prophesy and more do not exist, and explores why people continue to believe, and what that tells us about human behavior and the way the brain functions. Wiseman uses QR codes throughout the book, which link to YouTube videos as examples and as experiments the reader can participate in to further explain the phenomena. Because of a cautious American publishing market, it was only available in America through Kindle. Paranormality was awarded the Center for Inquiry's Robert P. Balles award for 2011.
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