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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GUI-HAN |
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GURNEY, EDMUND (18471888) , English psychologist, was born at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames, on the 23rd of March 1847. He was educated at Blackheath and at Trinity College, Cambridge , where he took a high place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship. His work
Cambridge examination in the science of the healing profession. These studies, and his great
Hegel to declare, and the subject had been metaphysically treated by Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Du Prel, Hamilton and others, as the philosophyof the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney's purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the staple of the evidence of metaphysicians. The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a colour of truth to the ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body
ordinary methods of scientific observation, and inquisition into evidence at first hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the "seances "of professed spiritualistic " mediums " (1894-1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (See PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the time, and experiments were made in " thought-transference " and hypnotism. Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes of Phantasms of the Living, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney's remarkable essay, Hallucinations. The chief
great
work
ordinary nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject's mind." These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, "Hypnotism and Telepathy," Proceedings S. P. R. vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, Janet, Richet, Hericourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with " the relation of the memory in the hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory." The result of Gurney's labours, cut short by his early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings. In controversy " he delighted in replying with easy courtesy to attacks envenomed with that odium plus quam theologicum which the very allusion to a ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire." In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, good temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author of Tertium Quid (1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one-sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at Brighton on 23rd June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine. (A. L.) End of Article: GURNEY, EDMUND (18471888) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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