{"id":164,"date":"2013-01-17T10:55:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T10:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/?p=164"},"modified":"2013-01-17T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T10:59:41","slug":"%e2%80%98you-study-what%e2%80%99-guest-blog-by-professor-charles-f-emmons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You Study What?!\u2019: guest blog by Professor Charles F. Emmons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Professor<\/a>

Professor Charles Emmons: at work and play<\/p><\/div>\n

This is a special guest blog posting by Professor Charles Emmons of Gettysburg College, USA. Charles is a sociologist <\/a>and has published widely from his research on the sociology of science and spirit, and appeared on numerous TV and radio shows in the US and Hong Kong. <\/em><\/p>\n

Together with his wife, Penelope – an ordained Spiritualist Minister and healer – Charles wrote Science and Spirit: exploring the limits of consciousness<\/a> as part of a wider ‘where science meets spirit’<\/a> project.<\/em><\/p>\n

I first met Charles at the Exploring the Extraordinary <\/a>Conference in York in 2011, where he stuck in my mind as being the first – and only – senior academic I have ever hugged a tree with! In this blog posting Charles reflects on his experiences as an academic and sometimes traveler to worlds beyond the habitual academic gaze. As you will see, it is not always in easy ride, but Charles has stuck with it and I look forward to many more exciting insights in the future from this very special member of our academic community.<\/em><\/p>\n

Over to you, Charles:<\/em><\/p>\n

As a sociologist I have studied \u201cnormal\u201d topics like politics in Hong Kong, but I especially like to study science, alternate spirituality, and the paranormal.\u00a0 Some of my books are about Chinese ghosts, UFO researchers, and spirit mediums.\u00a0 People sometimes ask me what my academic colleagues think of this.<\/p>\n

Usually I can\u2019t tell, because the main way people deal with deviance is to ignore it.\u00a0 Also, I\u2019m not sure I want to know in a lot of cases.\u00a0 As some wise person said, \u201cWhat you think of me is none of my business.\u201d\u00a0 Gradually over the years I have come to appreciate the fact that if I am committed to an open investigation of \u201cextraordinary\u201d things considered taboo subjects in normal, mainstream science, I need to be willing to take the consequences.\u00a0 Once I was sorely tempted to include the following in my application for a National Science Foundation Grant: \u201cIf this application were to receive funding, it would be contrary to my hypothesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes I do get feedback from colleagues.\u00a0 A subtle one happened when they had a reception for me at Gettysburg College to celebrate the publication of Chinese Ghosts and ESP: a Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences<\/em> in 1982.\u00a0 One professor (from another department) said, \u201cOh, I\u2019m surprised it\u2019s a hardback! You\u2019d think with a subject like that it would be a paperback.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less subtly, a few days before I was to appear in the TV show \u201cGhosts of Gettysburg\u201d in the 1990s, a faculty member in the natural sciences sent an e-mail to the entire faculty urging them not to watch the show on the grounds that it was going to be a lot of nonsense.\u00a0 This was an interesting statement considering that nobody could have seen any part of the broadcast ahead of time. \u00a0Perhaps he had strong precognitive abilities.\u00a0 I thought that the true spirit of science was to consider all questions and to keep an open mind before examining the data.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most negative reaction I ever received happened at a sociology conference in the late 1990s at which I gave a talk about UFO researchers from a sociology of science perspective.\u00a0 One man in the audience complained bitterly that I had labeled his fellow professor at Harvard, John Mack, a \u201cufologist.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps I was embarrassing Harvard, but in fact John Mack had written a book about UFO abductees and had participated in many UFO conferences, thus fitting my operational definition of a ufologist.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter Harvard University established an ad hoc committee to investigate Mack\u2019s work with abductees, whom he claimed were not crazy but were in fact having some kind of experience worth examining.\u00a0 His attorney asked me to write a statement to the committee about Mack\u2019s work and the issue of academic freedom.\u00a0 He had to spend at least $130,000 in legal fees defending himself (successfully).<\/p>\n

In 2003 my wife Penelope and I published a book about spirit mediums (Guided by Spirit: A Journey into the Mind of the Medium<\/a><\/em>).\u00a0 I sent a copy of it to the famous sociologist of religion (and the paranormal etc.), Andrew M. Greeley, who had been on my dissertation committee in 1971.\u00a0 After reading it he replied that he wanted to thank us for writing such an interesting book.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m glad,\u201d he added, \u201cthat you got tenure before you wrote it.\u201d\u00a0 Greeley wrote the oft-quoted piece, \u201cThe Paranormal Is Normal,\u201d meaning that most people have such experiences, even though mainstream science denies the value of studying them.<\/p>\n

I really must say, however, that I am fortunate to have gotten tenure (before Chinese Ghosts<\/em> actually) and to have received financial support for my research (although not as much as I received when studying Hong Kong politics, a \u201cnormal\u201d topic).\u00a0 I am also grateful for the positive reviews and supportive comments I have received from people I respect (like Scott Rogo who called Chinese Ghosts<\/em> \u201ca refreshing change from the nonsense\u201d).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve come to feel sorry for people who are narrow minded in their view of what science is.\u00a0 They\u2019re missing out.\u00a0 As J. Allen Hynek, the founder of modern ufology said, \u201cScience isn\u2019t always what scientists do.\u201d\u00a0 And I am delighted to see the growing interest in serious study of the paranormal and alternate spirituality, especially in the UK, and especially among many young scholars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a special guest blog posting by Professor Charles Emmons of Gettysburg College, USA. Charles is a sociologist and has published widely from his research on the sociology of science and spirit, and appeared on numerous TV and radio … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EverydaySpirituality\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}