People tend to have strong views on the paranormal.

They believe in it; they don't believe in it. They say the paranormal isn't science and it isn't rational and it isn't real. They love it or they mock it or they dismiss it without a second thought. They're fascinated with it or they take offense as if the paranormal means to insult them personally.

We hear a lot about what the paranormal isn't, but we don't hear very much about what it is.

What does it mean for a phenomenon to be called a paranormal phenomenon?

Here's how my dictionary defines the term 'paranormal':

"paranormal: adjective

denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding"

According to Wikipedia, "...paranormal phenomena also lack scientific evidence, as detectable but not well explained phenomena such as dark matter or dark energy are not commonly called paranormal."

Paranormal phenomena would seem then to be events that lie outside the realm of science, and yet, although many paranormal events and phenomena do lack physical evidence or a scientific explanation, that isn't always quite true.

For example, many phenomena labeled as 'paranormal' have been subjected to frequent and rigorous scientific study and the results have been intriguing. A respected university physicist in Michigan has done lab work on plants collected from crop circle sites and has found unexplained and startling differences between the crop circle plants and plants growing outside the circles; differences that can't be explained by a board, a foot, and a troop of hoaxers.

The results of these crop circle tests are consistent even when the same experiments are done on crop circles from all over the world. The experiments themselves are designed and executed using mainstream scientific methodology. The man doing them is a respected scientist. Yet no major research lab or university physics department is rushing forward to be the first in the door on crop circle investigation.

No surprises there: Science knows that some projects result in grant money and some result in ridicule. So crop circles remain 'paranormal' pending a change in the political research climate.

In other cases, physical evidence does exist in other countries or cultures, but Western science, for whatever reason, doesn't want to touch further investigation with a ten foot pole. This is very much the case with energy medicine and ideas about the etheric body or the human energy force.

Such ideas are mainstream and readily accepted in the East, and although good local research has been done showing that some forms of energy medicine (such as acupuncture) are quite effective, in the West the very idea retains a paranormal stain because Western medicine doesn't have any theoretical framework to validate a nonmaterial body or life force.

In still other instances, (such as the examples of dark matter and dark energy given by Wikipedia), science basically does accept the reality of the 'paranormal' phenomena in question, but still calls them paranormal pending a mainstream explanation from its own ranks.

Sometimes paranormal phenomena can be explained quite well scientifically, but a competing explanation is in active conflict with the mainstream one. This is often the case with UFO reports and also with various types of haunting and phenomena associated with issues of human consciousness.   

I have learned to research a claim thoroughly before accepting that, "No physical evidence exists for it." Sometimes that is true. Other times, it isn't even sort of true. Then the real story becomes, "Why is this being supressed and discredited? What political or person fight is obscuring reality here?"

Defunct or discredited traditions also get slapped with the 'paranormal' label simply because they 'are not science.' Astrology is a good example of this tactic. Few astrologers claim that astrology is a science, and almost none of them set astrology up in opposition to astronomy as some sort of competing discipline, but science often frames the comparison in exactly this way, as if astrologers around the world were planning to take over the telescopes at all the major observatories if they aren't properly slapped down regularly and hard.

Why such an extreme reaction? Because astrology (and alchemy and several other occult traditions) were supplanted by science historically during the Age of Reason, and now, 400 years after the fact, science is still skittishly reminding these disciplines that science 'won' the battle for academic respect. Science sets up the straw man as competitor and knocks him down, but the competitor was imaginary all along.

I call this 'the sore winner syndrome.'

The problem is that often these defunct traditions address issues that science does not, and those issues are perfectly valid. We end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The one constant in all these views of the paranormal is that, in every case, something about the topic at hand is labeled not science or not worthy of scientific examination.

The paranormal, in other words, is the trash heap of science.

I don't know about you, but I love dumpster diving. Sure, you're going to find junk in every dumpster. In fact, 98% of what you find will be junk.

But 2% of the time you find something amazing, singular, and rare.

Stay tuned, and we'll look at garbage and treasures as we find them. I like that quote from Hamlet that says, "There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Science is a methodology, and a good one, but it was never meant to explain everything.

So let's go dumpster diving and share what we find!

Bring your own bag.