Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer

Random House Publishing Group, Feb 27, 2007 - Psychology - 302 pages

In 1991, when her daughter’s rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayer’s familiar world of science and rational thinking turned upside down. After the police failed to turn up any leads, a friend suggested she call a dowser—a man who specialized in finding lost objects. With nothing to lose—and almost as a joke—Dr. Mayer agreed. Within two days, and without leaving his Arkansas home, the dowser located the exact California street coordinates where the harp was found.

Deeply shaken, yet driven to understand what had happened, Mayer began the fourteen-year journey of discovery that she recounts in this mind-opening, brilliantly readable book. Her first surprise: the dozens of colleagues who’d been keeping similar experiences secret for years, fearful of being labeled credulous or crazy.

Extraordinary Knowing is an attempt to break through the silence imposed by fear and to explore what science has to say about these and countless other “inexplicable” phenomena. From Sigmund Freud’s writings on telepathy to secret CIA experiments on remote viewing, from leading-edge neuroscience to the strange world of quantum physics, Dr. Mayer reveals a wealth of credible and fascinating research into the realm where the mind seems to trump the laws of nature.

She does not ask us to believe. Rather she brings us a book of profound intrigue and optimism, with far-reaching implications not just for scientific inquiry but also for the ways we go about living in the world.

What people are saying

Review: Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind

User Review  - Kurt Thonnings - Goodreads

About intuition. Written by a scientist trying to deal with the reality of the spirit realm. Good read. Provides some insights, creates more questions. I especially like the analogy of why we don't ...

Review: Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind

User Review  - Patyn - Goodreads

I really liked this book. I'm not saying that I absolutely believe everything in it, but it was a thought-provoking book that kept me pretty interested the whole way through.

About the author

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D., was an internationally known psychoanalyst, researcher, and clinician, the author of groundbreaking papers on female development, the nature of science, and intuition, and a contributor to Consciousness and Healing, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. In addition to her private practice, she was associate clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and also taught at UC Medical Center, San Francisco. She died just after completing Extraordinary Knowing.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind
• Author: Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2007
• ISBN: 0553803352, 9780553803358
• Length: 302 pages
• Subjects: Body, Mind & Spirit / Parapsychology / ESP (Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy); Psychology / Cognitive Psychology; Psychology / General