Abstract
The topic for this chapter is one which the reader will have little difficulty in associating with the name of the Israeli entertainer Uri Geller and the highly publicized controversy of the past decade over his claim to the reality of so-called ‘metal-bending’. That is, more specifically, his claim to the demonstrability of his capacity to bring about the super-normal softening, deformation and fracturing of pieces of metal, for example spoons, forks, keys, etc. (as well as, occasionally, other materials such as plastic), either (a) by the simple act of gentle finger-stroking, or even (b) by the direct action of thought alone without any touching whatsoever. In thus reminding the reader of the topic for discussion, it may be brought into sharper focus through mention that, whatever the ultimate significance of the claim embraced under (a), it is the starkness of (b) which is clearly of most decisive interest in the current context. To this extent — and in full acceptance, right from the outset, of what may well be taken as the inherent improbability of such happenings — the concern in what follows will relate most expressly to the latter, with only implied or incidental reference to the less conceptually provocative, though more widely publicized, mode of the challenge embraced under (a).
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Notes
Taylor, Superminds (London: Macmillan, 1975).
Cf. also, Taylor, Nature, 254 (April 1975) pp. 472–3.
Hasted, The Metal-Benders (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1981).
Randi, James, The Magic of Uri Geller (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1975); later republished (with certain additions) under the title The Truth about Uri Geller: One of the most eye-opening exposes [sic] of the decade about psychic claims and magic! (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1982).
Taylor, Science and the Supernatural (London: Panther, 1980).
Inglis, The Hidden Power (London: Cape, 1986) p. 179.
Hasted, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 49, No. 773 (September 1977) pp. 583–91, p. 583. The subject, it may be added, had previously figured prominently in experiments with Taylor; and, in the latter’s book, is identified as a sixteen-year-old boy rating even ‘as highly as Geller himself’ in some of his abilities. Taylor, Superminds p. 159.
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© 1990 T. C. Williams
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Williams, T.C. (1990). Super-normality as a Mode of the Present. In: The Idea of the Miraculous. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20848-7_8
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