Precognition (from the Latin prae- "before" and cognitio "gaining knowledge") is the supposed ability to see or become directly aware of events that will happen in the future.

There is no scientific proof that precognition is real, and it is often classified as pseudoscience. Precognition goes against the idea that an effect cannot happen before its cause.

People have believed in precognition for a long time in history. Even though there is no scientific evidence, many still think it is real. It is frequently reported and continues to be studied and discussed by researchers in the field of parapsychology.

Precognitive phenomena

Precognition is often considered part of a larger idea called prescience, which means knowing what might happen in the future through any method. It is different from premonition, which is a less clear feeling that something bad might happen. Practices like predicting the future through prophecy or fortune telling have been done for many years.

Precognitive dreams are the most commonly reported examples of precognition. Usually, a dream or vision can only be recognized as precognitive after the event it is thought to predict happens. When this occurs, it is said the event "broke the dream."

In Judaism, some believe dreams are mostly unimportant, while others think they might contain messages from the future. Some people believe bad dreams need to be addressed or changed. According to the Book of Genesis, God gave Joseph the ability to see the future through dreams and to understand the dreams of others.

In Buddhism, dreams are seen as "mind-created phenomena." Dreams that warn of danger or prepare a person for very good news are considered the most important.

History

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Throughout history, people have believed that some individuals have the ability to see the future, or that certain practices can lead to such experiences. These visions have sometimes been connected to important events in history. Even though there is no scientific proof, many people still believe in precognition. A poll in 2005 showed that 73% of Americans believe in at least one type of paranormal experience, with 41% believing in extrasensory perception.

Since ancient times, precognition has been linked with dreams, trance states, and waking premonitions. This has led to the practice of prophecy and fortune telling. Oracles, who were once seen as wise people, became more associated with predicting the future.

People who claim to see the future have always had critics. Aristotle studied dreams that were said to predict the future in his book On Divination in Sleep. He believed that some dreams might be connected to future events, but he also thought that most such dreams were just coincidences. While Democritus suggested that future events could send signals back to the dreamer, Aristotle believed that it was the dreamer's impressions that reached forward to future events.

The word "precognition" first appeared in the 17th century, but it was not commonly used by researchers until much later.

One of the first investigations into claims of precognition was published in 1883 by the missionary Fr. P. Boilat. He asked an African witch-doctor a question without saying it aloud. To his surprise, the witch-doctor answered correctly without ever hearing the question.

In the early 20th century, J. W. Dunne, a British soldier and aeronautics engineer, had several dreams that he believed were precognitive. He developed methods to record and analyze them, looking for matches between his dreams and future events. He wrote about his findings in his 1927 book An Experiment with Time. He reported that 10% of his dreams seemed to include some future events. He also asked some friends to try the experiment, but the results were mixed. He noticed that people, including himself, often avoided thinking that their dreams were precognitive and instead looked for other explanations. Dunne concluded that precognition in dreams is common and that many people have these experiences without realizing it. He also believed that dreams did not predict all future events, but only those that the dreamer would experience. This idea came from a dream that seemed to predict not a volcanic eruption itself, but his later mistake in reading a newspaper.

Edith Lyttelton, who later became President of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), thought Dunne's theory was similar to her own idea of the superconscious. In 1932, Dunne helped the SPR conduct a more formal experiment, but he and the Society's lead researcher, Theodore Besterman, disagreed about the results. However, the philosopher C. D. Broad said that the only theory he thought was worth considering was the one proposed by Dunne in An Experiment with Time. The book was widely read and influenced many writers of both fiction and nonfiction during the interwar years. According to Flieger, "Dunne's theory was so current and popular that not understanding it was a mark of singularity." Major writers influenced by Dunne's ideas include H. G. Wells, J. B. Priestley, and Olaf Stapledon. Vladimir Nabokov was also influenced by Dunne later in his career.

In 1932, Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped, murdered, and buried among trees. Psychologists Henry Murray and D. R. Wheeler used this event to test for dream precognition by asking the public to report any dreams about the child. A total of 1,300 dreams were reported. Only 5% of them described the child as dead, and only 4 of the 1,300 dreams mentioned the location of the grave as being among trees.

The first ongoing and organized research program on precognition was started by Joseph Banks Rhine and Louisa E. Rhine in the 1930s at Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory. J. B. Rhine used a method where participants guessed the order of a deck of 25 cards, each with one of five symbols. His results were positive and gained some academic attention, but his methods were later found to be flawed. Subsequent researchers using more rigorous methods were unable to reproduce his results. His math was sometimes incorrect, the experiments were not properly blinded, and the cards were so thin that the symbols could be seen through the back.

Samuel G. Soal, another member of the SPR, was one of Rhine's harshest critics. He conducted similar experiments with negative results. However, from around 1940, he ran experiments where a subject tried to identify which of five animal pictures another person was looking at. The subjects' performance was at chance level, but when the scores were matched with the card that came after the target card, three of the thirteen subjects had a very high hit rate. Rhine then called Soal's work a "milestone in the field." However, later analyses of Soal's findings suggested that the positive results were likely due to deliberate fraud. The controversy continued for many years. In 1978, the statistician Betty Markwick, while trying to support Soal, found that he had tampered with his data. The clean results showed no evidence of precognition.

As modern technology advanced, more automated methods of testing precognition were developed. These methods did not rely on hand-scoring and allowed for more reliable random testing. In 1969, Helmut Schmidt introduced the use of high-speed random event generators (REG) for precognition testing. Experiments were also conducted at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab. However, flaws were found in Schmidt's experiments when the psychologist C. E. M. Hansel discovered that necessary precautions were not taken.

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick believed he had precognitive experiences and used this idea in some of his novels, especially in his 1956 short story "The Minority Report" and in his 1956 novel The World Jones Made.

In 1963, the BBC television program Monitor broadcast an appeal by the writer J.B. Priestley for experiences that challenged our understanding of time. He received hundreds of letters in response and believed many described real precognitive dreams. In 2014, the BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Francis Spufford revisited Priestley's work and its connection to J.W. Dunne's ideas.

In 1965, G. W. Lambert, a former Council member of the SPR, proposed five criteria that needed to be met before a precognitive dream could be considered credible:

• The dream should be reported to a credible witness before the event.
• The time between the dream and the event should be short.
• The event should be unexpected at the time of the dream.
• The description should be of an event that literally happens, not just symbolically.

Scientific reception

Claims about precognition, like other claims, can be tested by science. However, the way science evaluates these claims depends on the nature of the claim itself.

Precognition is criticized for three main reasons:

• There is no known scientific explanation for how precognition could work. It would break the rule that causes come before effects, as the event someone predicts would need to happen before it actually occurs.
• Many experiments have been conducted, but none have provided accepted scientific proof that precognition exists.
• Stories about precognition are often explained by other psychological factors, such as coincidence or unconscious behavior.

Because of these reasons, precognition is widely seen as pseudoscience.

Precognition would break the principle of cause and effect, meaning an event cannot happen before its cause. If information could move backward in time, it would need to be carried by physical particles doing the same. Studies in physics suggest this is not possible. Therefore, physics does not support the idea of precognition.

Precognition would also conflict with much of what is known in neuroscience and psychology, including research on brain activity, imaging studies, and how the mind processes time.

Many claims about precognition have been made, including personal stories and experimental results. However, none of these have been accepted as solid scientific proof. Some experiments have been criticized for errors, and later studies have contradicted earlier findings. This suggests the evidence may not have been valid to begin with.

Psychologists have proposed several explanations for experiences that seem like precognition:

• Coincidence: Events that appear to be precognition may simply be the result of rare events happening by chance, especially when many possibilities exist.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy and unconscious enactment: People may unconsciously act in ways that make their imagined events come true.
• Unconscious perception: People may use information they have learned without realizing it to predict events. When the event happens, it seems like they knew it beforehand.
• Retrofitting: This is when people reinterpret old dreams or visions to match recent events. For example, a vague statement by Nostradamus has been interpreted in many different ways over time.
• False memories: People may remember events that did not happen, such as imagining a precognitive dream after an event occurs. Keeping a dream diary can reduce this effect.
• Déjà vu: This is the feeling that an event has happened before, even though it has not. Some researchers think déjà vu and false memories are similar, but others see them as separate.

Psychologists have also studied why some people believe in precognition. Research suggests that people who feel they have little control over their lives may believe in precognition because it gives them a sense of control.