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

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. 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.

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. 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 this book.


From the Hardcover edition.

Foreword by Freeman Dyson
Foreword by Carol Gilligan

1. The Harp that Came Back
My Journey Begins

2. Going Public with Private Knowing
Breaking the Silence

3. Disavowing the Extraordinary
Personal Cost and Public Consequences

4. States of Mind
Knowing That Doesn't Feel Like Knowing

5. Intuitive Intelligence
The Art and Science of Union

6. Starting—and Stopping—the Conversation
The Strange History of Paranormal Research

7. Tossing Out Meteorites
Science Fear, and Anxiety

8. Nighttime Eyes
Learning to Live with Paradox