Joseph Banks Rhine (29 September 1895 – 20 February 1980), usually known as J. B. Rhine, was an American botanist and parapsychologist, widely regarded as the founder of laboratory-based parapsychology as a scientific discipline.[1] He founded the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, the Parapsychological Association, and the organisation now known as the Rhine Research Center.[2]
Early life and education
Rhine was born in Waterloo, Juniata County, Pennsylvania, the second of five children of Samuel Ellis Rhine and Elizabeth Ellen Vaughan Rhine.[1] He served in the United States Marine Corps during the First World War before entering the University of Chicago in 1919, where he earned a B.S. in botany in 1922, an M.S. in 1923, and a Ph.D. in 1925.[1] In 1920 he married fellow student Louisa Ella Weckesser, who as Louisa E. Rhine went on to become a noted parapsychologist in her own right, focusing on the collection of spontaneous, real-world psychic case reports rather than laboratory testing.[3]
Path into psychical research
After graduating, Rhine briefly taught plant physiology, then enrolled at Harvard University to study for a year with psychologist William McDougall.[4] While there, Rhine and Louisa investigated the mediumship of Mina "Margery" Crandon alongside Walter Franklin Prince, and reported witnessing Crandon free herself from physical control during a 1926 séance to kick a megaphone and simulate levitation; the couple published their findings in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology after the American Society for Psychical Research declined to publish the report itself.[5][3] Drawn by McDougall's work, Rhine followed him to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in 1927, where he would remain for the rest of his career.[1]
The Duke Parapsychology Laboratory
Rhine and McDougall established the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke around 1930, conducting experiments into telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, initially testing children at local summer camps before moving on to Duke students that autumn.[6] Rhine's card-guessing tests, using cards developed with Duke perceptual psychologist Karl Zener, became the laboratory's signature methodology; his first standout subject, sophomore Adam "A. J." Linzmayer, scored well above chance across a series of trials beginning in 1931.[6] A later, more elaborate test conducted in 1933–34 with divinity student Hubert Pearce and researcher J. Gaither Pratt had Pratt handling and recording the cards' order in a separate building 100 to 250 yards away, with results and guesses independently sealed and compared afterward.[7]
In 1934, Rhine published Extra-Sensory Perception through the Boston Society for Psychic Research, summarising the lab's early findings and, per most accounts, coining the term "extra-sensory perception" itself.[1] The book drew international attention to Rhine's work — Duke's own retrospective describes him becoming "a rock star" within the field almost overnight, with the lab attracting correspondence from figures including Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, and Aldous Huxley, and drawing research funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and, at one point, a purchase of ESP cards by the CIA.[4] The Laboratory was formally separated from the Department of Psychology as its own research unit in 1935, and Rhine became its director in 1940.[2]
Institution-building
Beyond his own research, Rhine is credited with building much of the institutional foundation of modern parapsychology in the United States. He launched the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937, adopted the term "parapsychology" (translating a German term originally coined by Max Dessoir) in preference to the older "psychical research," and led the founding of the Parapsychological Association in 1957.[2] Anticipating declining institutional support at Duke, he and Louisa established the independent Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man in 1965, which continues today as the Rhine Research Center.[1]
Later life and death
Rhine continued directing the Institute for Parapsychology, the Foundation's research arm, and remained active in the field for the rest of his life. He died on 20 February 1980 in Hillsborough, North Carolina.[2]
Legacy and criticism
Rhine's results were never successfully replicated to the satisfaction of the wider scientific community, and his methodology drew sustained criticism throughout his career and afterward.[1] Nonetheless, the institutions and experimental traditions he founded — from Zener card testing to the later ganzfeld work carried out at research centres including the University of Edinburgh — shaped the entire subsequent field of parapsychology, and "ESP" remains, by a wide margin, the most widely recognised term for claimed extrasensory ability in general public use. His work also left a mark well beyond academic parapsychology: Duke's own research using Zener cards is cited as a direct real-world grounding for Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House.[4]
See also
- Extra-Sensory Perception (1934 book)
- Extrasensory Perception
- Parapsychology
- Boston Society for Psychic Research
- Society for Psychical Research
- Precognition, Clairvoyance, Telepathy
- Duke University
- Koestler Parapsychology Unit
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "J. B. Rhine of Duke University, Father of Modern Parapsychology."North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.2016.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Joseph Banks Rhine."Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Louisa E Rhine."Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Synchronicity at Duke."Duke Today.2009.
- ↑ "Joseph Banks Rhine."Alchetron.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "J B Rhine."The Bus (Substack).
- ↑ "J. B. Rhine."New World Encyclopedia.