Taylor, John (Gerald) (1931-)

Professor of applied mathematics at King's College, London, England, who was the first British scientist to investigate the phenomena of Uri Geller. Taylor was born on August 18, 1931, in Hayes, Kent. He won his way into Christ's College, Cambridge at age 16; at 18 he enrolled at Mid-Essex Technical College, where he took his B.Sc. in general science. He completed a three-year mathematics degree course in two years at Cambridge and passed with first class honors. His academic career has included visiting professorships in the United States as well as being Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Southampton and a post at King's College, London.

When Uri Geller visited Britain in 1974, Taylor conducted scientific tests of Geller's feats of metal bending and interference with a Geiger counter. Taylor also experimented with some of the children and adults who manifested paranormal abilities after seeing Uri Geller's appearances on British television programs. Taylor's interest in such phenomena was not only in its scientific validation, but also in investigation of the way in which such phenomena take place and the nature of the forces involved. He suggested the phenomena may be some low-frequency electromagnetic effect generated by human beings.

Through the 1970s Taylor was regarded as fully endorsing the paranormal metal bending of Uri Geller, but gradually has made more guarded statements; then in 1980 he largely retracted his support for Geller's paranormal talents. In 1974 he noted, "The Geller effect—of metal-bending—is clearly not brought about by fraud. It is so exceptional it presents a crucial challenge to modern science and could even destroy the latter if no explanation became available." Taylor then spent three years of careful investigation of such phenomena as psychokinesis, metal bending, and dowsing, but could not discover any reasonable scientific explanation or validation that satisfied him. He was particularly concerned to establish whether there is an electromagnetic basis for such phenomena. After failing to find this he did not believe that there was any other explanation that would suffice. Most of his experiments under laboratory conditions were negative; this left him in a skeptical position regarding the validity of claimed phenomena.

In contrast to the endorsement in his first book on psi, Superminds, he published a paper expressing his doubts in a paper in Nature (November 2, 1978) titled "Can Electromagnetism Account for Extra-sensory Phenomena?" He followed this with his book Science and the Supernatural (1980) in which he expressed complete skepticism about every aspect of the paranormal. In his final chapter he stated: "We have searched for the supernatural and not found it. In the main, only poor experimentation [including his own], shoddy theory, and human gull-ibility have been encountered."

Taylor's new position seems to stem from his failure to find an electromagnetic explanation for paranormal phenomena. In his new book he stated: "We therefore have to accept that when science faces up to the supernatural, it is a case of 'electro-magnetism or bust.' " In contrast, John Hasted, another British scientist who has tested Uri Geller, continues to support the reality of the Geller effect and also believes that there is evidence of an electromagnetic field in the phenomenon.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Taylor, John The Horizons of Knowledge. N.p., 1982.

——. Science and the Supernatural. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980.

——. The Shape of Minds to Come. N.p., 1971.

——. Superminds. London: Macmillan, 1975.