THE SCIENCE that deals with persons as distinct from impersonal
substances, forces, or bodies is called psychology just as the study
of living organisms as distinguished from the inanimate is called
biology. The characteristic that most distinguishes personal
agency or behavior from an impersonal operation has not yet been
successfully defined in terms of psychology. Consequently, it is
still not clear in more than superficial terms just how the field of
psychology is to be marked off from the rest of the studies of na-
ture. Under the influence of the trend in science towards a
mechanistic philosophy the natural effort has been to try to make
psychology in effect a branch of physics. However, the discover-
ies concerning psi, in showing that persons are capable of certain
nonphysical functions, have provided psychology with at least one
fundamental distinction between a person and an impersonal
thing. How far this distinguishing character extends throughout
the entire structure of the personality is a matter for further study,
but even at a minimal valuation it has won for psychology a scien-
tific claim to its own distinct area of reality. Unlike all the other
branches of science, it has been experimentally proved to have
operations that do not yield to physical explanation.

We should expect, in view of the significance of psi for a theory
of man's nature, that its position would become a more central
one in general psychology as recognition of the reality of psi
extends within that profession. The shift may come about slowly,
but if it should require a long time, that would in itself give some
measure of how profound an alteration in current thought was in-
volved. At all events, when the eventual stage of complete
recognition of psi is reached it can hardly fail to bring about a
major revolution in the larger field, so fundamental is the new
concept of man introduced.

-78-