Editing An Experiment with Time

{{short description|1927 book by J. W. Dunne}}
{{COI|date=March 2024}}
{{for|Serialism in music|Serialism}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox book 
| name          = An Experiment with Time
| image         = An Experiment with Time book cover.jpg
| caption       = 1934 [[Faber & Faber]] edition
| author        = [[J. W. Dunne]]
| illustrator   = 
| cover_artist  = 
| country       = United Kingdom
| language      = English
| series        = 
| subjects      = [[Precognitive dream]]s and [[Time]]
| publisher     = A. & C. Black<br />Faber & Faber
| pub_date      = 1927
| media_type    = Print ([[Hardcover]] and [[Paperback]])
| pages         = 208pp
| isbn          = 1-57174-234-4
| congress= MLCM 2004/02936 (B)
| oclc= 46396413
}}

'''''An Experiment with Time''''' is a book by the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher [[J. W. Dunne]] (1875–1949) about his [[precognitive dream]]s and a theory of [[time]] which he later called "Serialism". First published in March 1927, the book was widely read. Although never accepted by mainstream scientists or philosophers, it has influenced imaginative literature ever since. Dunne published four sequels: ''The Serial Universe'' (1934), ''The New Immortality'' (1938), ''Nothing Dies'' (1940) and ''Intrusions?'' (1955).
  
==Description==
===Overview===
''An Experiment with Time'' discusses two main topics.

The first half of the book describes a number of precognitive dreams, most of which Dunne himself had experienced. His key conclusion was that such precognitive visions foresee future personal experiences by the dreamer and not mere general events.

The second half develops a theory to try to explain them. Dunne's starting point is the observation that the moment of "now" is not described by science. Contemporary science described physical time as a fourth dimension and Dunne's argument led to an endless sequence of higher dimensions of time to measure our passage through the dimension below. Accompanying each level was a higher level of consciousness. At the end of the chain was a supreme ultimate observer.

According to Dunne, our wakeful attention prevents us from seeing beyond the present moment, whilst when dreaming that attention fades and we gain the ability to recall more of our timeline. This allows fragments of our future to appear in pre-cognitive dreams, mixed in with fragments or memories of our past. Other consequences include the phenomenon known as [[deja vu]] and the existence of [[life after death]].<ref name="priestley-mt">Priestley (1989)</ref>

===Dreams and the experiment===
Following a discussion of brain function in which Dunne expounds mind-brain parallelism and highlights the problem of subjective experience, he gives anecdotal accounts of precognitive dreams which, for the most part, he himself had experienced.

The first he records occurred in 1898, in which he dreamed of his watch stopping at an exact time before waking up and finding that it had in fact done so.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dunne |first=J. W. |author-link=J. W. Dunne |title=An Experiment with Time |publisher=Hampton Roads |year=2001 |orig-year=1927 |isbn=978-1-57174-234-6 |oclc=46396413}}</ref> Later dreams appeared to foretell several major disasters; a volcanic eruption in [[Martinique]], a factory fire in Paris, and the derailing of the [[Flying Scotsman (train)|Flying Scotsman]] express train from the embankment approaching the [[Forth Railway Bridge]] in Scotland.

Dunne tells how he sought to make sense of these dreams, coming slowly to the conclusion that they foresaw events from his own future, such as reading a newspaper account of a disaster rather than foreseeing the disaster itself. In order to try and prove this to his satisfaction, he developed the experiment which gives the book its title. He kept a notepad by his bedside and wrote down details of any dreams immediately on waking, then later went back and compared them to subsequent events in his life. He also persuaded some friends to try the same experiment, as well as experimenting on himself with waking reveries approaching a [[hypnagogic]] state.

Based on the results, he claimed that they demonstrated that such precognitive fragments were common in dreams, even that they were mixed up in equal occurrence with past memories, and therefore they were difficult to identify until after the event they foresaw. He believed that the dreaming mind was not drawn wholly to the present, as it was during wakefulness, but was able to perceive events in its past and future with equal facility.<ref name="priestley-mt" />

===The theory of Serialism===
Having presented Dunne's evidence for precognition, the book moves on to a possible theory in explanation which he called Serialism.<ref name="levy">{{cite journal |last=Levy |first=Hyman |title=Time and Perception (review of ''An Experiment with Time'') |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=119 |issue=3006 |date=11 June 1927 |pages=847–848|doi=10.1038/119847a0 |s2cid=4123898 }}</ref>

The theory harks back to an experience with his nurse when he was nine years old. Already thinking about the problem, the boy asked her if Time was the moments like yesterday, today and tomorrow, or was it the travelling between them that we experience as the present moment? Any answer was beyond her, but the observation formed the basis of Serialism.

Within the fixed spacetime landscape described by the recently published theory of [[general relativity]], an observer travels along a timeline running in the direction of physical time, ''t''<sub>1</sub>. [[Quantum mechanics]] was also a newly emerging science, though in a less-developed state. Neither relativity nor quantum mechanics offered any explanation of the observer's place in spacetime, but both required it in order to develop the physical theory around it. The philosophical problems raised by this lack of rigorous foundation were already beginning to be recognised.<ref>[[Arthur Eddington|Eddington, Arthur]]; ''[[iarchive:natureofphysical00edd|The Nature of the Physical World]]'', 1928 (delivered as the [[Gifford Lectures|Gifford lectures]] in 1927).[https://web.archive.org/web/20200919221214/https://www.giffordlectures.org/lectures/nature-physical-world]</ref>

The theory resolves the issue by proposing a higher dimension of Time, ''t''<sub>2</sub>, in which our consciousness experiences its travelling along the timeline in ''t''<sub>1</sub>. The physical brain itself inhabits only ''t''<sub>1</sub>, requiring a second level of mind to inhabit ''t''<sub>2</sub> and it is at this level that the observer experiences consciousness.

However, Dunne found that his logic led to a similar difficulty with ''t''<sub>2</sub> in that the passage between successive events in ''t''<sub>2</sub> was not included in the model. This led to an even higher ''t''<sub>3</sub> in which a third-level observer could experience not just the mass of events in ''t''<sub>2</sub> but the ''passage'' of those experiences in ''t''<sub>2</sub>, and so on in the infinite regress of time dimensions and observers which gives the theory its name.

Dunne suggested that when we die, it is only our physical selves in ''t''<sub>1</sub> who die and that our higher selves are outside of mundane time. Our conscious selves therefore have no mechanism to die in the same kind of way and are effectively immortal.<ref name="priestley-mt" /> At the end of the chain he proposed a "superlative general observer, the fount of all ... consciousness".<ref>Dunne, J. W. ''An Experiment with Time'', First Edition, A.C. Black, 1927, Page 207.</ref>

==Publishing history==
''An Experiment with Time'' was first published by [[A & C Black]] in March 1927. Dunne continued to update it and many new editions and impressions were published over his lifetime. Black brought out a 1929 second edition, prefaced with editorial notes and an extract from a 1928 letter from [[Arthur Eddington]].<ref>Dunne, J. W. ''An Experiment with Time'', 2nd Edition, A.C. Black, 1929, p. viii "I agree with you about ' serialism ' ; the ' going on of time ' is not in Minkowski's world as it stands. My own feeling is that the ' becoming' is really there in the physical world,* but is not formulated in the description of it in classical physics (and is, in fact, useless to a scheme of laws which is fully deterministic). . . Yours truly, A. S. EDDINGTON. OBSERVATORY, CAMBRIDGE,  1928, Feb.1." </ref> Dunne then changed publisher to [[Faber & Faber]], with whom he would remain. The third edition incorporated major new material and was published by Faber's in 1932; this and subsequent editions were published in the US by [[Macmillan Inc.|Macmillan]]. The final version which he had a hand in was published as a "reprint" in 1948.

Faber continued printing paperback editions until at least 1973, and others have appeared since.

==Reception==

=== Academic ===
Initial reactions from the scientific and scientifically-minded community were broadly positive. ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'' carried a review by [[Hyman Levy]]. They accepted that Dunne was a sober and rational investigator who was doing his best to take a scientific approach. They acknowledged that if his ideas about time and consciousness were true then his book would be truly revolutionary.<ref name="jones">Jones (2020)</ref> However opinions differed over the existence of dream precognition, while his infinite regress was almost universally judged to be logically flawed and incorrect.<ref name="levy"/>

Philosophers who criticised ''An Experiment with Time'' on much the same basis included [[John Alexander Gunn|J. A. Gunn]], [[C. D. Broad]] and [[M. F. Cleugh]].<ref>Gunn, J. A.; ''The Problem of Time'', Unwin, 1929.</ref><ref>Broad, C. D.; [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3746736 "Mr. Dunne's Theory of Time in 'An Experiment with Time'"], ''Philosophy'', Vol. 10, No. 38, April, 1935, pp. 168-185.</ref><ref>Cleugh, M. F.; ''[[iarchive:in.ernet.dli.2015.172131|Time: And its Importance in Modern Thought]]'', Methuen, 1937.</ref>

Physicist and parapsychologist [[G. N. M. Tyrrell]] explained:

<blockquote>Mr. J. W. Dunne, in his book, ''An Experiment with Time'', introduces a multidimensional scheme in an attempt to explain precognition and he has further developed this scheme in later publications. But, as Professor Broad has shown, these unlimited dimensions are unnecessary, ... and the true problem of time—the problem of becoming, or the passage of events from future through present to past, is not explained by them but is still left on the author's hands at the end.<ref>Tyrrell, G. N. M.; ''[[iarchive:dli.ernet.233758/page/135/mode/1up|Science and Psychical Phenomena]]''. New York: Harper, 1938, p. 135.</ref></blockquote>

Later editions continued to receive attention. In 1981 a new impression of the 1934 (third) edition was published with an introduction by the writer and broadcaster [[Brian Inglis]]. The last (1948) edition was reprinted in 1981 with an introduction by the physicist and parapsychologist [[Russell Targ]]. A review of it in ''[[New Scientist]]'' described it as a "definitive classic".<ref>[[John Gribbin|Gribbin, John]]; Book Review of ''An Experiment with Time'', ''[[New Scientist]]'', 27 August 1981, p. 548</ref>

Mainstream scientific opinion remains that, while Dunne was an entertaining writer, there is no scientific evidence for either dream precognition or more than one time dimension and his arguments do not convince.<ref>Evans, Christopher; ''Landscapes of the Night: How and Why We Dream'', Viking, 1983.</ref><ref>[[Paul Davies|Davies, Paul]]; ''About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution'', Viking, 1995.[https://books.google.com/books?id=mOgIGyD1uSIC&dq=paul+davies+%22experiment+with+time%22&pg=PT303]</ref>

=== Popular ===
''An Experiment with Time'' became well known and was widely discussed. Not to have read him became a "mark of singularity" in society.<ref name="flieger"/>

Critical essays on Serialism — some positive, some negative — appeared in popular works. Among others, [[H. G. Wells]] wrote an essay, "New Light on Mental Life: Mr. J.W. Dunne’s Experiments with Dreaming" in 1927,<ref>Included in his 1928 book ''[[The Way the World Is Going]]''.</ref> [[Jorge Luis Borges]] wrote a short essay, "El Tiempo y J. W. Dunne" (Time and J. W. Dunne) in 1940.<ref>Translated for his 1952 anthology ''Other Inquisitions: 1937-1952'',</ref> and [[J. B. Priestley]] gave an accessible account in his study ''Man and Time'' (1964). Interest remains today, with for example [[Gary Lachman]] discussing Dunne's Serialism in 2022.<ref>Lachman, Gary. ''Dreaming Ahead of Time''. Floris. 2022. pp.106-110.</ref>

==Sequels==

Besides issuing new editions of ''An Experiment with Time'', Dunne published sequels exploring different aspects of Serialism. ''The Serial Universe'' (1934) examined its relation to contemporary physics in [[Theory of relativity|relativity]] and [[quantum mechanics]]. ''The New Immortality'' (1938) and ''Nothing Dies'' (1940) explored the metaphysical aspect of Serialism, especially in relation to immortality. ''Intrusions?'' (1955) contained autobiographical accounts of the angelic visions and voices which had accompanied many of his precognitive dreams. It was incomplete at the time of his death in 1949; it was completed with the help of his family and finally published some years later. It revealed that he believed himself to be a spiritual [[medium (spirituality)|medium]]. He had deliberately chosen to leave this material out of ''An Experiment with Time'' as he judged that it would have affected the scientific reception of his theory.<ref>{{cite news |last=Brandon |first=Ruth |title=Scientists and the supernormal |work=[[New Scientist]] |date=16 June 1983 |page=786}}</ref>

==Literary influence==
<!-- Other significant authors who need citing include Rumer Godden (A Fugue in Time), Graham Greene and Robert Heinlein (Elsewhen and“Lost Legacy), -->
The popularity of ''An Experiment with Time'' was reflected in the many authors who subsequently referenced him and his ideas in literary works of fiction. He "undoubtedly helped to form something of the imaginative climate of those [interwar] years".<ref name="stewart">Stewart (2008)</ref><ref>Anon; "Obituary: Mr. J. W. Dunne, Philosopher and Airman", ''The Times'', August 27, 1949, Page 7.</ref> One of the first and most significant writers was [[J. B. Priestley]], who used Dunne's ideas in three of his "[[J. B. Priestley's Time Plays|Time plays]]": ''[[Time and the Conways]]'', ''[[Dangerous Corner]]'', and ''[[An Inspector Calls]]''.<ref name="stewart" />

Dunne's theory strongly influenced the unfinished novels ''[[The Notion Club Papers]]'' by [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] and ''[[The Dark Tower (Lewis novel)|The Dark Tower]]'' by [[C. S. Lewis]]. Tolkien and Lewis were both members of the [[Inklings]] literary circle. Tolkien used Dunne's ideas about parallel time dimensions in developing the [[Time in The Lord of the Rings|differing natures of time in ''The Lord of the Rings'']] between "[[Lothlórien|Lórien]] time" and time in the rest of [[Middle-earth]].<ref name="flieger">Flieger (2001)</ref> Lewis used the imagery of serialism in the afterlife he depicted at the end of ''[[The Last Battle]]'', the closing tale in the [[Chronicles of Narnia]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Inchbald |first=Guy |title=The Last Serialist: C.S. Lewis and J.W. Dunne |journal=Mythlore |volume=37 |issue=2, Spring/Summer 2019 |year=2019 |pages=75–88 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2096&context=mythlore}}</ref>

Other important contemporary writers who used his ideas, whether as a narrative or literary device, included [[John Buchan]] (''[[The Gap in the Curtain]]''), [[James Hilton (novelist)|James Hilton]] (''[[Random Harvest]]''), his old friend [[H. G. Wells]] (''The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper'' and ''[[The Shape of Things to Come]]''), [[Graham Greene]] (''The Bear Fell Free'') and [[Rumer Godden]] (''A Fugue in Time'').<ref name="stewart" /><ref>Gilvary, Dermot; ''Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene: Journeys with Saints and Sinners'', Continuum, 2011, p.101.</ref><ref>Stewart, Victoria; "An Experiment with Narrative?  Rumer Godden's A Fugue in Time", in (ed. Lucy Le-Guilcher and Phyllis B. Lassner) ''Rumer Godden: International and Intermodern Storyteller'', Routledge, 2010, pp. 81-93.</ref> Literary figures less overtly influenced included [[T.S. Eliot]], [[James Joyce]] and [[Flann O'Brien]].<ref name="jones" />

Following Dunne's death in 1949, the popularity of his themes continued. In [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s 1952 science fiction novella ''[[The Lovers (Farmer novella and novel)|The Lovers]]'' (expanded into a novel in 1961 & '79) the religion of the Haijac Union derives from Isaac Sigman, a messianic figure of a thousand years prior to the events of the story. Sigmanism is the belief system of the "Sturch" (state-church) and it is clear that it is an elaboration, or variant, of Judaism. It incorporates Dunne's "Serialism" with an extremely oppressive and coersive theocracy. [[Philippa Pearce]]'s 1958 childhood fantasy ''[[Tom's Midnight Garden]]'' makes use of Dunne's theory of time and won the British literary [[Carnegie Medal (literary award)|Carnegie Medal]].<ref>[http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/pearce_philippa "Pearce, Philippa"], ''Science Fiction Encyclopedia'' (accessed 15 January 2016)</ref> The writer [[Vladimir Nabokov]] undertook his own dream experiment in 1964, following Dunne's instructions, and it strongly influenced his subsequent novels, especially ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]''.<ref>[[Vladimir Nabokov|Nabokov, Vladimir]] (ed. Gennady Barabtarlo); ''Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time'', Princeton University Press, 2018 (sic).</ref><ref>Lanchester, John; [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n09/john-lanchester/nabokovs-dreams "Nabokov’s Dreams"], ''[[London Review of Books]]'', Vol. 40, Nr. 9, 10 May 2018, p. 18.</ref>

==See also==
*[[Dreamtime]], an Australian aboriginal merging of past, present and future.
*[[C. H. Hinton]], an early proponent of time as the fourth dimension who influenced Dunne.
*[[P. D. Ouspensky]], who proposed an alternative theory of cyclic time.

==References==
===Citations===
{{reflist}}

===Bibliography===
*{{cite book |last=Flieger |first=Verlyn |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |title=A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien's Road to Faërie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I33v5ny3NX0C |year=2001 |publisher=Kent State University Press |isbn=978-0-87338-699-9 |pages=38–47}}
*Jones, Darryl. (2020) "J. W. Dunne: The Time Traveller". In: Ferguson, T. (ed) ''Literature and Modern Time''. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-29278-2_9
*{{cite book |last=Priestley |first=J. B. |author-link=J. B. Priestley |title=Man and Time |publisher=Bloomsbury |orig-year=1964 (Aldus) |year=1989 |isbn=978-1870630672 |oclc=796254114}}
*{{cite journal |last=Stewart |first=Victoria |title=J. W. Dunne and literary culture in the 1930s and 1940s |journal=Literature and History |volume=17 |issue=2, Autumn 2008 |year=2008|pages=62–81|doi=10.7227/LH.17.2.5 |s2cid=192883327 }}

==Further reading==

*[[Ernest Nagel]]. (1927). ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2013955 An Experiment with Time]''. ''[[The Journal of Philosophy]]'' 24 (25): 690-692.
*[[Samuel Soal]]. (1927). [https://archive.org/stream/journalofsociety24soci#page/119/mode/2up ''Review: An Experiment with Time'']. ''Journal of the Society for Psychical Research'' 24: 119-123.

==External links==
* {{FadedPage|id=20181016|name=An Experiment with Time}}
* Full text of ''[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000007118205&view=1up&seq=9 An Experiment with Time]'' (first edition) at HathiTrust Digital Library

{{Time in philosophy}}
{{Parapsychology|state=collapsed}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Experiment with Time}}
[[Category:J. W. Dunne]]
[[Category:1927 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Books about the paranormal]]
[[Category:English-language non-fiction books]]
[[Category:English non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Philosophy of time]]