Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable--and Couldn't Hardcover – 7 Jun. 2011

Excellent. Volk elegantly exposes the flawed arguments of the 'skeptics', without the need for faith in religion or the paranormal. He gives us a glimpse of areas of the supernatural that may one day be within the grasp of scientific understanding, and summarises how and why science currently has no clear answers to questions about, for example, the nature of consciousness. Read it, and lend it to your friends.

Excellent read. Very compelling, well-researched book.

Steve Volk is a professional journalist, and that is the perspective he writes from in Fringe-ology. Although this is an intellectual quest on his part, his personally engaging style of writing pulls you in from page one.I usually take my time reading books that I enjoy, because I like to savor them like a fine wine, not wanting them to end, yet like a romantic dinner, I can't help anticipating its direction.This one was hard to put it down for long, so I found myself re-reading several of my favorite chapters to stretch out the experience. The introduction alone would have been worth the price of the book. It's that good.Then there's the greater issue of the "Paranormal Taint", and the chapter on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, or the effect that space travel has on Astronauts, lucid dreaming, the placebo effect and... I don't want to give too much away. Hint: there's more to the Paranormal Taint than you may think.Fringe-ology has the feel and integrity of Debra Blum's  Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death , except that Steve Volk covers a wider variety of phenomena and he approaches his subjects with a more personal touch.He has caught a little bit of flak because at certain points the reader starts to think that Steve is about to 'give in' and pronounce his belief in a supernatural cause underlying the topics he covers, only to have him continue on and give the skeptics their legitimate day in court. At one point I started to write out a list of insights that I found worth making note of, but I abandoned that because I was enjoying the book too much to turn it into a job assignment. This is an informative mind-candy joy of a read, not a textbook.The best metaphor that I can think of to describe Fringe-ology is that it's like reading a book length New York Times article / op-ed about the paranormal, with the honest information you would expect from a professional journalist, but with the personal engagement that you want from a novel. No axes to grind, no agenda's to fill, just pure intellectual inspiration.I have quite a library of wide-ranging books relating to the paranormal, spirituality, science, myths and religion. If I were to start loaning them out one by one to someone unfamiliar with these topics, I would begin with Fringe-ology. It's a level headed yet exciting place to start.Hands down, five stars. No question about it.

I was extremely impressed with this book. Volk ranges through a surprisingly wide spectrum of paranormal topics: near-death experiences, telepathy, the nature of consciousness, UFOs, ghosts, the mystical epiphanies of astronauts, neurotheology, lucid dreaming, and Induced After-Death Communication. As a result, I learned a great deal, because even though I am interested in the paranormal, several of these topics have not even been on my radar.I appreciated his journalistic approach, in which he travels the country to spend significant in-person time with key people in the various topics explored. In a few cases, he goes beyond interviewing these figures and actually takes part in their class, workshop, or therapy sessions. The theme, in other words, is direct contact with the phenomena in question, and we as the reader benefit enormously.In keeping with this theme, Volk is not just the journalist, he is also the subject. He makes clear that this is a personal search, propelled by an apparent ghost in his childhood home. He weaves throughout the book his search for answers to his personal ghost story, with great effect, but he is seeking more than that. He is seeking peace, for instance, after the death of a beloved family member. And he is, of course, seeking answers.It is impossible not to like Volk as both the journalist and the subject. His writing is witty, cool, and smart, without sliding into pretentiousness. It is also spare and direct; not a word is wasted. And he has a gift for memorable phrases ("Circumstances were forcing [the town of Stephenville] to make a choice: To Roswell, or not to Roswell"). As the subject, he lets us surprisingly far into his inner life, where his combination of vulnerable humanity and healthy skepticism makes us instinctively trust him.My one complaint is, unfortunately, virtually the key theme of the book. This is that the truly reasonable, unbiased position is a noncommittal one in between the avid believers and the skeptical deniers. Volk constantly suggests that both sides have staked out their positions out of a need to be in that place, a need to believe or a need to deny. In his eyes, the holy ground is clearly occupied by those who have the strength to stand in that middle ground of not knowing, who have the fortitude to "set aside these epistemologically unanswerable questions" (p. 249). Thus, the heroes of the book are those figures, like Stephen LaBerge and Andrew Newberg, who refuse to commit to any ontological implications of their field of study, but instead emphasize only its practical utility.The problem, in my mind, is that this "we can't know" position can become its own kind of inflexible bias, its own permanent auto-pilot. Shouldn't we have the flexibility to adopt any of the three positions (believer, denier, or "I don't know") depending on where the evidence takes us? If the evidence for telepathy becomes statistically astronomical, which it is, shouldn't we have the freedom to accept it? After discussing so openly the brain's need to find security in a certain position, Volk doesn't turn this idea back on himself and wonder whether his own middle-ground position might be where his brain finds its security.This complaint, however, couldn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying the book. One of the reviews on Amazon in the US is titled "a classic in the field," and that about captures it. It deserves to be a huge hit. (I'm amazed it isn't selling better on Amazon.) If you have any interest in the paranormal, you should definitely treat yourself to this book.

This book resembles very much a book called "Will Storr versus the Supernatural". Even both authors meet the same person claiming to be a demon hunter. The author very clearly hints that he isn't a believer in ghosts at the end of the book and one feels like that was his whole point entirely. Do not recommend because of the strange parallels with that other book supposedly unconnected.

I'm going to keep this review short and sweet. I am neither a hard-core skeptic, nor a hard-core believer. I came to this book as the result of the death of my grandmother last week. I wasn't necessarily looking for "proof" or "explanations" about the great beyond. But I was interested in hearing a bit more about the paranormal from the point of view of someone who appears to be smack in the middle like myself (from a belief standpoint). I have my own thoughts about what happens just before, during, and after death. So it was kind of cool to dive into a book that touched on the various mysteries of life without going too far into either corner. I never felt like the author was trying to convince me to buy into his line of thinking...and I definitely didn't feel he was being remotely unfair to his subjects or to those who oppose anything that smacks of, to use the author's favorite term, "hoo ha".The one thing I did walk away from this book with was a deeper appreciation for how much the folks on either side of the paranormal wall (skeptics and believers) begin to resemble one another in their passionate support/disavowal of the paranormal. As someone who has often wondered if we do really have all the answers science seems to think, it was refreshing to be reminded that even a big time skeptic a la James Randi doesn't have all the answers, as much as he wishes he did.I also really appreciated the very lengthy notes section at the back of the book with tons of links and book titles to allow for further exploration.If you are looking for an interesting, entertaining, and sometimes deep read about all things paranormal....give this a try. If, however, you are looking for lots of true ghost stories, photos of spirits, etc...you may want to pass. This book would likely be enjoyed by those who read and liked Spook by Mary Roach (although I feel Roach's book falls more on the skeptics side of the fence than this one did).

The author is trying to be impartial in the treatment of the following subjects because of his being a journalist. However, he is obviously on the side of defenders of paranormal phenomena, and rather because of so, this book is educational in understanding current ideas of scientists on the not-normal subjects below:(1) Paranormal events such as NDE, OBE(2) Consciousness, explained or yet-to-be explained & a scientist’s thought about afterlife(3) UFO(4) Haunted house(5) Lucid dream(6) And moreCarl Sagan stated several times in his book, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996),” the following essential: “One of the reasons for its success is that science has built-in, error correcting machinery at its very heart.” And the “built-in, error correcting machinery” may include the following mind-set: “Unexplained cases are simply unexplained. They can never constitute evidence for any hypothesis (John A. Wheeler, 1979).” This may be a secure, wise way of thinking for a scientist not to jeopardize his/her career as a mainstream scientist. However, this mind-set is in conflict with the spirit of scientific research.If I add one more comment, all these subjects have been treated also by the late American writer, poet, and trance channeler, Jane Roberts (1929-1984), in her books on the Seth material. For example, the old unexplainable story of UFOs: they are coming not from outer space but from inner space, i.e., from other dimensions, just as we are getting out of our physical dimension to other universes in dreams every night.

I appreciate Steve Volk for examining some paranormal subjects in a fair-minded way. I am always happy to have a little more light brought to the subject, which I've been interested in for decades.Positives. Steve is a good writer and injects emotion, humor and anecdote to keep things lively. I particularly appreciated the way he discussed the entrenched bias in the scientific establishment to even giving a hearing to these topics. He talks about the "paranormal taint" no one wants to go near, because it can mean derogation and ridicule, not to mention career disaster.Negatives. Steve gives scant attention to large areas of paranormal research. For example, chapters on ADCs (after-death communications) and apparitions are focused on tiny segments of those experiences, without giving the reader any sense of the wealth of material available on those subjects more generally. Mediumship gets only a superficial mention, despite the enormous literature there. I was also disappointed that Steve seemed frightened of getting "paranormal taint" on him, too, as he repeatedly emphasized the potential skeptical explanations for his experiences, without fair attention to the other possibilities (e.g., that these experiences reflect something real, not just wishful thinking).But still, 4 stars because good journalism in this area is rare, and Steve at least takes a fair stab at it.

Steve Volk, in this compelling read, points out an obvious yet oft overlooked piece of human psychology- we just plain don't like to be confused. We simply dislike anything liminal. We shrink at the borderlands, cringe at the crossroads. We want our reality to be straight ahead, with no annoying ambiguity.But, experts disagree. About everything. They make a living selling certainty. And so, we find our favorite ideology and sign right up, joining 'our' crowd, finding our folks, coalescing our crew. And, the truth suffers- because as the old adage goes, 'WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!' And the truth is a slippery beast indeed.Volk is really a great guide to the best exhibits of high strangeness currently available. Telepathy, UFOs, ghosts, all the topics that reasonable people avoid at cocktail parties. He's a journalist, and in it's best tradition, he shows us the facts, and points out the very human reactions to these facts- denial, confabulation, exaggeration, mass hysteria. And he's using this fringe stuff to make a much greater point.Deliciously, this book should be annoying to the Debunker as well as the True Believer. Actually, it's going to be a little bit tougher on the Debunker, as the facts tend to support some kind of truth, however misinterpreted, of these phenomena described.In the interests of full disclosure, I've had personal confirmation of some kind of truth to many of these topics Volk discusses, so for me the beauty of the book was in how well Volk points out what we do with information that challenges our world views, how we squirm and project our best paradigms onto them. The highest honor is given to those who can say with certainty that they don't know, and those who pretend that they have all the answers, or even most of them, are exposed for the cowards they are in this highly readable book.Maybe that's a bit harsh- but the harshness with with many of the proponents of said paradigms try to shove them down all our throats deserves a bit of the same batted back their way. Having said that, I'm enjoying greatly humanity's opportunity to escape the dogmas of both Science and Religion with tales such as these. Great stuff!Here's a quote by celebrated atheist Sam Harris, quoted in the book, and repeated here:"For millennia, contemplatives have known that ordinary people can divest themselves from the feeling they call `I' and thereby relinquish the sense that they are separate from the rest of the universe. This phenomenon, which has been reported by practitioners in many spiritual traditions, is supported by a wealth of evidence- neuroscientific, philosophical, and introspective. Such experiences are `spiritual' or `mystical', for want of better words, in that they are relatively rare (unnecessarily so), significant (in that they uncover genuine facts about the world), and personally transformative. They also reveal a far deeper connection between ourselves and the rest of the universe than is suggested by the ordinary confines of our subjectivity........A truly rational approach to this dimension of our lives would allow us to explore the heights of our subjectivity with an open mind, while shedding the provincialism and dogmatism of our religious traditions in favor of free and rigorous inquiry."Amen!

The reason I searched out this book is because I heard the authors story of his recurring dream on a public radio program. The story intrigued me. The subject of lucid dreaming is interesting and it reminded me of my childhood fascination with "paranormal" stories. But, as an adult, all rational and everything, I was hesitant to read this kind of material again. I read the 1 and 2 star reviews first and, while I couldn't fault the reasoning, I felt uncomfortable with the dismissive attitude. I saw my own bias in them. So, based on the more positive reviews and my impression of the author from the radio story I purchased Fringe-ology. I'm happy with my choice! The subject and the people in the stories were all treated with respect...as they should be. Science and Reason came away from this treatment without a scratch, in my opinion. Mr. Volk is great writer, knows his craft and his audience well. Anyone who is fairminded and knows the limits of the scientific quest will appreciate the result here. There was no attempt to anyone to any conclusion. Mr. Volk reminds us that to say, "I don't know.", is sometimes the most rational thing to admit. The book was well written, informative, and engaging! I'd recommend it to anyone!