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The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program was established at Princeton University in 1979 by Robert G. Jahn, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to pursue rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes common to contemporary engineering practice. Since that time, an interdisciplinary staff of engineers, physicists, psychologists, and humanists has been conducting a comprehensive agenda of experiments and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality.
The most substantial portion of the PEAR program examines anomalies arising
in human/machine interactions. 
In these experiments human operators attempt, solely by volition, to influence
the behavior of a variety of mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical,
and fluid devices to conform to pre-stated intentions. In unattended calibrations
these sophisticated machines all produce strictly random outputs, yet the
experimental results display increases in information content that can only
be attributed to the influence of the human operators.
Over the laboratory's history,
thousands of such experiments, involving many millions of trials, have been
performed by over a hundred operators. The observed effects are usually quite
small, of the order of a few parts in ten thousand, but they are statistically
repeatable and appear to be operator specific in their details. In contrast,
the results of given operators on widely different machines tend to be similar
in character and scale. 
Pairs
of operators with shared intentions are found to induce further anomalous
characteristics in the outputs. The devices also respond to group activities
of larger numbers of people, even when they are unaware of the machine's
presence. These human/machine anomalies can be demonstrated with the operators
located thousands of miles from the laboratory, exerting their efforts hours
before or after the actual operation of the devices. Elaborate analytical
methods have been developed to extract as much understanding from these results
as possible, and to guarantee their integrity against any experimental or
data processing flaws.
In another class of studies, the ability of human participants to acquire information about spatially and temporally remote geographical targets, otherwise inaccessible by any known sensory means, has been thoroughly demonstrated over several hundred carefully conducted experiments. The protocol requires one participant, the "agent", to be stationed at a randomly selected location at a given time, and there to observe and record impressions of the details and ambience of the scene. A second participant, the "percipient", located far from the scene and with no prior information about it, tries to sense its composition and character and to report these in a similar format to the agent's description.
Even casual comparison of the agent and percipient narratives produced in this body of experiments reveals striking correspondences in both their general and specific aspects, indicative of some anomalous channel of information acquisition, well beyond any chance expectation. Incisive analytical techniques have been developed and applied to these data to establish more precisely the quantity and quality of objective and subjective information acquired and to guide the design of more effective experiments. Beyond confirming the validity of this anomalous mode of human information acquisition, these analyses demonstrate that this capacity of human consciousness is also largely independent of the distance between the percipient and the target, and similarly independent of the time between the specification of the target and the perception effort.
All scientific research requires generic and specific theoretical models
for constructive dialogue with the empirical data. The stark inconsistencies
of the human/machine and remote perception results with established physical
and psychological theories place extraordinary demands on the development
of competent new models to represent these processes. In particular, the
primary importance of operator intention, the operator-specific aspects,
the absence of traditional learning patterns, and the lack of explicit space
and time dependence clearly indicate that no direct application or minor
alteration of existing physical or psychological frameworks will suffice.
Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded model of reality, one that
allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience
of the physical world, will be required.
Such a model has been proposed
and developed under the major premise that the basic processes by which
consciousness exchanges information with its environment, orders that
information, and interprets it, also enable it to bias probabilistic systems
and thereby to avail itself of some control over its reality. This model
regards many of the concepts of observational quantum mechanics, most importantly
the principles of complementarity and wave mechanical resonance, as fundamental
characteristics of consciousness, rather than as intrinsic features of an
objective physical environment. In this view, the "anomalous" phenomena observed
in the PEAR experiments become quite normal expectations of bonded human/machine
and human/human systems, and the door is opened for all manner of creative
consciousness/environnment interactions.
From this well established program of research, a number of related activities radiate outward into other locales and disciplines:
This composite array of internal and external PEAR activities is motivated by three overarching goals:
Accommodation of the observed anomalies within a functional scientific framework will require the explicit inclusion of consciousness as an active agent in the establishment of physical reality. This expansion of the scientific paradigm demands more courageous theoretical structures than exist at present, guided by more comprehensive empirical data than is now available, acquired via more cooperative interdisciplinary collaborations than are currently practiced. PEAR has enduring roles to play in all three aspects of this search.
Despite the small scale of the observed consciousness-related anomalies, they could be functionally devastating to many types of contemporary information processing systems, especially those relying on random reference signals. Such concern could apply to aircraft cockpits and ICBM silos; to surgical facilities and trauma response equipment; to environmental and disaster control technology; or to any other technical scenarios where the emotions of human operators may intensify their interactions with the controlling devices and processes. Indeed, the extraordinarily sophisticated equipment that generates much of the fundamental data on which modern science is based cannot be excluded from this potential vulnerability. Protection against such consciousness-related interference could become essential to the design and operation of many future information acquisition and processing systems. On the positive side, since these same research results provide important technical evidence of the precious process of human creativity, they offer the promising possibility of a new genre of human/machine systems that will enable more creative performance in all manner of applications from medicine to management, from manufacturing to communications, from education to recreation. Some exploration of these possibilities has been undertaken by PEAR, Inc.
Beyond its scientific impact and its technological applications, clear evidence of an active role of consciousness in the establishment of reality holds sweeping implications for our view of ourselves, our relationship to others, and to the cosmos in which we exist. These, in turn, must inevitably impact our values, our priorities, our sense of responsibility, and our style of life. Integration of these changes across the society can lead to a substantially superior cultural ethic, wherein the long-estranged siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of intellect and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of human experience will be productively reunited.
Bob is a Professor of Aerospace Sciences and Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, who has taught and published extensively in advanced space propulsion systems, plasma dynamics, fluid mechanics, quantum mechanics, and engineering anomalies.
Brenda is formally trained as a developmental psychologist but regards herself as a generalist whose principal task is the integration of the multiple scholarly vectors that bear on PEAR's various activities.
Roger is an experimental psychologist who oversees the design of PEAR's experimental protocols and controls, and aids in statistical modeling and data interpretation. His home page contains recent examples of PEAR research, as well as links to related sites.
John is an electrical engineer who is responsible for the design, construction, and maintanance of PEAR's experimental technology.
York is a theoretical physicist who designs and implements PEAR's data processing and analytical strategies, and contributes to the development of its theoretical models.
Michael, a visiting mathematical physicist from England, aids in the design of PEAR's experiments, data interpretation, and theoretical models, while exploring his own specific research interests.
Laurie maintains the organizational framework that permits PEAR's many activities to function in a systematic fashion.
Many archival publications and technical reports describing PEAR's experimental and theoretical studies are available on request. In addition, the book Margins of Reality (Harcourt Brace, 1988), now published in several languages, summarizes the research results and interprets them in a multidisciplinary context that allows exploration of their wider cultural implications. (This may be ordered directly from the publisher at 465 South Lincoln Dr., Troy, MO 63379, or by phone at 1-800-543-1918.)
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
C-131, Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
(609) 258-5950 (phone),(609) 258-1993 (fax)
pearlab@princeton.edu (email)
PEAR also has a Home Page on the World Wide Web at URL:
The internal and external programs of the PEAR laboratory have been supported
by a number of visionary and generous persons and organizations, among them:
The Fetzer Institute, The McDonnell Foundation, The Ohrstrom Foundation,
Laurance Rockefeller, and Donald Webster, along with various other philanthropic
agencies and individuals. We welcome the interest and participation of any
persons or organizations that share our convictions about the importance
of this work and its potential public benefits.
"Not once in the dim past, but continuously
http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/pear.html
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by conscious mind is the miracle of the Creation wrought"
Arthur Eddington