ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents several studies of the reception of unconventional science. It describes a radical “externalist” socio-cultural approach to the question of how Werner Heisenberg’s acausal physics was received in the first few years after its enunciation and publication. The book examines an important episode in the reception of what was historically the most important claim to experimental success of the field in America: that which J. B. Rhine set forth in his monograph, Extra-Sensory Perception. It provides an intermediate position, utilizing, implicitly, both external and internal factors to account for acupuncture’s reception. The book outlines a scheme of analysis in which competitive theories are to be evaluated on their abilities to solve research problems, and at the same time avoid generating serious conceptual difficulties vis-a-vis theories of related sciences and the prevalent metaphysical assumptions about modes of causality.
