View Jean E. Burns's profile

Jean Burns

Location: United States of America

About Me

 

Jean Burns was a physicist with interests in parapsychology and the relationship of psi phenomena to presently known physical laws; consciousness and free will and their relationship to presently known physical laws; thermodynamics and the nature of entropy. 

She reviewed psi phenomena with respect to their relationship to presently known physical laws and showed that a radical extension of these laws would have to be made to explain these phenomena (1993a, 2003). She also reviewed models that propose the existence of free will, viewed as a physical effect produced by non-physical means, and has shown that in all the models that propose it, a radical extension would have to be made to presently known physical laws to account for its action (1999).

She proposed a model by which mental action (free will and PK) can be produced by the ordering of quantum fluctuations. (The extension to physical laws would be, in this model, the possibility of ordering the usually random quantum fluctuations.) The root mean square effect of quantum fluctuations on the momentum of a molecule is very small over a mean free path. However, this effect is greatly magnified when molecules interact at the end of a mean free path. With regard to free will, she showed that through this effect the direction of travel of a water molecule in the intercellular medium in the brain can be changed to any desired direction in one mean free path. There is sufficient energy in about 400 ordered molecules at thermal velocity to break chemical bonds and open an ion gate in a sodium channel. More than one ion gate must be opened to produce an action potential, and several action potentials might be needed to initiate a physical action. (Presumably the brain produces programs for the action, and only the action potentials to initiate the programs are necessary to carry it out.) She estimated that about 4,000 molecules must be ordered to initiate a physical action, not very many (2002a, 2006).

With respect to psychokinesis (PK) she showed that 10,000 ordered molecules would be sufficient to produce a detectible response in a small (area of 10 mm2), sensitive microphone. This number is somewhat higher than the number of ordered molecules needed to initiate a free will action, but not greatly so. Therefore, it can be expected that some good psi producers would be able to produce such an effect, and this prediction can be used for an experimental test of the PK part of her model (2002a, 2006).

She also showed that previous experimental results in the PK deviation of a tumbling cube can be accounted for by the impact of 2x105 ordered molecules on the cube at the beginning of its trajectory (2002b, 2002c).

PUBLICATIONS

(2012), The action of the mind. In I. Fredriksson (Ed.), Aspects of the Mind (pp. 204-216). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

(2011), Using psychokinesis to explore the nature of quantum randomness. In D.P. Sheehan (Ed.), Quantum Retrocausation: Theory and Experiment (pp. 279-290). Melville, NY: AIP Conference Proceedings.

(2010), Cumulative effect of vacuum radiation on particle coordinates. In R.L. Amoroso, P. Rowlands, and S. Jeffers (Eds.), Search for Fundamental Theory (pp. 43-47). Melville, NY: AIP Conference Proceedings.

(2010), What does the mind do that the brain does not? In R.L. Amoroso (Ed.), The Complementarity of Mind and Body: Fulfilling the Dream of Descartes, Einstein and Eccles (pp. 117-134). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science.

(2007), Vacuum radiation, entropy, and molecular chaos, Foundations of Physics, 37, 1727-1737.

(2006), The arrow of time and the action of the mind at the molecular level, in D.P. Sheehan (ed.), Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation – Experiment and Theory (Melville, NY: AIP Conference Proceedings), pp. 75-88.  http://www.mindspring.com/~l.o.v.e.r/Burns-05.pdf

(2005), Detection of staring – psi or statistical artifact? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(6), 71-75.

(2003), Co-Editor (with J. Alcock and A. Freeman), Psi Wars (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic).

(2003), What is beyond the edge of the known world? in J. Alcock, J.E. Burns, and A. Freeman (eds.), Psi Wars (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic), pp. 7-28. Reprinted (2008), in R.M. Schoch and L. Yonavjak (eds.), The Parapsychology Revolution (New York: Tarcher).

(2002a), Quantum fluctuations and the action of the mind, Noetic Journal, 3(4), 312-317.  http://www.mindspring.com/~l.o.v.e.r/Burns-01.pdf

(2002b), The tumbling cube and the action of the mind, Noetic Journal, 3(4), 318-329.  http://www.mindspring.com/~l.o.v.e.r/Burns-02.pdf

(2002c), The effect of ordered air molecules on a tumbling cube, Noetic Journal, 3(4), 330-339.  http://www.mindspring.com/~l.o.v.e.r/Burns-03.pdf

(2002d), Vacuum radiation, entropy and the arrow of time, in R.L. Amoroso, G. Hunter, M. Kafatos, and J.-P. Vigier (eds.), Gravitation and Cosmology (London: Kluwer Academic), pp. 491-498.  http://www.mindspring.com/~l.o.v.e.r/Burns-04.pdf

(1999), Volition and physical laws, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(10), 27-47.  http://eprints.assc.caltech.edu/214/01/VOLITION-assc.pdf

(1998), Entropy and vacuum radiation, Foundations of Physics, 28, 1191-1207.

(1996), The possibility of empirical test of hypotheses about consciousness, in S.R. Hameroff, A.W. Kaszniak, and A.C. Scott (eds.), Toward a Science of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 739-742.

(1994), Spaciousness: The common ground between science and spirituality, in R. I. Heinze (ed.), Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing (Berkeley, CA: Ruth Inge Heinze), pp. 5 12.

(1993a), Current hypotheses about the nature of the mind-brain relationship and their relationship to findings in parapsychology, in K.R. Rao (ed.), Cultivating Consciousness (New York: Praeger), pp. 139 148.

(1993b), Time, consciousness, and psi, in B. Kane, J. Millay and D. Brown (eds.), Silver Threads: 25 Years of Parapsychology Research (New York: Praeger), pp. 124 136.

(1993c), The predictive possibilities of a card code, in R. I. Heinze (ed.), Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing (Berkeley, CA: Ruth Inge Heinze), pp. 59 66.

(1991a), Does consciousness perform a function independently of the brain? Frontier Perspectives 2(1), 19 34 (Philadelphia, PA: Center for Frontier Sciences, Temple University).

(1991b), Contemporary models of consciousness: Part II, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 12, 407 420.

(1990), Contemporary models of consciousness: Part I, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 11, 153 172.

(1986), Consciousness and psi, Psi Research, 5, 166 205.

PROFESSIONAL WORK IN CONSCIOUSNESS

1994 to 2017
Associate Editor
Journal of Consciousness Studies, United Kingdom
http://www.imprint.co.uk/

EDUCATION

Ph.D. (Physics), 1970
University of Hawaii, Honolulu

B.A. (Physics)
University of California, Berkeley

 

My Recent Activity

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns updated their profile.

Monday, February 18, 2013

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns published The Action of Consciousness and the Uncertainty Principle.
Below is an overview of a paper I wrote in 2012 on a possible way that consciousness could act to affect physical matter. A link to the paper is given at the bottom of the page. It isn’t known how consciousness actually produces physical effects. ... more

Saturday, February 2, 2013

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns updated their profile.

Monday, October 8, 2012

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns updated The Action of the Mind.

Friday, September 21, 2012

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns published The Action of the Mind.
Here is the abstract of my recently published article on physics issues relevant to the action of the mind, i.e.,  to the production of physical change in matter by non-physical means. The article primarily discusses this action in terms of free ... more

Thursday, September 20, 2012

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns published PK and the Nature of Quantum Randomness.
Here is an abstract for a recent paper:  Burns, J. E. (2011), Using psychokinesis to explore the nature of quantum randomness. In D.P. Sheehan (Ed.), Quantum Retrocausation: Theory and Experiment (pp. 279-290). Melville, NY: AIP Conference ... more

Thursday, April 14, 2011

View Jean E. Burns's profile Jean E. Burns registered at The Parapsychological Association website.
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