Clement Mundle

Clement Mundle (1916-1989) was a Scottish philosophy professor who participated in telepathy experiments and published commentary on psychical research.

Life and Career

Clement Williams Kennedy Mundle was born in Dysart, Fife in 1916. He attended the Glasgow Academy, then studied at St Andrews University where in 1939 he acquired a first-class degree in philosophy. During World War II he served in the RAF, reaching the rank of squadron leader. He then attended Queen’s College, Oxford where he studied philosophy, politics and economics. He returned to Scotland as the head of the philosophy department at University College, Dundee. He held both the Ferguson Scholarship and the Shaw Fellowship in Philosophy at Edinburgh.

In 1955 he was appointed a Chair at the University of North Wales, Bangor where he remained for 21 years.

Psychical Research

Mundle joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1948, having been inspired by CD Broad’s Mind and its Place in Nature and JB Rhine’s Extra-Sensory Perception.1 He served as the Society’s president between 1971 and 1974. He wrote numerous papers on both philosophical as well as parapsychological subjects. In his presidential address2 he ‘recognised that acceptance of the phenomena does not solve the problem of identifying and classifying them, and warned against the dangers of premature theorising, either on dualist or materialist lines.’3

Experiments with SG Soal

Mundle supervised some of the telepathy card-guessing experiments carried out by SG Soal with two Welsh schoolboys. On occasion, the pair were caught trying to communicate by means of a clumsy code (sniffing, coughing, chair creaking and the like). Mundle rates as unlikely the possibility that these accounted for the successful results, but also considers claims by CEM Hansel and others that they might have escaped detection using dog whistles to communicate.4

Selected Works

The experimental evidence for PK and precognition (1950). Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 49, 61-78.

Is psychical research relevant to philosophy? (1950). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume 24, 207-31.

Selectivity in ESP experiments (1951). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 36, 385-93.

Correspondence re P. Clark (1951). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 36, 412-14.

Correspondence re R.E. Thouless (1951). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 36, 446-47.

The extension of mind: Comments on Dr Smythies’s paper (1952). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 36, 543-46.

Correspondence re Mr Richmond's experiments on paramecia: Interpretation of the results (1953). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 37, 41-42.

Correspondence re probability and parapsychology (1953). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 37, 179-80.

Review of A New Approach to Psychical Research, by Antony Flew (1954). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 37, 280-88.

Correspondence re probability and parapsychology (1954). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 37, 292-94.

Review of The Mind Readers, by S.G. Soal and H.T. Bowden (1959). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 40, 84-96.

Review of The Philosophy of C.D. Broad, ed. by Paul Arthur Schilpp (1961). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 41, 1-11.

The problem of precognition: Comments on W.G. Roll’s paper in the Journal, September 1961 (1961). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 41, 176-80.

Review of The Scientist Speculates, ed. by I.J. Good (1963). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 42, 192-96.

The explanation of ESP (1965). International Journal of Parapsychology 7/3, 221-234.

Correspondence: The Jones Boys (1966). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 43, 385.

Perception: Facts and Theories (1971). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Presidential address: Strange facts in search of a theory (1973). Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 56, 1-20.

The Soal-Goldney experiments (1974). Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 56, 85-87.

On the ‘psychic’ powers of non-human animals (1976). In Philosophy and Psychical Research ed. by S.C. Thakur. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Review of Causing, Perceiving and Believing, by P.H. Hare & E.H. Madden (1975). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 48, 230-32.

A case of ESP (1977). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 49, 674-75.

Literature

Broad, C.D. (1925). The Mind and its Place in Nature. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.

Heath, P. (1990). Obituary: Professor C.W.K. Mundle. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 56, 110-13.

Mundle, C.W.K. (1959). Review of The Mind Readers, by S.G. Soal &H.T. Bowden. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 40, 84-96.

Mundle, C.W.K. (1973). Strange facts in search of a theory. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 56, 1-20.

Mundle, C.W.K. (1974). The Soal-Goldney experiments. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 56, 85-87.

Rhine, J.B. (1934). Extra-Sensory Perception. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Bruce Humphries.

Endnotes

Footnotes

- 1. Broad (1925); Rhine (1934).

- 2. Mundle (1973), 1-20.

- 3. Heath (1990), 112.

- 4. Mundle (1959).

© Psi Encyclopedia