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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 1776026" data-attributes="member: 571">The Hard to Suss Out Origins of "Psionics"The word was coined around 1938 by one John Campbell. A magazine editor (Astounding) and then friend of Professor Rhine, founder of the Rhine Institute. The professor would later lay claim to having invented the term, but by then he and Campbell had long been on the outs.Properly used psionics refers to electronically added psychic abilities. It's a play on electronics, then a new technology just starting to impact daily life. It was John Campbell's goal to get a psionics technology and industry going, so people would have tools to use to boost their innate psychic abilities.Later, after his split with L. Ron Hubbard over the direction the latter was taking with Dianetics, Campbell started pushing psychic phenomenon in Astounding (later renamed Analog in the early 60s). People soon started using psionics in connection with those tales. After Campbell had used the term in some editorials, and it had appeared in articles about psionic equipment. Most especially the Dean DriveSoon enough psionics became the preferred term for psychic phenomenon in science fiction stories.BTW, about the time of his death (an aneurysm) Campbell was pretty much giving up on psychic phenomenon. After twenty years of support he was seeing no results for all the research. He was also coming to realize that psychic abilities had no effect on society at all. Something you'd expect if they were as utile and ubiquitous as proponents think.So there you have the origins of 'psionics'.(BTW, John Campbell also edited a fantasy magazine. Unknown run just a couple of years, and was a casualty of the paper shortage of World War II.)</blockquote>

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