What exactly are we to make of...

What exactly are we to make of the fact that more than three- fourths of the American teen-agers questioned in a 1984 Gallup poll professed a belief in angels? (And ghosts, witches, astrology, extrasensory perception, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, too.) I read these rather whimsical poll results as a measure of the profound spiritual yearning that afflicts us all, including the adolescents who are so often portrayed in the popular culture as grubby materialists and mindless seekers-after-sex. But to Kendrick Frazier, editor of Science Confronts the Paranormal (Prometheus: $15.95), the poll results are a cause for concern: The paranormal, writes Frazier, “appeals to our curiosity, our sense of wonder, and the human need for fantasy and diversion” as well as “the understandable human need for comforting beliefs”--but Frazier appears to believe that these phenomena are essentially self-serving delusions that are incompatible with hard science.

“Beliefs in the paranormal, because they operate at the level of deep-seated psychological needs, seem to be remarkably immune to the error-correcting processes of daily life,” Frazier argues. “And thus many people go on believing in things that more objective inquiries may indicate are probably not so.”

Indeed, objective inquiry is the mission of the so-called Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, whose work is documented in “Science Confronts the Paranormal.” Dozens of philosophers, psychologists, scientists, journalists and even magicians (“Experts in deception,” explains Frazier, “and in the investigation of ‘psychic’ powers”) have contributed penetrating studies into cherished occult themes ranging from the role of the moon in lunacy (“The Moon Is Acquitted of Murder in Cleveland” by N. Sanduleak”) to the elusive “psi” factor (“Magicians in the Psi Lab” by Martin Gardner). It’s a fascinating collection of scientific exotica, often witty and acerbic, with doses of both cool scientific colloquy and gossipy attacks on the demi-gods of the New Age: “Fritjof Capra believes, apparently, that what physicists have found out with great difficulty,” writes Isaac Asimov, “Eastern sages have known all along.”

While scientists are probably justified in debunking the “comforting beliefs” that find expression in astrology, palmistry, and other pseudo-scientific gimmickry, I was disquieted by the apparent underlying assumption that science cannot co-exist with spirituality. Above all, the contributors to “Science Confronts the Paranormal” seem to lack the compassion and insight to realize that if teen-agers believe in angels, it is because of some urgent need that cannot be safely or wisely ignored, and for which neither sex nor the scientific method is enough. (Einstein, of course, appreciated the compatibility of science and the spirit, and I imagine that he would have felt perfectly comfortable with Fritjof Capra’s conception of physics and Tao as reciprocal metaphors.)

The same lack of compassion can be detected in Douglas Curran’s In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space (Abbeville: $16.95), an essay in prose and photography about the men and women whose neo-messianic obsession with flying saucers infuses their otherwise unremarkable lives with ritual, meaning nad comradeship. Curran makes explicit the ironic juxtaposition of science and religion: “As popularly conceived, the flying saucer is a god wrapped in stainless steel,” writes Curran, whose photographs of improvised UFO totems along the backroads of North America are as expressive as his text. “Like a god, it seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” Curran styles himself as a kind of amateur anthropologist, non-intrusive and non-judgmental, but I was troubled by his insistence on hiding behind his reportorial mask. Even so, a note of condescension can be detected in Curran’s narrative, and his vivid photographic images have a certain freak-show quality. I found myself wondering what he really thinks--or intends us to think--of the earnest men and women of the Aetherius Society in Hollywood, who stand so solemnly in their choir robes and “charge a spiritual battery.”

By contrast, The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards by Michael Dummett (George Braziller: $15.95) displays a wicked pack of cards, but these rare 15th-Century Italian playing cards are offered strictly as artifacts and works of art. Dummett speculates that tarot was first devised in Ferrara (“Irreverent, pleasure-loving, steeped in romance, devoted to play of all kinds”), but he insists that the esoteric uses of the deck were a late 18th-Century invention of Antoine Court de Gebelin’s “vast unfinished work of misconceived scholarship.” According to the dispassionate Dummett, “Tarot cards were unquestionably invented to play a particular type of game . . . and, until De Gebelin’s ideas were adapted by professional French fortune-tellers and occultists, they were never used for any other purpose.” Of course, the glory of “The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards” is the 74 hand-painted cards of the deck itself, so many masterpieces in miniature, superbly reproduced in their actual size, and generously annotated by the author.

New and Noteworthy: Elaine Costello’s Religious Signing: The New Comprehensive Guide for All Faiths (Bantam: $9.95) is an intriguing lexicon of signs for expressing prayers and blessings in American Sign Language for Catholics, Jews, Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans and Assembly of God.

Titles reviewed in Paperback Originals have been published in paperback only or in simultaneous paperback and hardcover editions.