astronomy

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation rather than just read about it. In short: Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a 1966 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on claims of spontaneous recall of information about previous lives by young children. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author.

Key takeaways

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a 1966 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on claims of spontaneous recall of information about previous lives by young children. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author. It has been translated into seven foreign languages.

General approach Stevenson describes his general approach as following an "almost conventional pattern":

The case usually starts when a small child of two to four years of age begins talking to their parents or siblings of a life they led in another time and place. The child usually feels a considerable pull back toward the events of the life and he frequently importunes his parents to let them return to the community where they claim that they formerly lived. If the child makes enough particular statements about the previous life, the parents (usually reluctantly) begin inquiries about their accuracy. Often, indeed usually, such attempts at verification do not occur until several years after the child has begun to speak of the previous life. If some verification results, members of the two families visit each other and ask the child whether they recognizes places, objects, and people of their supposed previous existence. Stevenson set up a network of volunteers to find these spontaneous past life recall cases as soon as the children began to speak of them. He then would carefully question both the family of the living child and the family of the deceased to ensure that they had no contact and that no information would be passed between them. He would obtain detailed information about the deceased, including information not fully known to anyone involved, such as details of the will, that he would use to verify that the child actually did know the information required. The publication of the book was delayed when it was discovered that one of Stevenson's interpreters had been accused of dishonesty. Stevenson claimed that the translator was dishonest in some matters, but "did not think the man had deceived him". Nevertheless, he returned to India, where the interpreter had been used, and examined the cases in question again, with different interpreters. He found them to be even stronger evidence for reincarnation than he had previously thought.

Published results

Stevenson concluded that reincarnation was the "best possible explanation" for the following reasons:

The large number of witnesses and the lack of apparent motivation and opportunity, due to the vetting process, make the hypothesis of fraud extremely unlikely. The large amount of information possessed by the child is not generally consistent with the hypothesis that the child obtained that information through investigated contact between the families. Demonstration of similar personality characteristics and skills not learned in the current life and the lack of motivation for the long length of identification with a past life make the hypothesis of the child gaining his recollections and behavior through extra-sensory perception improbable. When there is correlation between congenital deformities or birthmarks possessed by the child and the history of the previous individual, the hypothesis of random occurrence is improbable.

Reception In 1977, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease devoted most of one issue to Stevenson's work in which psychiatrist Harold Lief described Stevenson as "a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side...Either he is making a colossal mistake, or he will be known ... as 'the Galileo of the 20th century.'" When philosopher Leonard Angel criticized one of the cases in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation personally handled by Stevenson, Stevenson published a rebuttal which argued the critique itself was flawed. Mainstream scientists tended to ignore or dismiss Stevenson's research. Some questioned his objectivity, claimed he was credulous and suggested his investigations were flawed.

Reviews Reviews of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation have been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Medical Psychology, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease and some other journals.

See also European Cases of the Reincarnation Type Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect Old Souls (book) Carol Bowman Reincarnation in popular culture

References

Bibliography Stevenson, Ian (1974). Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation second (revised and enlarged) edition, University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-0872-4 Stevenson, Ian (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 1: Birthmarks and Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 2: Birth Defects and Other Anomalies. Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, and London. ISBN 0-275-95282-7 Tucker, Jim B. (2005). Life Before Life: A scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives, St. Martin's Press, New York, 256pp. ISBN 0-312-32137-6

External links The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation

In research: Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1966 English-language non-fiction books, 1966 non-fiction books, Books about reincarnation, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation in simple terms?

Why does Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.