Dunne, J(ohn) W(illiam) (1875-1949)
Dunne, J(ohn) W(illiam) (1875-1949)
Parasychologist who studied the implications of dreams for survival of death. Dunne was born in Roscommon, Ireland, but lived and worked in Britain. He was a pioneer aeronautical engineer and in 1904 invented the stable, tailless airfoil, which was named after him. Between 1906 and 1907 he built and flew the first British military airplane.
In the field of parapsychology he achieved a lasting position through his theories on dreams. In his book An Experiment with Time (1927) he describes his own experiments with dreaming, from which he concluded that precognitive elements frequently occur in dreams. The book has been frequently reprinted.
Dunne developed a theory called "serialism," which postulates an infinite series of dimensions within time, giving any present moment extensions into the past and future. His later books developing this theory are The Serial Universe (1934), The New Immortality (1938), and Nothing Dies (1940). He died August 24, 1949, in Banbury, England.
Sources:
Dunne, J. W. An Experiment with Time. New York: Macmillan, 1927.
Prince, Walter Franklin. Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occur-rences. Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Occurrences, 1928. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963.