Unlocking Minds

It seemed to me, reading Mayer's obviously sincere and earnest account of her investigations, that the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, who has long harbored an interest in the paranormal, had it exactly right in his foreword to her book: "As a scientist, I don't believe the story," he wrote about McCoy's dowsing for the harp, "but as a human being I want to believe it." It is part of the human condition to seek wonder in the world, to seek communion with a higher power that links us all together with our machines and our chickens. If there is anything stronger than belief itself, it is the desire to believe.

As for McCoy, after several hours of poring over the street maps I gave him, he called to say that the lock was in the Bronx.

It was in Queens.

© 2007