Lucifer shifted uneasily.
"From another value judgement," Huth continued, "the orthodoxy of Earth science is a product of its fragmentation. Within each cubicle, isolated from the fertilization of new concepts, the unorthodox all too often and too soon can become rigidly orthodox. This is the circle around which each science seems forever to travel!"
Lucifer felt himself being moved skillfully toward an unknown objective. It was like being a Knight on a chessboard in the hands of an expert player.
Huth moved in closer to his objective. "And so it is with psi, Dr. Brill. Or so it appears to an extra-terrestrial viewpoint, which is now necessarily your own! Parapsychology had to depart from the physiology of orthodox psychology in order to get a look at itself. It became unorthodox avant guarde! It established a scientific case for psi, and for two decades thereafter established little else. What have you proved that Rhine did not prove twenty years ago?"
"It is necess—"
"Already we see forming a dogma of psychic research, a cult of psychologizers that may match in exclusivity the cult of physiologizers—each declining to draw upon the resources of the other! We see a tendency to look backward instead of forward, a bemusement with the historical concepts of association theories, psychon systems and continuums of cosmic consciousness—all of which suggests a turning away from the frontiers of infinity to an interminable abstraction of possibilities from your own finite knowledge.
"Do you follow me, Dr. Brill?"
Lucifer removed his glasses, breathed on them, polished them carefully on the sleeve of his tunic. He looked beyond Huth to the window and the steaming tropical rain. When his thoughts were composed again, he answered, "I follow you—with reservations."
"Naturally. Now consider this question: Have you looked into other cubicles of science for answers to psi?"
"We welcome all viewpoints."