 The Philosophy of Parapsychology. Parapsychology is the study of apparently paranormal events. Broad seeks to capture the nature and importance of the subject. A paranormal event is an event that seems prima facie to conflict with what he terms a basic limiting principle, i.e. a principle that “we unhesitatingly take for granted as the framework within which all our practical activities and our scientific theories are confined” (1953, p. 7). There are a number of such principles. One says that an event cannot begin to have any effect before it has occurred; another that knowledge of the future is impossible except in certain familiar manners, such as by inference from present facts. The basic limiting principles seem to “cover very satisfactorily an enormous range of well-established facts of the most varied kinds”. We are therefore “naturally inclined to think that they must be all-embracing” (p. 8). And for that reason these principles are of immense importance to our overall view of the universe and our place in it. But just in proportion to this importance is “the philosophic importance of any well-established exception to them” (p. 9).