Extrasensory perception (ESP), also commonly referred to as the sixth sense, involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by German psychical researcher, Rudolf Tischner, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine to denote psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance, and their trans-temporal operation as precognition or retrocognition. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut instinct or hunch, which are historical English idioms. The term implies acquisition of information by means external to the basic limiting assumptions of science, such as that organisms can only receive information from the past to the present.

Parapsychology is the study of paranormal psychic phenomena, including ESP. Parapsychologists generally regard such tests as the ganzfeld experiment as providing compelling evidence for the existence of ESP. The scientific community does not accept this due to the disputed evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain ESP, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.

History