Clairvoyance
ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through extrasensory perception
Clairvoyance (; from French clair 'clear' and voyance 'vision') is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ('one who sees clearly').
Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community. The scientific community widely considers parapsychology, including the study of clairvoyance, a pseudoscience.
Usage
Pertaining to the ability of clear-sightedness, clairvoyance refers to the paranormal ability to see persons and events that are distant in time or space. It can be divided into roughly three classes: precognition, the ability to perceive or predict future events, retrocognition, the ability to see past events, and remote viewing, the perception of contemporary events happening outside the range of normal perception.
The English connotations of seeing through time are not always present in concepts of clairvoyance in other languages. The French usage, for example, has more emphasis on spatial connotations and arises from the Latin etymology of clear-seeing/clear vision.
In history and religion
Throughout history, there have been numerous places and times in which people have claimed themselves, or others, to be clairvoyant.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Clairvoyance” as ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through extrasensory perception. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through extrasensory perception. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2975244. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Clairvoyance”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Clairvoyance primary sources, Clairvoyance archive and Clairvoyance research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Clairvoyance”?
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Clairvoyance” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.