Psychokinesis  (noun) coined from Greek ψυχή "soul" and κίνησις "movement

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Psychokinesis, also called telekinesis or "mind over matter," is the movement of physical systems and objects by the use of psychic power. Abbreviated as PK. The word psychokinesis was coined in 1914 by American author Henry Holt in his book On the Cosmic Relations.

    Psychokinesis includes telekinesis, the paranormal movement of objects; levitation and materialization; mysterious events associated with given people or houses such as rappings, overturned furniture, and flying objects; and psychic healing.

    Since the 1930s  Psychokinesis has been a major research interest among parapsychologists, especially in the United States and Russia, but, in general, the results have been inconclusive.

   In 1968 Russia released film and other evidence to the West showing Nina Kulagina, a housewife from Leningrad, apparently using PK to move a variety of stationary objects. She was also photographed apparently levitating objects.

     In the 1970s the Israeli psychic Uri Geller dazzled TV audiences with his alleged powers of bending metal with a few gentle strokes or taps with his fingers. Under laboratory conditions, experiments with Geller proved inconclusive, and certain professional magicians have claimed that Geller is a fraud using simple sleight-of-hand to achieve his extraordinary feats.

     PK generally evokes images of table levitations, spoons bending, and similar fireworks. But such ‘macroscopic’ or large-scale PK effects -- assuming they really exist -- are probably just the more explicit and impressive manifestations of a broader phenomenon which is going on all the time, unnoticed. Micro-PK - the mind’s influence upon microscopic events -- has been the preferred laboratory approach for several decades now.

Actually, the idea of micro-PK is not new. Way back in the 1700s, Sir Francis Bacon, ‘father’ of the scientific method, gave some visionary suggestions for the study of micro-PK. In his posthumously published work, Sylva Sylvarum, he proposed we study this ‘mental force’ by applying it «...upon things that have the lightest and easiest motions... as upon the sudden fading or coming up of herbs; or upon their bending one way or other ...or upon the casting of dice».

     In the 1930s. A young gambler arrived at the Duke University parapsychology lab claiming he could influence the fall of dice by sheer will power. J.B.Rhine, director of the lab and ‘father’ of modern parapsychology, was intrigued, and willing. He devised tests and found that the gambler indeed seemed to beat the odds and get the wished-for outcome much more often than would be expected by chance.

    Micro-PK research was thus born, as Rhine began to test different individuals’ ability to influence the fall of dice.

    Most scientists deny the existence of PK, and the difficulty in reproducing PK phenomena at will make scientific investigation difficult.