J. W. Dunne (John William Dunne) Biography

British inventor and philosopher, educated privately; he served in the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). Dunne designed and built the first British military aeroplane (1906–7), but is best known for An Experiment with Time (1927), a book of scientific speculation. It challenged both Einstein on the nature of time, and Freud on the nature of dreams. Offering much practical advice about recording dreams, he considered them as precognitive clues to future events, and also as crucial in understanding time. His theory of ‘serial time’ was dramatized by one of his most enthusiastic supporters, J. B. Priestley, in Time and the Conways (1937), and other plays. Dunne further elaborated his theories in The Serial Universe (1934), The New Immortality (1938), and Nothing Dies (1940). In Man and Time (1964), Priestley devoted an entire chapter to Dunne's controversial theories.