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WARNING: This section deals with Nostradamus from a purely secular point of view. If you want the religious point of view, please check the section On Prophecy.
Nostradamus has been called many things. Prophet and seer, psychic and fortuneteller are just a few of the titles given to him. He has also been called fraudulent and glory seeker. But what is he really?
It is definite that he has perceived things that is beyond the ken of ordinary mortals to perceive. You would have to be a liar to claim that everything he saw was of the past, taken from the Bible, or simply his imagination. His accurate prediction of the nature of the death of Henri II, published several years before it occurred, is so accurate in detail as to be inconceivable that he did not, in some way, perceive it. Of course, it may be that you may claim that the quatrain he wrote was necessarily broad in detail, but then you would have to admit that events seemingly conspired to bring it about exactly as he said. A young lion, a Scotsman whose banner was that of a lion, did overcome the old lion that was Henri in a joust, a single combat. The lance did break apart, causing two wounds. And the death was a particularly cruel one at that; he lingered multiple days in pure agony before finally expiring.
But how many have actually examined him with an honestly critical eye. In my opinion, very few. And even the more accurate ones tend to bring their own preconceptions and prejudgments to the analysis. Most of the people who examined him have fallen into two classes, either being a total believer in him and his abilities and finding that he could predict nothing inaccurately or have been a total disbeliever in him and his inabilities and assert that he did nothing right! In other words, divine or damned with no in-between.
The problem with such approaches is that while they may be emotionally satisfying, they prevent the necessary objectivity that is required to truly understand what he was. And this is quite evident because where the one is ready to sing his praises no matter what the other is just as ready to condemn him no matter what. And neither approach gives us any honest criticism as to his abilities or his successes.
On the one hand you had people who passed down tales, laid down by others, that were fundamentally fallacious in their praise of his deeds. People like these almost universally found stupid excuses to explain away his failures as simple errors on our own part, they did nothing to see the failures of Nostradamus as his failures. If they moved the bar of acceptance, which they often did, they moved it in favor of accepting Nostradamus and his work blindly.
On the other hand you had people who passed down or created other tales that were fundamentally false in their condemnation and damnation of his abilities, all in support of their claims that he was nothing more than a fraud. People like these almost universally found fallacious ways to explain away or to ignore his successes, they almost always claimed that he only wrote about his imaginings, past events, or Biblical legends. If they moved the bar of acceptance, which they often did, they moved it in favor of denying that Nostradamus had any abilities whatsoever.
The trouble is, neither ever truly looked at the evidence honestly and critically. They approached it with their own preconceived notions as to what they would find, much as most people do. Their own tests were used to validate their own prejudiced beliefs, all in the name of objectivity of course. The one would preach that prophecy does exist, therefore Nostradamus was a prophet. The other would cry out that there is no evidence for precognition, all could be simple guesswork and reading the past, therefore it was, as a result Nostradamus foresaw nothing. As can be seen, neither approach is honest.
Without counting those predictions that clearly cannot be true unless they find their fulfillment in the future, it is evident that there are many predictions that are definitely true. These predictions, or prognostications, defy explanation except if you admit that he actually saw the events before they happened. How to explain it any other way is impossible to answer in this day and age.
But at the same time there are also those predictions that clearly can never be true. Some of the predictions came very close, impossibly close some would say. Others missed by a wider mark. And at least one almost came true but seems to have been averted at the last minute. Why did these fail? That too is a very interesting question.
But there is also a third class of prediction, a third class of prognostication. They are those predictions that never would have happened except for the existence of the prediction. Least you claim that this is impossible, let me reiterate a story from the story of Nostradamus.
The problem is manifest because the white pig was only killed thanks to Lord Florenville wanting to play a joke on Nostradamus. And he wanted to play this joke only because Nostradamus said that they would eat the black one and a wolf the white one. The question here is, would the cook have slaughtered the white one that night if the Lord had not ordered him to do so, opening up the pig to the hunger of the lord's tame wolf cub? Obviously not. We do not know what would have happened, but it is almost certain that the white pig would not have been killed to be eaten that night.
The Florinville story is a demonstration of a third type of precognition: the self-serving precognition. The events that are predicted would never have happened except for the existence of the prediction. It is the existence of the prediction that starts the chain of events happening. That makes this type of prediction self-serving and self-reliant.
So the question is, how do we study something so nebulous, so difficult to pin down?
It is evident that any approach to the study of precognition requires at least an acceptance that it may be possible for one to foresee the future using what we would call paranormal means. Einstein’s definition of time being a dimension indicates that it may be possible to see events in the future just as it is possible to see things in the past. It is certainly true that many great thinkers and scientists believe it is possible. Science fiction writers of renown have put it into their books. And not just precognition either. Telepathy, the means of communicating via paranormal means, is also accepted, as are other "powers of the mind."
The science that is studying these powers of the mind is called Parapsychology. It is a very serious study. All parapsychologists are convinced that such powers of the mind are real and that sooner or later they, or one of their number, will find the proof needed.
The Prophecies of Nostradamus is proof that parapsychology is correct, that at least precognition exists. But these works are also proof that currently it is being utilized unconsciously, without any knowledge as to how or why it works the way it does. The usage it is being given is even more primitive than the usage of mineralogy that blacksmiths used when making steel in the medieval period. At least blacksmiths understood that if you combine iron and coal and top the mixture with sand and apply heat over a period of time, you could make steel and draw out the impurities into the sand – they did not know why but they definitely knew how to do it. Parapsychologists are not even to this level. They are at the level where they can say that steel exists but they cannot claim to know how to make it. Telepathy, empathy, precognition, we are virtual infants in the study.
So the study of precognition is worthy in and of itself. It may be centuries before any real advance is made. Or it may be just a matter of years. But the pursuit of the study is definitely a worthy pursuit with a worthy goal, the betterment of mankind. It does need some honest critics, those who critically look over the work and point out flaws, objections and oppositions to it. But one thing it does not need: It does not need so-called skeptics and cynics who do their best to alter the criteria and conditions while claiming that powers of the mind do not exist. It also does not need true believers who willingly jump up and down claiming that this or that is fundamental proof of precognition. It needs honest, intelligent and critical examination of the evidence. And if the Prophecies of Nostradamus can be of any aid in understanding these strange powers, then it is all to the good.