<P> An early inquiry into allegedly prophetic dreams was done by Aristotle in his On Divination in Sleep . His criticism of these claims appeals to the fact that "the sender of such dreams should be God", and "the fact that those to whom he sends them are not the best and wisest, but merely commonplace persons ." Thus: "Most (so - called prophetic) dreams are, however, to be classed as mere coincidences ...", here "coincidence" being defined by Aristotle as that which does not take "place according to a universal or general rule" and referring to things which are not of themselves by necessity causally connected . His example being taking a walk during an eclipse, neither the walk nor the eclipse being apparently causally connected and so only by "coincidence" do they occur simultaneously . </P> <P> J.W. Dunne believed that dream precognition did not reference any kind of future event, but specifically the future experiences of the dreamer . He was led to this idea when he found that a dream of a volcanic eruption appeared to foresee not the disaster itself but his subsequent misreading of an inaccurate account in a newspaper . In 1963 the BBC television programme Monitor broadcast an appeal by the writer J.B. Priestley for experiences which challenged our understanding of Time . He received hundreds of letters in reply and believed that many of them described genuine precognitive dreams . In 2014 the BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Francis Spufford revisited Priestley's work and its relation to the ideas of J.W. Dunne . </P> <P> In 1932 Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped, murdered and buried among trees . The psychologists Henry Murray and D.R. Wheeler tested precognitive dreams by inviting the public to report any dreams of the child . A total of 1,300 dreams were reported . Only five percent envisioned the child dead and only 4 of the 1,300 envisioned the location of the grave as amongst trees . This number was no better than chance . </P> <P> David Ryback, a psychologist in Atlanta, used a questionnaire survey approach to investigate precognitive dreaming in college students . His survey of over 433 participants showed that 290 or 66.9 percent reported some form of paranormal dream . He rejected many of these reports, but claimed that 8.8 percent of the population was having actual precognitive dreams . </P>

What do you call a person who knows the future