Physics and Psychics
- 27 September 2019
- book
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Abstract
This is the first systematic exploration of the intriguing connections between Victorian physical sciences and the study of the controversial phenomena broadly classified as psychic, occult and paranormal. These phenomena included animal magnetism, spirit-rapping, telekinesis and telepathy. Richard Noakes shows that psychic phenomena interested far more Victorian scientists than we have previously assumed, challenging the view of these scientists as individuals clinging rigidly to a materialistic worldview. Physicists, chemists and other physical scientists studied psychic phenomena for a host of scientific, philosophical, religious and emotional reasons, and many saw such investigations as exciting new extensions to their theoretical and experimental researches. While these attempted extensions were largely unsuccessful, they laid the foundations of modern day explorations of the connections between physics and psychic phenomena. This revelatory study challenges our view of the history of physics, and deepens our understanding of the relationships between science and the occult, and science and religion.Keywords
This publication has 143 references indexed in Scilit:
- Normalizing the Supernormal: The Formation of the “Gesellschaft Für Psychologische Forschung” (“Society for Psychological Research”), c. 1886–1890Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2012
- Victorian Sciences and Religions: Discordant HarmoniesOsiris, 2001
- Just beforeNature: The purposes of science and the purposes of popularization in some English popular science journals of the 1860sAnnals of Science, 1998
- Scientists, engineers and Wildman Whitehouse: measurement and credibility in early cable telegraphyThe British Journal for the History of Science, 1996
- John Tyndall, Pantheist: A Rereading of the Belfast AddressOsiris, 1987
- Our Point of ViewScientific American, 1934
- XV. Aberration problems.—A discussion concerning the motion of the ether near the earth, and concerning the connexion between ether and gross matter; with some new experimentsPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. (A.), 1893
- XV. On the supposed “new force” of M. J. ThorePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. (A.), 1887
- XIII. Further observations upon liquid jets, in continuation of those recorded in the Royal Society’s ‘Proceedings’ for March and May, 1879Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 1883
- VI. Researches on the atomic weight of thalliumPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1873