One lesson we can learn from a fresh look at our historical sources is that leaders of modern sciences have been hopelessly polarized in their views on the empirical evidence for ‘occult’ phenomena.
In my last post, I addressed this by noting deep disagreements among founding figures of modern psychology and psychiatry regarding the marvels of spiritualism. I also briefly alluded to the fundamental clash of opinion on spiritualism between the founders of modern evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
If these profound disagreements between Darwin and Wallace are not widely known today, another instance has almost completely fallen into obscurity: the day when the devout spiritualist Wallace clashed with William James on the question of mediumship.
This is particularly interesting since James was no opponent of spiritualism, but an outspoken advocate of investigations of mediums and believer in certain mediumistic phenomena. Not to be outdone, we are talking about the co-originator of modern evolutionary theory clashing with the co-founder of experimental psychology.
Here is an excerpt from my introduction to the latest collection of James’s writings on psychical research, Mind-Dust and White Crows (the book also includes James’s cited protest):
Whereas Darwin and his famed ‘bulldog’ [Thomas H.] Huxley were biased by deep hostility to psychic matters from the outset, the example of Wallace serves as a counter-reminder that we should not simply rest our conviction regarding any controversy on the scientific standing of a proponent or opponent alone.
In fact, while Wallace’s work as a naturalist rightly warrants him to be named in one breath with Darwin, the critical faculties displayed by him in these controversial matters left much to be desired. Debates especially with the Sidgwicks [Henry and Eleanor M. Sidgwick] and [Richard] Hodgson in the periodicals of the SPR [Society for Psychical Research] in the mid-1880s reveal Wallace’s almost complete disregard for ordinary explanations of psychic phenomena including conscious and unconscious fraud, and the pitfalls of eyewitness testimony especially under unfavorable conditions of observation such as in (usually darkened) séance rooms.
This lack of scientific rigor concerning spiritualist phenomena displayed by Wallace in fact once brought William James into the unfortunate situation of having to publicly distance himself from the great naturalist.
During a visit of Wallace to the US in 1886, he and James attended a séance in Boston by a medium who specialized in the supposed materialization of spirit forms. When a leading spiritualist magazine later touted the news that both Wallace and James had been impressed by the medium’s performances, James saw himself forced to issue a correction: Not only had he failed to witness anything that convinced him of the medium’s occult capacities, he also observed how Wallace was haplessly taken in by fairly obvious trickery carried out with the help of the medium’s accomplices.
[I broke up the excerpt into paragraphs, added details of names in parentheses, and omitted footnotes and references – click here for the original, referenced PDF version of my text.]
