I’m excited to announce that the long-awaited book by Richard Noakes is now available for pre-order. Scheduled to appear in October 2019 as part of the Science in History series by Cambridge University Press, Physics and Psychics: The Occult and the Sciences in Modern Britain will provide surprising insights into the heterodox preoccupations of many of the most celebrated figures in the history of British physics, and question entrenched distinctions between science and pseudo-science.
If Richard’s previous work on the hidden history of the physical sciences is any indication, his book promises to set new standards for future historians working on similar topics. Like his many essays and articles published in leading history of science and technology periodicals and edited volumes, this book will reconstruct the past on its own terms, and draw on a wealth of previously unexploited archival and other primary sources.
Here is the blurb and table of contents from the publisher’s website:
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. NEW IMPONDERABLES, NEW SCIENCES
1.1 Animal Magnetism as Physics
1.2 The Oddity of Od
1.3 Outdoing the Electric Telegraph
1.4 “Scientific Men” and Spiritualism
1.5 Extending the Boundaries of Physics
2. A SURVEY OF PHYSICAL-PSYCHICAL SCIENTISTS
2.1 Inventing Psychical Research
2.2 Identifying Physical-Psychical Scientists
2.3 Connecting Physical-Psychical Scientists
2.4 Gold Mines of Science, Handmaids to Faith
2.5 Changing Attitudes to Psychical Investigation
3. PSYCHICAL EFFECTS AND PHYSICAL THEORIES
3.1 Removing Scientific “Stumbling Blocks”
3.2 Challenging Materiality
3.3 Dim Analogies
3.4 Maxwellian Psychics
3.5 Doubts and Criticisms
4. PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATION AS EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS
4.1 From Psychic Force to the Radiometer
4.2 Tying Mediums with Electricity
4.3 Magnetic Sense or Nonsense?
4.4 Physical as Psychical Laboratories
4.5 Wanting Opportunities?
5. EXPERTISE IN PHYSICS AND PSYCHICS
5.1 Scourging Spiritualists and Scientists
5.2 Tricky Instruments of Psychics
5.3 Tricky Instruments of Physics
5.4 Psychical Researchers and Conjurors
5.5 N-rays and Psychical Expertise
6. MODERNISING PHYSICS AND PSYCHICS
6.1 Busy Men
6.2 “Applied” Psychical Research
6.3 Lodge’s Etherial Body
6.4 Interpreting Lodge’s Physics and Psychics
6.5 Interwar Transitions
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Finally, here’s some advance praise:
“Physics and Psychics is a much-anticipated contribution to scholarship by the preeminent historian of science studying the interaction of science and occultism in this period. Noakes’s masterful book, focused on the years 1870-1930, will be essential for scholars of modernism in art, literature, and culture more generally.” – Linda Dalrymple Henderson, University of Texas, Austin
“Richard Noakes knows more than anyone else in the world about the complex ways physics and psychical research interacted in the decades around 1900, and in this incisive book he shows us just how permeable the boundary between science and the seemingly supernatural was in those days – and perhaps still is.” – Bruce J. Hunt, University of Texas, Austin
“Richard Noakes’s ground-breaking book casts important new light on the place of physics in Victorian spiritualism, and the place of spiritualism in Victorian physics. This detailed and compelling study shows just how important the psychic world was in the development of the physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century.” – Iwan Rhys Morus, Aberystwyth University
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