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 … Read more
Does it matter that some eminent scientists and intellectuals have firmly believed in ‘psychic’ phenomena? Or should we just accept vocally dismissive statements on these matters by scientifically distinguished disbelievers? This is one of several questions I touched upon in my latest article, which I was invited to contribute to a thematic issue of the … Read more
I’m very excited to introduce a brand-new feature to you: The Forbidden Histories Reading Group (https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceMagicReadings). The first reading will be E.R. Dodds’s The Greeks and the Irrational. For a schedule and further information watch this video. Reading groups are not your thing? You may still enjoy the video, which addresses a possible link between … Read more
At long last, I just uploaded the second part of “Poltergeist Phenomena and the History of Science” to our Youtube channel. After part one was concerned with early modern responses to “things that go bump in the night” by Robert Boyle and colleagues at the Royal Society, and looked at the decline of empirical approaches … Read more
“You don’t want to mess with Mrs. Sidgwick!”. No Victorian has ever written a statement like this, though it is certainly along the lines of what many contemporaries of Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick were thinking. Born on 11 March 1845 into one of the most politically and intellectually influential families in Britain, Nora (as she was … Read more
I’m very happy to announce our colleague Kyle Falcon in Canada as the winner of the latest Patreon prize draw. As it happens, Kyle, who has won a copy of Alison Winter’s classical study Mesmerized, is a fellow historian working on themes closely related to those covered on Forbidden Histories: His Ph.D. research at Wilfrid … Read more
As I’m preparing my presentation for the upcoming conference on the history of science and spiritualism in Leeds, I thought I’d share an extended version of my abstract with those of you who won’t be able to attend: Scientific Naturalism and the Study of Spiritualist Phenomena by Positivist and Materialist Representatives of Science and Medicine … Read more
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 … Read more
[This article continues my earlier post, “Materialism vs. Supernaturalism? ‘Scientific Naturalism’ in Context”]. Is the popular conflation of scientific naturalism with ontological materialism historically legit? Our first look at the context of Thomas H. Huxley’s first usage of ‘scientific naturalism’ in the sense in which it is deployed today suggested that it is not: Yes, … Read more
In my last article on William James’ heretical science I mentioned that among the many opponents of his studies of alleged psychic phenomena were representatives of “scientific naturalism”, which I stated was “not the same as ontological materialism, of which major science ‘naturalizers’ such as Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall in Britain, and Emil du … Read more