Science as an Assimilation of the 19th Century Spiritualism into Society (original) (raw)
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2003 Annual Conference Proceedings of the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, 2003
Over the last century and a half, the successes of science in explaining our normally sensed world have led to further attempts to expand science into the realm of the para normal and explain the para-normally sensed world of psychic phenomena. These attempts have helped to establish a greater and growing variety of psychical experiences as well as offer a real challenge to our traditional concepts of religious experience. Within this context, science first came into contact with the paranormal with modern spiritualism, then to parapsychology and finally to paraphysics and a new interest in consciousness and spirituality. At each stage of this evolutionary process, changes in the scientific attitude toward the paranormal coincide with changes in the evolution of attitudes in normal science as well as changes in religious attitude.
Spiritualism and Psychical Research
Spiritualism as a religious movement self-consciously sought an alliance with science that would eventually lead to its own downfall. Despite Spiritualism's resemblances to many prior instances of mystical experience or ghostly contact, the movement is traditionally dated to 1848, when two young sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, attempted to communicate with a poltergeist in their home in Hydesville, New York. Using a home-spun version of Morse code called "alphabet raps", the girls inaugurated what would become a trans-Atlantic phenomenon of séances and table tippings, making international sensations of some and endorsing domestic attempts for all (Braude 1989, pp. 10-12; Cox 2003, pp. 6-7). Spiritualism posited that the dead continued to exist on an advanced plane-usually a graduated seven tiers of heaven-where they could be contacted for advice and solace. Progress was the hallmark of heaven: not instantly perfected at death, spirits continued to grow in knowledge and morality. Moreover, Spiritualism proposed that everyone went to heaven-all religions, races, and temperaments were destined for the same afterlife. One's deceased kin and the sages of history were all available to help the living. The desire to talk to the dead caught the imagination of the era, and the desire to prove scientifically that this was possible followed immediately in its wake.
Science, the paranormal and spirituality: A new beginning
Spirituality Matters! The ASPSI e-Newsletter, 2012
Science, the paranormal and spirituality form a spectrum of sorts, ranging from the physical world and the logic that science uses to describe and probe it, to consciousness and intuition where the roots of the paranormal and spirituality can be found. The paranormal mediates between our scientific and spiritual worldviews, just as consciousness seems to bridge the enormous chasm between our internal mental image of self and the external material world. Therefore, a scientific study of paranormal phenomena seems the best way to understand spirituality at a higher level of physical reality than just our normal intuitive feelings for the world in which we live, our purpose in the world and how we interact with it. Within this context, the scientific study of the paranormal can be broken down into several historical periods. Each period coincides with specific developments and advances in scientific worldviews that are sometimes separated by paradigms shifts, both large and small. This fact is important because a new change in scientific worldview has recently begun to emerge and it coincides with new advances in the scientific study of consciousness which will greatly enhance and alter our worldview of the paranormal and spirituality.
In the early nineteenth century, investigations into the nature of psychic/spiritual phenomena, like trances and the supposed acquisition of information unattainable using normal sensory channels, prompted much debate in the scientific arena. This article discusses the main explanations offered by the researchers of psychic phenomena reported between 1811 and 1860, concentrating on the two main movements in the period: magnetic somnambulism and modern spiritualism. While the investigations of these phenomena gave rise to multiple theories, they did not yield any consensus. However, they did have implications for the understanding of the mind and its disorders, especially in the areas of the unconscious and dissociation, constituting an important part of the history of psychology and psychiatry.
This paper presents brief information about the existence and orientation of selected journals that have published articles on psychic phenomena. Some journals emphasize particular theoretical ideas, or methodological approaches. Examples include the Journal du magn´etisme and Zoist, in which animal magnetism was discussed, and the Revue Spirite, and Luce e Ombra, which focused on discarnate agency. Nineteenth-century journals such as the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and the Annales des Sciences Psychiques emphasized both methodology and the careful accumulation of data. Some publications, such as the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research and the Dutch Tijdschrift voor Parapsychologie, were influenced by the agenda of a single individual. Other journals represented particular approaches or points of view, such as those of spiritualism (Luce e Ombra and Psychic Science), experimental parapsychology (Journal of Parapsychology), or skepticism (Skeptical Inquirer). An awareness of the differing characteristics of these publications illustrates aspects of the development of parapsychology as a discipline.
Either/Or: Spiritualism and the roots of paranormal science
Yggdrasil: The Journal of Paraphysics, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Winter Solstice 1996, 1996
During the last half of the nineteenth century a confluence of intellectual, cultural and scientific notions gave rise to the practice of modern spiritualism. Past histories of science and culture have considered the events surrounding modern spiritualism as a historical aberration especially when placed in the context of the science of the era. Yet modern spiritualism was as much a consequence of the successes of Newtonian science as was the Second Scientific Revolution. Several of the factors in its development are noted; The rise of evolution, conservation laws in physics and chemistry, the ‘Naturphilosophie’ ideas of convertibility of forces and unity of nature, the Romantic notions of organic nature as opposed to a strictly mechanistic view of nature, the Principle of Continuity, the mind-matter paradox, aether theories, Riemannian (non-Euclidean) geometries and other geometries of hyperspace, as well as older forms of occultism and spiritualism. Among these notions, the Principle of Continuity is identified as a “unit-idea” which has influenced the intellectual development of mankind since the early Greek era. But to a far greater extent, the rise of modern spiritualism was a continuation of scientific speculations on the interaction between mind and matter which only occurred when Newtonian science was well enough advanced to once again consider the role of mind in nature and science. When considered within this context, both the development of the scientific aspect of spiritualism and psychical research in the final decades of the nineteenth century can be viewed as a valid scientific endeavor as well as an integral part of the overall development of science.
Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine
George H. Doran Company, 1919
' a little eamest attention to the matter was bound to admit that, making every allowance for fraud, there was xx INTRODUCTION response introduced the idea of intelligence into what had previously been a mere chaos of noises and movements. The American mind is open to new impressions, and probably the cult spread more rapidly there than it could have done elsewhere. But the biggest brain which tumed itself upon this new subject and drew others behind it, was not American but French. Allan Kardec, with his spiritualist philosophy, differed in some details from the Americans, but founded his conclusions upon the same phenomena. When the whole story comes to be told, however, there is no doubt that it is to England that the new branch of science owes most, and, indeed, that it is due to England that it can be called a science at all. Cambridge University will always be the Mecca of systematic psychic investigation, which is the avenue that nearly always leads eventually to complete acceptance of the spiritual hypothesis. There have seldom, if ever, been a more brilliant set of minds than those which engaged themselves upon this subject.
Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, 2014
In so far as researchers viewed psychical, occult, and religious phenomena as both objectively verifiable and resistant to extant scientific explanations, their study posed thorny issues for experimental psychologists. Controversies over the study of psychical and occult phenomena at the Fourth Congress of International Psychology (Paris, 1900) and religious phenomena at the Sixth (Geneva, 1909) raise the question of why the latter was accepted as a legitimate object of study, whereas the former was not. Comparison of the Congresses suggests that those interested in the study of religion were willing to forego the quest for objective evidence and focus on experience, whereas those most invested in psychical research were not. The shift in focus did not overcome many of the methodological difficulties. Sub-specialization formalized distinctions between psychical, religious, and pathological phenomena; obscured similarities; and undercut the nascent comparative study of unusual experi...
Psychical research in the history and philosophy of science. An introduction and review
Psychical research in the history and philosophy of science. An introduction and review
As a prelude to articles published in this special issue, I briefly sketch changing historiographical conventions regarding the ‘occult’ in recent history of science and medicine scholarship. Next, a review of standard claims regarding psychical research and parapsychology in philosophical discussions of the demarcation problem reveals that these have tended to disregard basic primary sources and instead rely heavily on problematic popular accounts, simplistic notions of scientific practice, and outdated teleological historiographies of progress. I conclude by suggesting that rigorous and sensitively contextualized case studies of past elite heterodox scientists may be potentially useful to enrich historical and philosophical scholarship by highlighting epistemologies that have fallen through the crude meshes of triumphalist and postmodernist historiographical generalizations alike.
2019
The late-Victorian period was characterised by rapid social, cultural, and intellectual changes, with all domains open to challenge from numerous and diverse directions. This thesis focusses on a short period in ‘the Age of Enlightenment’, from the mid-nineteenth century to 1914, during which many groups and individuals wanted to try to answer the ultimate questions about the nature of the universe and humanity’s place within it. For them, the well-established fields of science, religion, and philosophy each proved to be inadequate individual tools with which to attempt to answer these questions. Consequently, many members of the cultural and intellectual elite turned to the paranormal domain, within which they saw the potential to answer some of their fundamental questions. Psychical research was a nascent intellectual field that investigated strange phenomena which existed at the borders of orthodox thinking, sitting precariously between the acceptable and the unacceptable. This t...