LOS LÍMITES DE LA CIENCIA: ESPIRITISMO, HIPNOTISMO Y EL ESTUDIO DE LOS FENÓMENOS PARANORMALES (1850-1930) (THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE: SPIRITISM, HYPNOTISM AND THE STUDY OF PARANORMAL PHENOMENA) (original) (raw)

This book is about the spiritist practices that emerged in the United States and Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century. Motivated by curiosity and a desire to be entertained, many people gathered together at night to watch tables shake or hear strange knocking sounds that seemed to contain intelligible messages. Once these practices reached European countries, they were to take on a more specific significance. They were established as a form of rational philosophy, based on mediumship, with religious and scientific aspirations. As a social movement, they acquired a certain popularity; although the movement was always of a highly disjointed nature. Some scientists soon found themselves involved in putting the paranormal phenomena exhibited during the night-time sessions to the test. That was the start of the creation of a space for both conflict and negotiation between the two camps, as well as within science itself; following a dynamic of the defining of competencies and the demarcation of professions. The work is structured in ten chapters. The first four deal, from a general perspective, with the evolution of spiritism and how this led to the emergence of parapsychology (in the form of “psychical research” and metapsychics. The next three chapters are about mediumship, hypnotism and clairvoyance, showing how these practices were first introduced into Spain and then spread. Next there is a chapter on different forms of clairvoyance and their relationship with psychoanalysis, art and the popular press in Europe. Finally, the last chapter examines in detail the research into spiritist phenomena undertaken in Saint Petersburg by a commission set up by the famous Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev.