Physics and Psychics

Noakes, Richard

doi:10.1017/9781316882436

Cited by 29 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 160 publications

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“…Thorndike, 1923Thorndike, -1958Yates, 1964). More importantly for the present context, the same holds true for a rapidly expanding literature of cutting-edge research on what esotericism scholars would consider part of their field, covering a vast spectrum from Theosophy (Viswanathan, 1998;Bevir, 2000;van der Veer, 2001), Spiritualism and occultism (Dixon, 2001;Owen, 2004;Treitel, 2004;Albanese, 2007;Wolffram, 2009;Noakes, 2019), early modernity (Clucas/Forshaw/Rees, 2011;Rampling, 2014;Copenhaver, 2015), magic and occult arts in the middle ages (Burnett, 1996;Pingree, 1997;Fanger, 2012), "esoteric" currents in antiquity (Turner, 2001;Dieleman, 2005;Bull, 2018), or within dynamic new fields such as global history (Bayly, 2004;Osterhammel, 2014;Conrad, 2018;Green, 2015).…”

Section: Preventing the Self-marginalization Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 73%

Esotericism’s Expanding Horizon: Why This Book Came to Be

Asprem¹,

Strube²

2020

New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism

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The academic study of esotericism is currently undergoing a phase of expansion and diversification. This is true whether we look at the topics, geographical regions, and subject languages of new research projects in the field, at the disciplines involved in its study, or the demographic composition of its scholars. The past decade has seen monographs, anthologies, and journal special issues on topics such as African-American esotericism (Finley, Guillory and

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Section: Preventing the Self-marginalization Of The Fieldmentioning

confidence: 73%

Esotericism’s Expanding Horizon: Why This Book Came to Be

Asprem¹,

Strube²

2020

New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism

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“…Related to the concept of waves, was the main idea of the entry Emanations, or the exteriorization of forces out of the body to produce psychic phenomena. This is an ancient concept that arrived in psychical research mainly via the mesmeric and spiritualistic literatures, but that to some extent was also nurtured by ideas from physics (Alvarado, 2006(Alvarado, , 2015Noakes, 2019). The concept of vital, nervous, or psychic forces as the agent behind telepathy, telekinesis, healing, materialization, and other phenomena, was seriously discussed by many during the 1930s, as seen in the writings of Carrington (n.d., circa 1939), Hamilton (1934), andOsty (1937a).…”

Section: The Content Of the Encyclopaedia Of Psychic Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Early Psychical Research Reference Works: Remarks on Nandor Fodor’s Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science

Alvarado¹

2020

JSE

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Some early reference works about psychic phenomena have included bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and general overview books. A particularly useful one, and the focus of the present article, is Nandor Fodor’s Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science (n.d., ca. 1933 or 1934). The encyclopedia has more than 900 alphabetically arranged entries. These cover phenomena such as apparitions, auras, automatic writing, clairvoyance, hauntings, materialization, poltergeists, premonitions, psychometry, and telepathy, but also mediums and psychics, researchers and writers, magazines and journals, organizations, theoretical ideas, and other topics. In addition to the content of this work, and some information about its author, it is argued that the Encyclopaedia is a good reference work for the study of developments before its publication, even though it has some omissions and bibliographical problems. Keywords: Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science; Nandor Fodor; psychical research reference works; history of psychical research

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“…6 Within the SPR, there were several figures deserving of attention during the 1920s, among them Theodore Besterman, Eric Dingwall, Oliver J. Lodge, J. G. Piddington, and Helen Salter. As argued in a recent study, Lodge's position about physical phenomena and physical ideas was well-known, and was not reductive solely to physical processes (Noakes, 2019). The attitude of the SPR, not necessarily a corporate one, may also be examined in relation to phenomena other than materializations.…”

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confidence: 96%

Mediumistic Materializations in France During the Early 1920s

Alvarado¹

2021

JSE

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As I have argued before in this journal, there is a rich tradition of psychical research studies of materialization mediums published before 1930 (Alvarado, 2019a). The phenomenon, associated with many well-known mediums such as Eva C., Florence Cook, William Eglinton, D. D. Home, Franek Kluski, and Eusapia Palladino, has been reviewed by many both during the nineteenth century and later (e.g., Moses, 1884–1886; Richet, 1922, Part 3). Opinions about it have been diverse. In a review of nineteenth-century evidence about it in his book Modern Spiritualism, Frank Podmore (1902, Vol. 2, Chapter 6) was rather dubious about the existence of the phenomenon. In his later concise history of psychical research, Rudolf Tischner (1924) argued that we cannot be sure if “strict proof of the reality of materialization has been provided,” but there has been “circumstantial evidence of considerable strength” (p. 68; this, and other translations, are mine). More positively, Charles Richet (1922) wrote in his celebrated Traité de métapsychique that materializations could “take a definitive rank in science” even if “we understand absolutely nothing about it” (p. 690). Over the years these attitudes have been maintained by many writers and students of the subject, some of which speculate about vital forces and spirit action. In addition, there have been various reports of fraud with materialization mediums (e.g., Sitwell & Von Buch, 1880; Wallace, 1906). Students of the history of materialization phenomena are aware of the studies on the subject by French individuals such as Juliette Bisson and Gustave Geley. This is the main work reviewed by Antonio Leon, who has a doctorate in history from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In Sessões de Ectoplasmia, which focuses on French developments during the 1920s, Leon analyzes materialization phenomena, some of which were studied at the Institut Métapsychique International (IMI) during the 1920s. This book appears at an appropriate time because IMI celebrated their centenary in 2019. Leon states that in his work about IMI he set out to investigate how the experiments took place, their organization, the precautions taken to prevent fraud, their procedures of control, the phenomena, their description, and who the mediums were and the investigators involved . . . [The book] aims to verify the various aspects that pervaded the experiments during the decade of the 1920s, . . . the values and rules of the investigations of ectoplasm of this period. It will also focus on the research context in which the experiments were located. (p. 19)

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Physics and Psychics

Cited by 29 publications

References 160 publications

Esotericism’s Expanding Horizon: Why This Book Came to Be

Esotericism’s Expanding Horizon: Why This Book Came to Be

Early Psychical Research Reference Works: Remarks on Nandor Fodor’s Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science

Mediumistic Materializations in France During the Early 1920s

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