num_pages: 332
description: Most scholars dismiss research into the paranormal as pseudoscience a frivolous pursuit for the paranoid or gullible. Even historians of religion whose work naturally attends to events beyond the realm of empirical science have shown scant interest in the subject. But the history of psychical phenomena Kripal contends is an untapped source of insight into the sacred. By tracing that history thru the last two centuries of Western thought we can see its potential centrality to the critical study of religion. Kripal grounds his study in the work of four major figures in the history of paranormal research: psychical researcher Frederic Myers; writer Charles Fort; astronomer computer scientist &amp; ufologist Jacques Vallee; &amp; philosopher &amp; sociologist Bertrand Mheust. Thru incisive analyses of these thinkers Kripal ushers readers into a beguiling world somewhere between fact fiction &amp; fraud. The cultural history of telepathy teleportation &amp; UFOs; a ghostly love story; the occult dimensions of sf; cold war psychic espionage; galactic colonialism; &amp; the intimate relationship between consciousness &amp; culture all come together in Authors of the Impossible a look at how the paranormal bridges the sacred &amp; the scientific.
language: English
title: Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred
publisher: University of Chicago Press