num_pages: 440
description: The Society for Psychical Research was established in 1882 to further the scientific study of consciousness but it arose in the surf of a larger cultural need. Victorians were on the hunt for self-understanding. Mesmerists spiritualists and other romantic seekers roamed sunken landscapes of entrancement and when psychology was finally ready to confront these altered states psychical research was adopted as an experimental vanguard. Far from a rejected science it was a necessary heterodoxy probing mysteries as diverse as telepathy hypnosis and even sance phenomena. Its investigators sought facts far afield of physical evidence of a transcendent irreducible mind. The New Prometheans traces the evolution of psychical research through the intertwining biographies of four chemist Sir William Crookes depth psychologist Frederic Myers ether physicist Sir Oliver Lodge and anthropologist Andrew Lang. All past presidents of the society these men brought psychical research beyond academic circles and into the public square making it part of a shared far-reaching examination of science and society. By layering their papers textbooks and lectures with more intimate texts like diaries letters and literary compositions Courtenay Raia returns us to a critical juncture in the history of secularization the last great gesture of reconciliation between science and sacred truths.
language: English
title: The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle
publisher: University of Chicago Press