Warts and All: Francis Bacon’s Account of a Cure by “Sympathetic Magic”

When Francis Bacon – a key figure of the Scientific Revolution in Britain – travelled France as an adolescent, he was puzzled by a number of strange experiences. As mentioned in my video on Bacon’s views on “natural magic”, one such experience involved his dream which seemed to predict the unexpected death of his father … Read more

What is the Historical Study of Science and Magic Good for?

Christian Jarrett, an editor at Aeon magazine, approached me after reading my response to a Japanese newspaper query on ghost beliefs in the West last year to commission a short article on a similar topic. I was happy to comply, and my Aeon piece on the hidden history of hallucinations and visions went online in … Read more

New: Science, ‘Atheism’ and Ridicule – Prof. Michael Hunter on the Hidden History of the Decline of Magic in Early Modern British Science

  Nobody knows more about Robert Boyle, a founder of modern experimental science and the Royal Society, than Michael Hunter. Now an Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, Hunter is the author of various essays and books including the award-winning monograph, Boyle: Between God and Science (2009). Apart from producing a catalogue of Boyle’s vast … Read more

Magic and the Human Sciences: Jason Josephson-Storm’s The Myth of Disenchantment

I may have developed a bit of a reputation as a harsh reviewer of historical studies which in my opinion do a poor job at engaging with primary sources and original contexts (such as a recent book on the heretical science of William James, and a study of German occultism and the Third Reich). By … Read more

Positivists in Wonderland: Extended Abstract of my Talk at the Conference, Science and Spiritualism, 1750-1930

As I’m preparing my presentation for the upcoming conference on the history of science and spiritualism in Leeds, I thought I’d share an extended version of my abstract with those of you who won’t be able to attend:  Scientific Naturalism and the Study of Spiritualist Phenomena by Positivist and Materialist Representatives of Science and Medicine … Read more

Hitler’s Monsters? A Look at German “Scientific Occultism” and Fascism

In case you haven’t noticed, American and British politics are in utter shambles. A climate science-denying President of the supposedly United States gets away with racial slurs and refusals to renounce sympathies with Neo-Nazis, and while I don’t think it’s fair to say that everybody who voted for Brexit is a racist, correlations between racial … Read more

What is a Supernatural Phenomenon? Aquinas, Hume, and Alfred Russel Wallace’s ‘Naturalistic Spiritualism’

[This article continues my earlier post, “Materialism vs. Supernaturalism? ‘Scientific Naturalism’ in Context”]. Is the popular conflation of scientific naturalism with ontological materialism historically legit? Our first look at the context of Thomas H. Huxley’s first usage of ‘scientific naturalism’ in the sense in which it is deployed today suggested that it is not: Yes, … Read more

Ghosts and Enlightenment Science at the University of Basel

In 2014 I was invited to give a talk at the University of Basel as part of a public lecture series on ‘transcendent experiences’, which was organized by the biologist and philosopher Heiner Schwenke. German readers might be interested in a text of mine which is based on this lecture, and which just appeared in … Read more

Materialism vs. Supernaturalism? “Scientific Naturalism” in Context

In my last article on William James’ heretical science I mentioned that among the many opponents of his studies of alleged psychic phenomena were representatives of “scientific naturalism”, which I stated was “not the same as ontological materialism, of which major science ‘naturalizers’ such as Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall in Britain, and Emil du … Read more

Why Was the First Compilation of James’ Essays on Unorthodox Science Published in French?

Given my own specialization in the occult underbelly of the history of modern human sciences, the heretical preoccupations of William James as the ‘founding father’ of modern American psychology are a naturally recurring theme of Forbidden Histories. Some of you might be aware of a recent book by Krister D. Knapp, William James: Psychical Research … Read more