Tying the knot

Skill, judgement and authority in the 1870s Leipzig spiritistic experiments

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8395148
AutoresKLAUS B STAUBERMANN, Klaus Staubermann (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, autor de correspondencia)
Año2001
Volumen34
Número01
Fecha de publicación2001-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0007087401004307
OpenAlexW2121654907
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

Recent studies in nineteenth-century spiritualism have illuminated the social practice of the occult in various cultural contexts. Richard Noakes in his latest study on telegraphy and the occult in Victorian England, for instance, shows how the world of spiritualism and the world of technology were welded together by Victorian engineering schemes and money. R. Noakes, ‘Telegraphy is an occult art: Cromwell Fleetwood Varley and the diffusion of electricity to the other world’, BJHS (1999), 32, 421–59. This paper looks at another culture of occult practice which has often been neglected by historians of science: the role of spiritism in the making of German experimental psychology. Based on a debate focusing on the German astrophysicist Karl Friedrich Zöllner and the American medium Henry Slade, I will show how spiritistic experiments were situated in the emerging contexts of scientific practice, laboratories and disciplines. For a more external approach on Zöllner see C. Meinel, Karl Friedrich Zöllner und die Wissenschaftskultur der Gründerzeit, Berlin, 1991. ‘Spiritismus’ in German and ‘spiritualism’ in English refer to the study of ghosts. ‘Spiritualismus’ in German refers to the metaphysical and theological dimension of the spiritual. This study will also take a close look at the perception of spiritistic mediums as instruments by experimenters such as Zöllner. This perception dates back to the 18th century. S. Schaffer, ‘Deus et Machina’, La Lettre de la Maison française (1997), 9, 30–58. On the perception of experimental subjects as machines in Victorian culture see A. Winter, Mesmerized, Chicago, 1998, Chapter 3.Things were in control and then they were not and then they were.Sally Bushell, Under the Breadfruit Tree S. Bushell, Under the Breadfruit Tree, Cambridge, 1997, 22

Art · Art history · German · Sociology · Spiritualism · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · History of Science and Natural History · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices