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List of contents
List of figures and tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. New imponderables, new sciences; 1.1 Animal magnetism as physics; 1.2 The oddity of od; 1.3 Outdoing the electric telegraph; 1.4 'Scientific men' and spiritualism; 1.5 Extending the boundaries of physics; 2. A survey of physical-psychical scientists; 2.1 Inventing psychical research; 2.2 Identifying physical-psychical scientists; 2.3 Connecting physical-psychical scientists; 2.4 Gold mines of science, handmaids to faith; 2.5 Changing attitudes to psychical investigation; 3. Psychical effects and physical theories; 3.1 Removing scientific 'stumbling blocks'; 3.2 Challenging materiality; 3.3 Dim analogies; 3.4 Maxwellian psychics; 3.5 Doubts and criticisms; 4. Psychical investigation as experimental physics; 4.1 From psychic force to the radiometer; 4.2 Tying mediums with electricity; 4.3 Magnetic sense or nonsense?; 4.4 Physical as psychical laboratories; 4.5 Wanting opportunities?; 5. Expertise in physics and psychics; 5.1 Scourging spiritualists and scientists; 5.2 Tricky instruments of psychics; 5.3 Tricky instruments of physics; 5.4 Psychical researchers and conjurors; 5.5 N-rays and psychical expertise; 6. Modernising physics and psychics; 6.1 Busy men; 6.2 'Applied' psychical research; 6.3 Lodge's etherial body; 6.4 Interpreting Lodge's physics and psychics; 6.5 Interwar transitions; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Richard Noakes is a leading historian of nineteenth and twentieth century sciences and technology at the University of Exeter. He is the co-editor of From Newton to Hawking: A History of Cambridge University's Lucasian Professors of Mathematics (Cambridge, 2003) and the co-author of Science in the Nineteenth Century Periodical: Reading the Magazine of Nature (Cambridge, 2004).
Summary
In this first systematic exploration of the intriguing connections between Victorian physical sciences and what we now call the paranormal, Richard Noakes challenges our view of the history of physics, and deepens our understandings of the relationships between science and the occult, and science and religion.
