Exceptional Early Scientists and Scholars on Survival and the Paranormal

Another excellent post by Michael Tymn in his blog.

This one quotes fifteen 19th and early 20th century distinguished scientists and scholars on the subjects of survival and the paranormal, people of an earlier day before materialism had set into a sort of concrete.

"It wasn’t long after the birth of modern Spiritualism in 1848 that scientists and scholars began investigating the phenomena.  Many of them started out with the intent of showing that all mediums were charlatans, but one by one they came to believe in the reality of mediumship and related psychic phenomena.  A few of them sat on the fence when it came to professing a belief in the spirit world, but others were more courageous.

Here are testimonials from the earliest researchers."

Some examples:

"Professor James J. Mapes (1806-1866) – A professor of chemistry and natural philosophy at the National Academy of Design in New York and later at the American Institute, Mapes is best remembered for his inventions in sugar refining and artificial fertilizers. He set out around 1854 to rescue his friends who were “running to mental seed and imbecility” over the mediumship epidemic. After investigating many mediums, Mapes changed his views. Moreover, both his wife and daughter became mediums.

The manifestations which are pertinent to the ends required are so conclusive in their character as to establish in my mind certain cardinal points.  These are:  First, there is a future state of existence, which is but a continuation of our present state of being…Second, that the great aim of nature, as shown through a great variety of spiritual existences is progression, extending beyond the limits of this mundane sphere…Third, that spirits can and do communicate with mortals, and in all cases evince a desire to elevate and advance those they commune with.

Biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) – Co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection theory of evolution, Wallace, a naturalist who provided Darwin with his parallel theory before Darwin went public with their two theories, was a hard-core materialist until he began investigating mediums in 1865.  He soon became one of Spiritualism’s greatest missionaries.

My position is that the phenomena of Spiritualism in their entirety do not require further confirmation.  They are proved quite as well as facts are proved in other sciences.

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) – A physicist and chemist, he discovered the element thallium and was a pioneer in radioactivity.  He invented the radiometer, the spinthariscope, and a high-vacuum tube that contributed to the discovery of the x-ray. He was knighted in 1897 and served as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  He set out in 1870 to drive “the worthless residuum of spiritualism” into the “unknown limbo of magic and necromancy.”  However, after thorough investigations of Daniel D. Home and Florence Cook, he changed his views.

[The phenomena] point to the existence of another order of human life continuous with this, and demonstrate the possibility in certain circumstances of communication between this world and the next."

Unfortunately, the situation has come to be that the minds of the overwhelming majority of our current intellectual elite are firmly closed to any notion of the paranormal, totally committed to materialism. To them it is a matter of almost subconsciously assimilated common sense, never to be questioned by any intelligent person any more than the heliocentric theory of the planets.

To them, these statements and experiences of long-dead scientists and other professional people even if very intelligent, are from people who must have somehow been deluded, perhaps due to lack of the pervasive modern nihilistic sophistication. Of course, in reality it is just that these men lived in a day before materialism had become as fully set into a sort of fossilized rock-like cultural and social rigidity, inculcated from early childhood by the educational system and the media.

To the modern intellectual elite, spirit or soul, an afterlife and a spiritual realm are a priori impossible and therefore Sherlock Holmes’ dictum must apply, that the explanation absolutely must be the only thing that remains, no matter how implausible or ridiculous.

Of course, in this case the only thing that remains is the assumption that absolutely all things apparently paranormal (especially afterlife related) have in reality normal explanations, whether misperceptions, hallucinations, fraud, or whatever, no matter how ridiculous given the quality of the empirical evidence.

I think all we can do in this area of their deliberate ignorance and bias, is to contemptuously ignore our supposed intellectual and scientific betters in society and keep in mind British writer Colin Wilson's remark, "Anyone who denies the validity of psychic phenomena is like someone standing at the foot of Mount Everest and insisting that they can’t see anything".

Let's not forget Albert Einstein, who wrote the introduction for Upton Sinclair's book on telepathy.

I think the media has tried to make it seem like serious scientists don't believe in the paranormal, but the popularization of ideas like the Multiverse and Simulation Hypothesis by some of these same figures has probably softened the boundary between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" concepts.

Let's not forget Albert Einstein, who wrote the introduction for Upton Sinclair's book on telepathy.

I think the media has tried to make it seem like serious scientists don't believe in the paranormal, but the popularization of some of these same figures of ideas like the Multiverse and Simulation Hypothesis has probably softened the boundary between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" concepts.

Don't forget that Einstein died in 1955, 65 years ago. Three generations of materialist brainwashing have passed since then. It is true that some of the early founders of quantum mechanics and other physicists had spiritual belief systems, but now? It is hard to tell exactly what Einstein believed with regard to survival and an afterlife, but I think it is unlikely he believed it by the end of his life.