Poltergeist phenomena and the history of science

[Ninshub]

Historian Andreas Sommer has a new video piece:


In this video & and its sequel, we are trying not to validate nor debunk, but to understand why scientists have believed & disbelieved in alleged "poltergeist" phenomena (and how scientists who did believe interpreted them over time).

The Daily Grail has an article about it:

Andreas Sommer, historian of science and magic at the University of Cambridge – who runs the excellent Forbidden Histories website that we’ve linked to many times here on the Grail – delves into a little bit of this history in a recent video on his YouTube channel (the first instalment in a series, embedded below).

One surprising fact he mentions: attacks and ridicule of the phenomena predominantly came from religious authorities, not scientists:

    In contrast to modern popular assumptions, the Enlightenment war on belief in things that go bump in the night was not spearheaded by science and medicine, but by religious and political writers.

    Historians of Enlightenment science and medicine such as Roy Porter, Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park and Michael Hunter have argued that the deadliest weapons in the fight against belief in supernatural phenomena during the Enlightenment were not empirical tests, but ridicule and sweeping pathologisations.

Part 2 is out ->