The New Prometheans

• Published in: Fortean times no. 394; p. 61
• Main Author: Ruffles, Tom
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Diamond Publishing Ltd 01.07.2020
• ISSN: 0308-5899

Tom Ruffles examines a new study of the early days of the Society for Psychical Research and its exploration of the complex relationship between science and religion The New Prometheans Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siecle Courtenay Raia University of Chicago Press 2019 Pb, 424pp, $35/£27, notes, bib, ind, ISBN 9780226635354 Scientific advances in the second half of the 19th century had implications both for religious belief, requiring a new framework within which a relationship between secular and religious values could be determined, and for the understanding of consciousness. Collectively the four helped to make psychical research - located at the intersection of the physical and mental, while acknowledging the lack of strict demarcation - part of the public discourse, bringing to bear a multidisciplinary approach that was ahead of its time. [...]while the SPR conformed to the scientific method, it expanded the limits of what had previously been that method's objects of study. [...]in general their astonishingly productive empirical explorations, far more sophisticated than previous initiatives such as Edward Cox's Psychological Society, tested the boundaries of the developing scientific disciplines (though not without controversy), evolving both experimental methods and a theoretical perspective that could critically address such phenomena as Spiritualism, Theosophy and mesmerism, often to their adherents' displeasure.