A “Careful Examination of All Kind of Phenomena”: Methodology and Psychical Research at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

AbstractWhat does psychical research teach us about the development of control strategies, not only in terms of improved experimental settings but also as criteria for data collection and interpretation? In this paper, I explore this question with the help of three historical cases: (1) Michael Faraday’s 1853, experiments on table turning, (2) Robert Hare’s Experimental Investigations on Spiritual Manifestations (1855), and (3) the later attempts at analysing telepathic phenomena statistically, as it was theorized by Edmund Gurney (1884, 1886) and criticized by Charles S. Peirce (1887). These cases do not aim to exhaust the topic of psychical research and of its methodological issues, but rather to point at methodological ideas as they emerge from the actors’ strategies and practices. Eventually, psychical research allows to investigate such methodologies all while acknowledging that their framing happens on the backdrop of religious, social and institutional concerns.