Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
-
Sarcognomy
A new science of the relationship of the brain and the rest of the body, which was proposed by Joseph Rhodes Buchanan (1814-99). Working from phrenological theory, Buchanan proposed the idea that the body is basically expressive of character. He concluded that each part of the body’s surface had interesting psychological powers, as well as…
-
Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973)
Naturalist, cryptozoologist, world traveler, and Fortean. Scottish born and well educated (with degrees in zoology, geology, and botany), Ivan Terrence Sanderson began his life work by collecting animals for the British Museum. Perhaps it was his interest in exotic animals that led him to an interest in other exotic phenomena and, eventually, to found the…
-
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
One of the most famous U.S. scientists of this century and an outspoken critic of claims of the paranormal. He earned a degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1954, received his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960, and taught at Harvard before moving to Cornell where he became Director of the…
-
Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946)
An Estonian who joined Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1919 and became editor of the party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, and a leading ideologist of the Nazi movement. In 1934, he published The Myth of the Twentieth Century in support of Nazi Racism. The use of “myth” in his title is not intended to disparage; on…
-
Root races
The idea appears in Madame Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine (1888), claimed to be extracted from The Book of Dyzan written in Senzar (a hitherto and still unknown language) by her astral guides, the “Masters,” with Blavatsky acting as an intermediary or medium and translator. The second volume of this work is in effect the…
-
Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980)
A botanist from Chicago who first became interested in Psychical research after hearing a lecture on spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE. In 1926 he became a research assistant to William McDougall in the psychology department at Harvard, following him to Duke University in 1927. His first published paper, in 1929, was on a mind-reading…
-
Remote viewing
Seeing a distant place by psychic means. Just as the U.S. Air Force was attracted to the possibility of using telepathy to transmit messages, the idea of being able to survey locations, installations, possible bombing targets, and much else by some form of ESP was very attractive to the military and to intelligence agencies. To…
-
Religious science
One of several New Thought religious communities developed upon an understanding of popular psychology in the early 20th century. The Religious Science Movement was founded by New Englander Ernest Holmes who was influenced by the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. He moved to California in 1912 and discovered…
-
Karl Von Reichenbach (1788-1869)
A German 19th-century physicist and chemist who in 1833 discovered creosote carbolic acid by distillation from wood-tar. Baron Karl von Reichenbach, like his contemporaries Joseph Priestley in England and Alessandro Volta in Italy, was interested in the process known as destructive distillation the reducing of an element to its basic components, usually by means of…
-
Reflectograph
An instrument developed by the Ashkir-Jobson Trianion Guild to help record supposed messages from the dead. The guild was founded by two British researchers, A. J. Ashdown and B. K. Kirby after the death of their colleague, George Jobson. Prior to Jobson’s death, the three had made a compact that the first to die would…
Got any book recommendations?