Glossary

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Ghosts

    Spirits or spiritual beings conceived as having survived bodily death and manifesting themselves to the living. They are also called spooks, specters, shades, haunts, phantoms, or wraiths. Ghosts may appear as living monsters (metaphysical giants themselves, the offspring of Uranus, or heaven, and Gaia, or Earth). Atlas, who carries Earth on his back, and Chronos,…

  • Ghost lights

    Strange balls or patches of light whose existence and behavior are sometimes difficult to explain. They are usually white or yellow, but other colors have been seen. Sometimes they appear in the same locality, off and on, for years; and sometimes they appear only once or for a short time. In the United States there…

  • Geocentrism

    Belief that Earth is at the center of the universe. The geocentric theory of the universe dominated European astronomical thinking for more than two millennia. The original geocentric theory that Earth is stationary and that the entire universe revolves around it is sometimes attributed to the Pythagoreans, an ancient community established in Croton in Southern…

  • Gender theory

    The theory that entails investigation of the relationship between sex and gender. Gender comes from the Latin verb generare, “to beget,” and the Latin stem gener-, meaning “race” or “kind.” Gender signifies sort, kind, or class and has been used in this sense continuously since at least the 14th century. The term gender adheres closely…

  • Uri Geller (1946- )

    Israeli self-styled psychic. Soon after serving an obligatory period in the Israeli army, Geller developed a magic act. He claimed that his apparently magical powers were not produced by the usual stage illusionist’s methods trickery, misdirection, and/or deception but were evidence of ESP that he was psychic and had paranormal powers. Andrija Henry Puharich witnessed…

  • Michel Gauquelin (1928-1991)

    French psychologist who attempted to use statistics to prove the validity of Astrology. Gauquelin, who earned scientific degrees at the Sorbonne, became interested in astrology at an early age, and wished to discover whether it could be substantiated scientifically. While still at the Sorbonne, he began to apply statistical analysis to astrological principles and found…

  • Martin Gardner (1914- )

    American journalist and writer known as one of the premier authors of mathematical and logical puzzles and conundrums. Although Gardner spent part of his career as a reporter for the Tulsa Tribune and as a contributing editor to the children’s magazine Humpty Dumpty, his greatest exposure came through his 1957-82 column in Scientific American, which…

  • Garabandal virgin

    An appearance of the Virgin Mary reported in the small Spanish town of Garabandal. After morning Mass on Sunday, June 18, 1961, two young gills, Conchita, aged 12, and Marie Cruz Gonzales, 11, were joined by their two friends Loli and Jacinta, both 12, in the schoolmaster’s garden where they were stealing apples. On the…

  • Ganzfeld procedure

    German for “total held”; a test for psi (parapsychological) communication that attempts to neutralize all known possibilities of sense perception of a mentally transmitted target. Pioneered in psychology by Herman Witkin, the ganzfeld was modified for parapsychological use and introduced to that held by Charles Honorton and William Braud in their 1974 and 1975 studies,…

  • Francis Galton (1822-1911)

    Amateur scientist, traveler, author, and mathematician who was the intellectual spark for the modern eugenics movement. Galton was the seventh and youngest child of a wealthy banking family from Birmingham, England. He was related on his mother’s side to the famous naturalist Charles darwin. A prodigy in various subjects, admirers have estimated his childhood IQ…

Got any book recommendations?

Get In Touch