Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Celestial spheres
Ancient Greek astronomers’ conception that the heavens are a series of crystal spheres and circles, centered on Earth, supporting the stars and planets. In the early fourth century B.C.E., Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of Plato, suggested that each planet was attached to a separate sphere. Other philosophers believed that the planets were in fact…
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Celestial bed
A couch that had the magical property of improving the potency and fertility of couples who slept in it. Scottish doctor John Graham invented the celestial bed in London around 1780. To make his claim plausible, he added strange coils to the bed, constructed to provide small electric shocks. His clients used the bed in…
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Edgar Cayce
Clairvoyant, psychic diagnostician, who was also known as The Sleeping Prophet. For a period of 43 years, Cayce performed some 15,000 diagnoses and prescribed treatments while in a sleeplike trance. His diagnoses were said to have been accurate in more than 90 percent of his cases. He was also able to see the human AURA,…
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Cattle mutilations
Dead animals with missing organs found in mysterious circumstances. Beginning in 1973, in separate locations in Kansas and Minnesota, cattle ranchers reported the discovery of dead animals that apparently had had various body parts surgically removed. The cattle had commonly lost eyes, ears, lips, sex organs, rectum, and/or tail; often there was a seeming blood…
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Catastrophism
A geological theory that explained the creation of the physical features of Earth as the result of sudden, violent acts. Its major advocate during the 18th century was the French naturalist Baron Georges cuvier. Cuvier was best known as a comparative anatomist, who reconstructed fossil species from their partial remains. Cuvier was able to prove,…
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Sir Cyril Burt
One of the foremost educational psychologists of his generation. He served the London County Council for many years as their official psychiatrist, and he occupied the chair of psychology at University College, London, from 1932 until 1950. Burt was responsible for testing and interpreting the results of mental tests for thousands of schoolchildren in the…
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Godfried bueren
A 20th-century West German patent attorney who took the idea of the hollow earth doctrine (Holtweltlehre) and applied it, not to the Earth but to the Sun. According to him the very hot exterior of the Sun, the part we see, encloses a cool interior containing another sphere supporting vegetation and, presumably, other forms of…
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Brown mountain lights
Multicolored lights that exhibit small movements and have been sighted since 1913 near Morganton, North Carolina. They are a long-established example of the phenomenon of ghost lights. The U.S. Geological Survey determined that the lights could be from distant car or locomotive headlights and/or brushfires. Another investigation in the 1970s by the Oak Ridge Isochronous…
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John Romulus brinkley
Surgeon known as “GOAT GLAND” Brinkley for his sex rejuvenation remedy. As a young man, Brinkley worked in the slaughterhouse, where he developed the idea that animal’s sex organs could aid impotence. He obtained a doctor’s degree from the Eclectic Medical University and later acquired a diploma in medicine and surgery from the Royal University…
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Bridey murphy
A reputed person who lived in Belfast, Ireland, in the early 19th century and later reincarnated as Ruth Simmons (a pseudonym of Virginia Tighe). The story of Bridey Murphy became the subject of a best-selling book, The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956), which set off an immediate debate about reincarnation and raised the issue of…
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