Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Sir William Fletcher Barrett
The first person to make a significant scientific examination of dowsing. A professor of physics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, Barrett published his theories in The Divining Rod (1926). He suggested that clairvoyance by the dowser stimulated an involuntary muscular reaction that caused the dowsing rod to turn. Barrett was involved in psychic…
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Sabine Baring Gould
One of the greatest of the Victorian eccentrics and polymaths. He was a devout clergyman, a far-flung traveler, a collector of folk songs, an architect, an artist, an archaeologist, and a renowned novelist and poet. He is best remembered for his famous hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” but he also wrote more than 100 books, including…
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Baquet
A large circular tub used in the early days of mesmerism. It was developed around 1780 by a friend of Franz Anton mesmer. Inside the baquet were some bottles partially submerged in water. The tub was covered with a lid through which holes had been punched. Iron rods ran from the interior of the tub…
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Ball lightning
A mysterious natural electrical phenomenon that reportedly occurs in the form of a burst of electrical energy resembling a fireball. The first modern study of ball lightning was written by Russian scientist G. W. Richman, who himself was killed while studying the phenomenon in 1754. Ball lightning is described as a sphere of light that…
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Baconianism
A philosophy of science, based on the writings of Francis bacon, rejecting natural philosophy and sensory knowledge in favor of an empirical and inductive approach to understanding the universe and nature. Fighting traditional medieval philosophy and the Renaissance cult of rediscovered classics, Bacon argued that the metaphysical philosophers of his time had made no progress…
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Francis bacon
English statesman and philosopher of science. At a time when the religious fanaticism of the Counter Reformation had driven modern science from its birthplace of Italy, Bacon became its founding father in England, while at the same time achieving the highest political office under King James I. Not strictly a scientist himself, Bacon instead provided…
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Cleve backster
Polygraph expert who advocated the idea that plants were sensitive to human thoughts. Backster moved from his work with the Central Intelligence Agency to become director of a Polygraph Institute and then founder of the Cleve Backster School of Lie Detection in New York City. In the late 1960s he conducted a series of experiments…
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Avebury
A small village in Wiltshire, southwest of England; the site of the Avebury Circle, the largest ancient stone circle in the world. The circle was built around 2000 B.C.E. at about the same time or perhaps a few years earlier than stonehenge, a smaller but better-preserved monument of a different type that is located 17…
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Automatic writing
Writing accomplished without the writer’s effort or consciousness, sometimes with the aid of an instrument such as a planchette. Often the writer is in a trance state; sometimes he or she has simply “emptied” his or her mind in order to be receptive to messages that allegedly come from the spirit world, with the writer…
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Aurora islands
Nonexistent archipelago of islands in the seas surrounding Antarctica, reported and charted by early explorers. According to several historians of exploration, 18th-century explorers discovered several islands to the southeast of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. The islands were first sighted in 1762. In 1774, they were named the Aurora Islands after the…
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