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The Turmoil of the Unknown

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Michel Pierssens
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Extract

The adverse report of the Academy of Sciences, published in 1784, failed to put an end to the proselytism of Mesmer's early followers, nor did it scale down their ambitions to gain scientific recognition. The allure of mystery, the taste for wonders and the call of the unknown prevailed, and throughout that century numerous clashes occurred between the scientific establishment and those demanding its recognition. Their demand was founded not so much on a theoretical construct as on people's personal experiences as actors or witnesses, which were perceived to be true simply because they were nearly always profoundly disturbing. The fact is that, despite the observations of scientists such as Faraday, anyone could put questions to an ecstatic in a state of trance, have a medium summon the dead, or communicate with the “other world” by table-turning. Insofar as it rejected the validity of the most commonly accepted “research programmes”, the challenge to the institutions that were the guarantors of received knowledge was a major one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 43 , Issue 169 , March 1995 , pp. 109 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. Dr. J.S. Morand's study, Le Magnétisme animal. Étude historique et critique, Garnier Frères, 1889, is still the most comprehensive work on the history of these debates.

2. Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research, New York, 1968. Faraday's articles (L'lllustration, 2 July 1853) were re-published in a booklet brought out by Édi tions Le Daily-Bul, La Louvière, Belgium, in 1976 together with several other documents which also appeared in L'lllustration.

3. The "fin-de-siècle" atmosphere would again encourage esotericism and occultism. Scientists who were involved or who had got themselves lost in the study of "mediumship" would then quite naturally be of interest to the surreal ists. See: Daniel Cottom, Abyss of Reason: cultural movements, revelations and betrayals, Oxford, 1991.

4. Discours sur l'esprit positif (1844), republished by U.G.E 10/18, 1963, p.75

5. Certain aspects of this affiliation are discussed in M. Pierssens, "Le syndrome des tables toumantes," Les Temps Modernes, no. 528, 1990 and "Le Merveilleux psy chique au XIXe siècle," Ethnologie française, XXIII, 1993,3,"Science/Parascience."

6. Armand Chastenet de Puységur, Mémoires pour servir à l'établissement du mag nétisme animal, facsimile edition, Bordeaux, 1986 (1786). Clara Gallini's work La Sonnambula meravigliosa. Magnetismo e ipnotismo nell' Ottocento italiano, Milan, 1983, provides a very complete social and cultural history of somnambulism in Italy. There is no equivalent work dealing with the corresponding aspect of French history.

7. L'Hôte inconnu, Eugène Fasquelle, 1917. Published in English as: The Unknown Guest, Tr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, London, 1914.

8. Sollier and Boissier, "Médiumnité délirante," in Archives de neurologie, 1904.

9. Paul Janet, L'automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l'activité humaine, Paris, 1889. This whole aspect of the ques tion is discussed in Marcel Gauchet's excellent study, L'Inconscient cérebral, Paris, 1992, and L. Chertok and I. Stengers, Le coeur et la raison. L'hypnose en question, de Lavoisier àLacan, Paris, 1989.

10. Justinus Kerner, La Voyante de Prévorst, translated by Dr. Dusart, Lucien Chamuel and Librairie Spiritualiste, 1990.

11. Publication of the first edition was spread over the period 1848-1854. On Cahagnet's life, cf. M. Pierssens, "Le merveilleux psychique au XIXe siècle," Ethnologie française, XXIII, 1993, 3.

12. Arcanes, Vol. 2, p.11.

13. Arcanes, Vol. 3, p. 373. The idea had also been expounded since 1842 by Marcil let, one of the star magnetizers of the period, who had become a salon celebrity through the feats of his clairvoyant, Alexis: "Magnetism is the daguerreotype of thought." Cf. J.-A.Gentil, Initiation aux mystères-secrets du magnétisme (…) suivie de la biographie de J.-B. Marcillet, Paris, 1848.

14. Le 19e siècle à travers les âges, Denoël, "L'Infini," 1984.

15. Pillaut et Béziat, La Vie. Travaux de nos chers amis de l'espace, Douai, 1910. This group is discussed in M. Pierssens, "Fictions célestes," Revue des sciences humaines (in press).

16. See La Pluralité des mondes habités (1861), his articles in Cosmos or Magasin pit toresque, his columns in the newspaper Le siècle, Les Merveilles célestes (1866) — first volume of the famous Bibliothèque des Merveilles launched by Hachette and, above all, L'Astronomie populaire, published in instalments from 1879.

17. La Légende des Siècles, NRF, "Pléïade," 1967, p. 721. The poet and novelist Jean Rameau made this the central theme of his work, from La Chanson des étoiles (which included a poem dedicated to Flammarion), Ollendorf, 1888, to L'arrivée aux étoiles, a spiritualist novel, Paris, 1922.

18. Charles Richet (1850-1935), discoverer of anaphylaxis, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine (1913), member of the Academy of Sciences, and author of numerous works of physiology, was one of the greatest figures in French medi cine at the turn of the century.

19. Traité de métapsychique, p. 617. On the more general conditions of a technology of vision in the 19th century, cf. J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Mass., 1992. However, the problems posed go back much further, as shown by H. Damisch in L'Origine de la perspective, Paris, 1987.