James and Psychical Research in Context

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Sommer
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Psychical Research ◽  
International Network ◽  
Academic Activity ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
Henry Sidgwick ◽  
Empirical Approaches

James’s open advocacy, practice, and defense of unrestrictedly empirical approaches to telepathy, mediumship, and other alleged “supernatural” phenomena was a central part of his work, yet it is still often misunderstood or passed over. By placing James back into an international network of contemporary elite intellectuals who were also preoccupied with reported occult phenomena as fundamental scientific anomalies that may or may not have spiritual significance, this chapter argues that James’s psychical research can be reconciled with the progressiveness for which his canonical ideas are often regarded. When appreciated within important political and medical contexts of his time, and in view of his long-term collaborations in the study of trance states and hallucinations in non-pathological populations with F. W. H. Myers and other figures connected to Henry Sidgwick in England, James’s psychical research was an integral part of his evolving experimental psychology. Growing out of James’s deep discontent with dogmatism in science and religion, his unorthodox work also shared mutual origins with his pragmatist and radical empiricist philosophy. Moreover, by illustrating the polemical nature of simultaneous attacks on James’s psychical research and pragmatism by fellow psychologists, and the employment of religious arguments by supposedly scientific critics, this chapter suggests the story of James and psychical research is a reminder that “scientific naturalism” as an inconsistently defined yet absolute standard of modern Western academic activity has grown out of concerns that were not as self-evidently science-based or humanistic as we may be accustomed to believe.

WHAT THE OCCULT REVEALS

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 611-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORINNA TREITEL
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Psychical Research ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
Samuel Butler ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Henry Sidgwick

Where does occultism fit on the map of modernity? Frank Miller Turner proposed an intriguing answer in his 1974 study Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England. The book examined the lives and struggles of six Victorian men: the philosophers Henry Sidgwick and James Ward, the scientists Alfred Russel Wallace and George John Romanes, and the writers Frederic W. H. Myers and Samuel Butler. Of the six, three cultivated a serious and sustained interest in the occult. Sidgwick and Myers engaged in psychical research, while Wallace immersed himself in phrenology and spiritualism. Raised as Christians, all of them came to find Christian belief inadequate. Yet the scientific naturalism that might have provided an alternative pole for their allegiance, that was the alternative pole of allegiance for much of their generation, failed to entice them. All had ethical qualms about its refusal to comment on God's existence or on life after death. All, too, wondered about the soul and bemoaned the reluctance of scientists to investigate the immaterial and subjective aspects of human nature. Caught between the Christianity of their upbringing and the scientific naturalism of their adulthood, Turner argued, these men “came to dwell between the science that beckoned them and the religion they had forsaken.”

scholarly journals Using Long Term Simulations to Understand Heat Transfer Processes during Steady Flow Conditions in Combined Sewers

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 570
Author(s):  
Mohamad Abdel-Aal ◽  
Simon Tait ◽  
Mostafa Mohamed ◽  
Alma Schellart
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Heat Recovery ◽  
Predictive Accuracy ◽  
Flow Conditions ◽  
Empirical Relationships ◽  
Taylor Diagram ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
The Heat Transfer Coefficient ◽  
Empirical Approaches

This paper describes a new heat transfer parameterisation between wastewater and in-sewer air based on understanding the physical phenomena observed in free surface wastewater and in-sewer air. Long-term wastewater and in-sewer air temperature data were collected and studied to indicate the importance of considering the heat exchange with in-sewer air and the relevant seasonal changes. The new parameterisation was based on the physical flow condition variations. Accurate modelling of wastewater temperature in linked combined sewers is needed to assess the feasibility of in-sewer heat recovery. Historically, the heat transfer coefficient between wastewater and in-sewer air has been estimated using simple empirical relationships. The newly developed parameterisation was implemented and validated using independent long-term flow and temperature datasets. Predictive accuracy of wastewater temperatures was investigated using a Taylor diagram, where absolute errors and correlations between modelled and observed values were plotted for different site sizes and seasons. The newly developed coefficient improved wastewater temperature modelling accuracy, compared with the older empirical approaches, which resulted in predicting more potential for heat recovery from large sewer networks. For individual locations, the RMSE between observed and predicted temperatures ranged between 0.15 and 0.5 °C with an overall average of 0.27 °C. Previous studies showed higher RMSE ranges, e.g., between 0.12 and 7.8 °C, with overall averages of 0.35, 0.42 and 2 °C. The new coefficient has also provided stable values at various seasons and minimised the number of required model inputs.

scholarly journals The Origins of Creationism in the Netherlands: The Evolution Debate among Twentieth-Century Dutch Neo-Calvinists

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham C. Flipse
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The Netherlands is, besides the United States, one of the few countries where debates about creationism have been raging for decades. Strict creationism has become deeply rooted in traditional Reformed (Calvinist) circles, which is all the more remarkable as it stemmed from a very different culture and theological tradition. This essay analyses the historical implantation of this foreign element in Dutch soil by investigating the long-term interaction between American creationism and Dutch “neo-Calvinism,” a movement emerging in the late nineteenth century, which attempted to bring classical Calvinism into rapport with modern times. The heated debates about evolution in the interbellum period as well as in the sixties—periods characterized by a cultural reorientation of the Dutch Calvinists—turn out to have played a crucial role. In the interbellum period, leading Dutch theologians—fiercely challenged by Calvinist scientists—imported US “flood geology” in an attempt to stem the process of modernisation in the Calvinist subculture. In the sixties many Calvinists abandoned their resistance to evolutionary theory, but creationism continued to play a prominent role as the neo-Calvinist tradition was upheld by an orthodox minority, who (re-)embraced the reviving “Genesis Flood” creationism. The appropriation of American creationism was eased by the earlier Calvinist-creationist connection, but also by “inventing” a Calvinist-creationist tradition, suggesting continuity with the ideas of the founding fathers of neo-Calvinism. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of what Ronald L. Numbers has recently called the “globalization” of the “science-and-religion dialogue.”

Empirical Approaches to Social Innovation

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-106
Author(s):  
Georg Mildenberger ◽  
Gudrun-Christine Schimpf ◽  
Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti ◽  
Nadia von Jacobi
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Innovation Research ◽  
Social Innovations ◽  
Abstract Categories ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Empirical Approaches ◽  
Method Approach ◽  
Oriented Approach

This chapter describes two empirical approaches with which social innovation and its potentially transformative role can be studied. Both are oriented towards the Extended Social Grid Model (ESGM) and strive to bring its abstract categories on the ground and facilitate empirical analyses; first an analysis of long-term comprehensive case studies; and second a mixed-method approach inspired by the capability approach for evaluating the impact of social innovations. Both approaches enter new ground in social innovation research and supply valuable insights into the nature of social innovation and how it can be examined. The historical approach reveals the complexities of social innovation trajectories; the agency oriented approach of the more quantitative study opens new paths for a measurement of social innovation impacts that can be applied in many situations.

scholarly journals Rocks, skulls and materialism: geology and phrenology in late-Georgian Belfast

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-55
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jeffrey Wright ◽  
Diarmid A. Finnegan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Scientific Naturalism ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Recent years have seen the development of a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of scientific naturalism in the nineteenth century. It has become apparent that scientific naturalism did not emerge sui generis in the years following the publication of Charles Darwin's On the origin of species (1859), but was present, if only in incipient form, much earlier in the century. Building on recent scholarship, this article adopts a geographically focused approach and explores debates about geology and phrenology—two of the diverse forms of knowledge that contributed to scientific naturalism—in late-Georgian Belfast. Having provided the venue for John Tyndall's infamous 1874 address as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Belfast occupies a central place in the story of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism. However, in uncovering the intricate and surprising ways in which scientific knowledge gained, or was denied, epistemic and civic credibility in Belfast, this discussion will demonstrate that naturalism, materialism and the relationship between science and religion were matters of public debate in the town long before Tyndall's intervention.

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