Homing Turtles and Animal Magnetism

This chapter studies the magnetic sense of animals. A magnetic sense is widespread in nature and allows a variety of animals to detect the Earth’s geomagnetic field, and to use this for orientation and navigation over short and longer distances. The chapter looks at how animals use magnetic cues and magnetic maps, which is illustrated by the much-studied sea turtles. Turtles inherit a magnetic map that allows them to calculate their position in the ocean and adjust their orientation appropriately so they can travel towards a specific goal. However, it is not only turtles that achieve remarkable feats of navigation. A number of fish species also travel great distances during different phases of their lives, often returning to natal spawning grounds to breed later on. Meanwhile, over twenty bird species have been clearly demonstrated to use magnetic information as a compass and to respond to different components of the magnetic field. The key evidence for how the avian magnetic sense works is based on a magnetite process.

COMMUNICATION IN AND AROUND MESMERISM. CONTROVERSIES, CASE HISTORIES AND THE CULTURAL IMAGINATION

Mesmerism or animal magnetism was the most controversial and most spectacular medical concept of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century. It was also conceptualised and practiced as a medical therapy based entirely on communication; a communication that worked on many levels: between magnetiser and patient, between body and mind and – in its theoretical explanations – between human beings and the cosmos. This paper will first briefly look at theories of mesmerism from this perspective and then discuss some of the scandalous and provocative communicative phenomena of the so-called magnetic rapport between magnetiser and patient in the somnambulist trance. It will also briefly review the controversies between supporters and sceptics of the magnetic cure around the communicative experience in the rapport. The final part of this paper will turn to Romantic literature, as its rich aesthetic representations of mesmerism transcend enlightenment controversies and offer more complex, nuanced and insightful negotiations of the forms of communication prevalent and observable in the mesmerist phenomena. In mesmerism we can thus observe that around 1800 literature seems to know and understand more about psychodynamic and psychophysical communication than medical science.

„Wiadomości Brukowe” wobec zjawiska magnetyzmu zwierzęcego

The animal magnetism, which was here to stay on Vilnius socjety at the begining of the 19th century, intrigued both supporters and opponents of this theory. It has also become the main topic, often discussed by the press of that time. The lyrics published in the „Wiadomości Brukowe” magazine will be taken into consideration. It was the mesmerism which outlined the direction, the periodical editors followed, obviously taking a certain publishing policy. The character of the articles placed in the newspaper with their rogue and ironic ton is the perfect example of the editors’ literary artistry. What is more, they delight with great sense of humor. However the most significant thing is that they form the vitally important but still do not explored element of Lithuanian literary culture.

Schopenhauer’s Haunted World

Schopenhauer aspired to develop a metaphysics that provided a comprehensive explanation of the totality of experiences. Central to this task was the completion of the scientific image of the world by explaining assumptions made by, but not explainable by science and by explaining actual phenomena that science would rule out as impossible. So, in On Will in Nature, a work ostensibly concerned with showing how the best findings of science substantiated his metaphysics, the lengthiest chapter is “Animal Magnetism and Magic,” a discussion of phenomena that are viewed by science as impossible due to their violating the laws of space, time, and causality. In this chapter, the author critically examines the role that weird and paranormal phenomena play in validating Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, phenomena such as waking dreams, animal magnetism, ghosts, magic, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and communication with the dead.