Slated for release in October 2019 as part of the Science in History series by Cambridge University Press, Physics and Psychics: The Occult and the Sciences in Modern Britain by Richard Noakes is the first rigorous exploration of the surprising connections between Victorian science and the phenomena commonly described as psychic, occult and paranormal. The book offers fascinating insights into the ‘heretical’ activities of some of the most eminent scientists in Victorian Britain, and will demonstrate just how porous the boundary between science and the seemingly supernatural was at the time – and perhaps still is.
For much of the 20th century psychic and paranormal phenomenon had been dismissed as carnival oddities by the mainstream press. I had written an article on the CIA’s decades-long remote sensing program, where they deployed psychics to ferret out Cold War secrets. (“The Stargate Project: Psychic Warriors and the CIA”, Reality Sandwich.) So, this book caught my eye when it popped up on the Forbidden Histories site. I reached out to Dr. Noakes and picked his brain about stuff that had always intrigued me – the cultural history of the occult, the academic interactions between modern science and the realm of the supernatural, and the surprisingly recent divergence between scientists and spiritualists.