accepted the existence of ghosts and other
psychic phenomena. The club harboured not only intellectuals like Dickens but
also clergymen and scientists, and it continues to this day. Of course, it
would be ridiculous today for a scientist to belong to such a club dedicated to
communicating with the dead. But “the past is a different country; they do
things differently there,” and in the century of Dowding’s birth, they did
indeed do things differently. Science had shown that the universe was vastly more
mysterious than had been believed, and even today, John Wheeler, one of our
greatest physicists, has noted that “the universe is not only stranger than we
suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.”
This is not to suggest that Wheeler believes in
the living dead, but to those pioneers of modern science in the nineteenth
century the strangeness of the universe was even stranger than we can suppose
today, and post-mortem existence did not strain the faculties of the mind.
Belief in a life after death and in the reality of communication across the
boundary does, after all, predate all of today’s religions. Its origin as a
cultural phenomenon, however, can be said to have taken place just a few
decades before Dowding’s birth. This public fascination with the spirit world
began with the explosive popularity of the Fox sisters, who, on March 31, 1848,
discovered how to communicate with the spirit who inhabited their haunted
house. By a series of clicks and knocks, they learned that the spirit was angry
because he had been murdered five years previously. Miracle of miracles!
The story was picked up and widely circulated,
and the two Fox sisters became vaudeville celebrities with their psychic
demonstrations. One of the two, Margaretta, later confessed that she faked the
spirit’s clicks by clicking on her own double-jointed toe, but the widespread
publicity the sisters received sparked a movement similar to the flying-saucer
craze, which began almost precisely a hundred years later.
Spiritualism received a tremendous boost in the
final decades of the nineteenth century from three widely respected figures:
Arthur Conan Doyle, William Crookes, and Oliver Lodge. Conan Doyle’s respect
(in this respect) was unearned; he was a good writer but had no real
understanding of either science or philosophy. Though the Sherlock Holmes
stories he produced are topflight, the pseudoscientific utterances of Sherlock
are just plain silly. Lodge and Crookes, on the other hand, were two of the
most eminent scientists of the century.
In 1870 Sir William Crookes, the discoverer of
thallium and the inventor of the Crookes tube—the precursor of today’s
television tubes—and later the president of the world’s most distinguished
scientific body, the British Association, embarked on a scientific
investigation of this thing called spiritualism. “I consider it the duty of
scientific men who have learnt exact modes of working to examine phenomena
which attract the attention of the public, in order to confirm their
genuineness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest and to
expose the tricks of deceivers.” Good try, Sir William. He concentrated on the
most notable medium of the day, a delightful young lady named Florence Cook,
and after a couple of years, he announced that he was satisfied that she was
neither deluded nor a deceiver. She was, in fact, the genuine goods.
He maintained this stance for the next three
years, defending her—and through her, all spiritualists, who loudly proclaimed
William James’s dictum “In order to prove that not all crows are black, you
need find only one white crow.” Crookes was convinced, after thorough
investigation using the most stringent scientific techniques, that Miss Cook
did converse with dead spirits and that she did bring them into the seances in semi-material
forms. In short, he concluded that there was life after what we call death and
that communication between the
psychic phenomena. The club harboured not only intellectuals like Dickens but
also clergymen and scientists, and it continues to this day. Of course, it
would be ridiculous today for a scientist to belong to such a club dedicated to
communicating with the dead. But “the past is a different country; they do
things differently there,” and in the century of Dowding’s birth, they did
indeed do things differently. Science had shown that the universe was vastly more
mysterious than had been believed, and even today, John Wheeler, one of our
greatest physicists, has noted that “the universe is not only stranger than we
suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.”
This is not to suggest that Wheeler believes in
the living dead, but to those pioneers of modern science in the nineteenth
century the strangeness of the universe was even stranger than we can suppose
today, and post-mortem existence did not strain the faculties of the mind.
Belief in a life after death and in the reality of communication across the
boundary does, after all, predate all of today’s religions. Its origin as a
cultural phenomenon, however, can be said to have taken place just a few
decades before Dowding’s birth. This public fascination with the spirit world
began with the explosive popularity of the Fox sisters, who, on March 31, 1848,
discovered how to communicate with the spirit who inhabited their haunted
house. By a series of clicks and knocks, they learned that the spirit was angry
because he had been murdered five years previously. Miracle of miracles!
The story was picked up and widely circulated,
and the two Fox sisters became vaudeville celebrities with their psychic
demonstrations. One of the two, Margaretta, later confessed that she faked the
spirit’s clicks by clicking on her own double-jointed toe, but the widespread
publicity the sisters received sparked a movement similar to the flying-saucer
craze, which began almost precisely a hundred years later.
Spiritualism received a tremendous boost in the
final decades of the nineteenth century from three widely respected figures:
Arthur Conan Doyle, William Crookes, and Oliver Lodge. Conan Doyle’s respect
(in this respect) was unearned; he was a good writer but had no real
understanding of either science or philosophy. Though the Sherlock Holmes
stories he produced are topflight, the pseudoscientific utterances of Sherlock
are just plain silly. Lodge and Crookes, on the other hand, were two of the
most eminent scientists of the century.
In 1870 Sir William Crookes, the discoverer of
thallium and the inventor of the Crookes tube—the precursor of today’s
television tubes—and later the president of the world’s most distinguished
scientific body, the British Association, embarked on a scientific
investigation of this thing called spiritualism. “I consider it the duty of
scientific men who have learnt exact modes of working to examine phenomena
which attract the attention of the public, in order to confirm their
genuineness, or to explain, if possible, the delusions of the honest and to
expose the tricks of deceivers.” Good try, Sir William. He concentrated on the
most notable medium of the day, a delightful young lady named Florence Cook,
and after a couple of years, he announced that he was satisfied that she was
neither deluded nor a deceiver. She was, in fact, the genuine goods.
He maintained this stance for the next three
years, defending her—and through her, all spiritualists, who loudly proclaimed
William James’s dictum “In order to prove that not all crows are black, you
need find only one white crow.” Crookes was convinced, after thorough
investigation using the most stringent scientific techniques, that Miss Cook
did converse with dead spirits and that she did bring them into the seances in semi-material
forms. In short, he concluded that there was life after what we call death and
that communication between the
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