Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The former Soviet Union’s origins and outlook were purportedly science-based. Marxist ideology claimed to be scientific in its version of history. Friedrich Engels in The Dialectics of Nature claimed to show that science and dialectical materialism were allied. Vladimir Lenin in his writings and speeches and in exchanges with visitors from the West emphasized the…

Massive collection of primary source material and rare secondary sources on all kinds of unusual phenomena. The project’s originator, William R. Corliss, a physicist by profession, published his first volume in 1974 and has published nearly a volume a year since that time. Some of the general subject areas covered by the Sourcebook Project are…

U.S. organization investigating Psychokinesis and paranormal phenomena. The Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis, better known by its acronym Sorrat, was founded in 1960s by poet and author John G. Neihardt (1881-1973). Neihardt had spent six years with the Omaha tribe as a young man and continued his interaction with Native Americans throughout his…

Society founded in London, England, in 1882, branching out from the British National Association of Spiritualists. It was the model for the American society for psychical research (aspr), founded soon afterward. Its purpose was to investigate the scientific basis of a variety of apparently paranormal phenomena and report on its findings. Among its founding members…

A 19th-century theory proposed by British sociologist Sir Francis Galton and loosely based on Darwinism, by which the social order is said to be a product of natural selection of those individuals who are best suited to existing living conditions. A “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest,” terms coined by U.S. sociologist William…

British parapsychologist whose career ended in charges of fraud. Soal, who was trained as a mathematician, became interested in psychical research as a result of reading Raymond (1916) by Sir Oliver Fodge (1851-1940). In the book, Fodge described communications he had received through several mediums from his son who had been killed in World War…

A medical theory of conversion advanced by journalists Flo Conway and Jim Siegalman in their 1978 anticult book. Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change. In their volume, they claimed that certain religious groups, popularly called cults, had discovered a new technique of mind control. The cults, Conway and Siegalman suggested, used this technique on…

Magazines addressed to readers who are essentially skeptical about claims for scientific validity. The Skeptic, The Skeptical Inquirer, and Free Inquiry are just three of the several English language skeptical magazines. The Skeptic, published in Altadena, California, is the quarterly magazine of the skeptics society, published since 1993 under the editorship of Michael Shermer, who…