Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The concept that visual defects could be cured by throwing away one’s glasses and following a prescribed regimen of eye exercises. The idea was one of the most persuasive pieces of medical pseudoscience of the early part of the 20th century, and the treatment was followed by many thousands of people in Europe and the…

The linen cloth that reputedly enshrouded the body of Jesus Christ when it was taken down from the Cross. First brought to ecclesiastical attention in the 14th century, the cloth was discovered in a church in Lirey, France. More than 14 feet long and about four-and-a-half feet wide, the cloth is heavily stained with blood,…

A concept in parapsychology that explained some significant scoring effects on ESP tests. In 1942, when parapsychology was still less than a decade old, Gertrude Schmeidler suggested that scoring could be affected by the subjects’ belief system. Schmeidler concluded that those who believed in the possibility of ESP (whom she labeled “sheep”) would score higher…

The theory that human beings are of two different races, a male race and a female race. It was an idea put forward by British engineer, William H. Smyth in 1927 in Did Man and Woman Descend from Different Animals? It was picked up by an eccentric English antifeminist, Arabella Kenealy who developed it in…

Creatures of unknown species, usually having a serpentine or reptilian resemblance, that are said to inhabit the world’s seas, often threatening ships and humans. Sea serpents have populated myths for as long as people have known the seas. Additionally, there are documented reports of sailors seeing or being threatened by such creatures in nearly all…

The use of or appeal to the authority of science to legitimate some particular claim or policy. The Fontana Dictionary of Modem Thought defines scientism as “The view that the characteristic induction methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge…

The relationship between science fiction and science, which dates back to the 19th century. Works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), with its horrific picture of life created through the application of (then current) scientific principles running amuck, paved the way for later writers. Science fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was…