Methods from Madness: Magic, Ghosts and Experimental Psychology

Presented by: London Fortean Society

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0	LONDON: The Bell
P	Thursday 31st January, 2019
N	7:45pm

Event information

On Sunday November 18th 1877, at 3pm in the afternoon, Wilhelm Wundt, sometimes identified as the “Founder of Experimental Psychology”, joined hands with a group of academics and bore witness to a series of “miracles” in the presence of a visiting American spirit medium. Wundt was unconvinced by what he saw – but a number of his esteemed colleagues, including world-renowned physicist Johann Zöllner, believed that the events they had witnessed called for a complete revision of the fundamental laws of physics – a revision that could accommodate immortal fourth-dimensional spirit people.

The resulting debate was not itself immortalised in any mainstream psychology textbooks, but, arguably, it played a fundamental role in the subsequent emergence of Experimental Psychology as a formal scientific discipline. Magician and experimental psychologist Dr Matt Tompkins mixes storytelling and magical scientific demonstrations to explore how scientists, past and present, have approached the study of illusion.