In a message dated 8/25/00 3:05:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:
> I ran ectoplasm through the OED. The term appears in science in the 19th
> century, & it migrated into spiritualist texts by the 1920s. It might be
> argued that this explanation for ghosts tries to find a "scientific" ground
> to replace religious ideas about souls. At this point I am getting way
> beyond my usual field, but it seems to be a compromise between spiritualism
> & scientific materialism.
> Tom Izbicki
>
I'm inclined to agree with your interpretation, and on at least two levels.
First, it does seem, from the late 19th century onward, that there's a big
effort to devise "scientific" explanations for almost everything. When
Wilhelm Ostwald tries to develop a scientific explanation for the visual
perception of color, it's plain that he thinks the study of color will be
more worth taking seriously if a "scientific" way of going about it can be
devised. Hermann Gunkel's taxonomic approach to the Psalms, and the
increasing importance of Biblical archaeology, also seem to me to be based on
a desire to be "scientific." Maybe the tendency is strongest in those
academic fields where German scholars had the most influence. Even today, a
20 page paper on English literature, published in PMLA, might have no more
than 10 or 15 footnotes. Yet a paper on art history, of the same length,
published in the CAA Art Bulletin, rarely has fewer than 100 to 150
footnotes, and there's a far greater insistence on an excruciating degree of
documentation. A great deal of advertising is based on the claim that
"scientific studies" show the advertiser's product to be vastly superior to
competing products. And of course the competing products have commissioned
their own "scientific studies."
Second, it does seem as if, during the same period, there's a widespread hunt
for substitutes for religion, or for the traditional religions. At one
extreme, the Transcendentalists reading and translating all those Buddhist
and Hindu texts. Then spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy, and the Ethical
Culture Society. Then Horace Kallen deciding to make a "religion" of
democracy, and devising his own "Bible" which began with the Declaration of
Independence. Strange times, I guess.
pat
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