Courtenay Raia’s multi-dimensional account of psychical research undertaken by Victorian-era scientists centers on four individuals: Sir William Crookes, chemist and physicist; Frederick Myers, psychologist; Oliver Lodge, physicist; and Andrew Lang, folklorist and anthropologist. While together they represent a spectrum of scientific expertise in their day, it is not as representatives of their respective disciplines that they feature in Raia’s study, but rather as individuals deeply committed to the investigation of psychical phenomena. Each aimed through such inquiry to discover deep truths about human consciousness and ultimately about the cosmos as a whole.

Raia begins with a brief account of the Society for Psychical Research, an organization for which each of her subjects served as president. The standards governing this Society’s investigations conformed strictly to the scientific practices of the day, she explains, the extraordinary nature of their subject matter notwithstanding. She thus sets the stage for a defense of the...

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