Book ID: CBB628992095

William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity (2017)

unapi

Knapp, Krister Dylan (Author)


University of North Carolina Press


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 400 pages
Language: English

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James's psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James's life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality.Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James's psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism's changing place in fin de siecle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

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Reviewed By

Review Abigail Modaff (2018) Review of "William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (pp. 572-574). unapi

Review Araujo S. F (2019) Review of "William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 161-161). unapi

Review Linda Simon (2018) Review of "William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 211-212). unapi

Review Andreas Sommer (2018) Review of "William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 410-411). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB628992095/

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Authors & Contributors
Leporiere, Lorenzo
Alvarado, Carlos S.
David Armando
Pierroberto Scaramella
Pietro Terzi
Maraldi, Everton de Oliveira
Concepts
Spiritualism
Psychology
Supernatural
Occult sciences
Parapsychology; psychic phenomena
Medicine and religion
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
France
Naples (Italy)
Italy
United States
Strasbourg (France)
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
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