12 ms·

> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a keen spiritualist, even consulted a medium to attempt to solve the mystery of her disappearance. This bit was the most surp

by ycan 3y ago

> Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a keen spiritualist, even consulted a medium to attempt to solve the mystery of her disappearance. This bit was the most surprising part of the article for me, given the themes of science and materialism in Sherlock Holmes books. Looking a bit into it, Doyle really seems to have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason [0]. [0] https://arthurconandoyle.co.uk/spiritualist https://arthurconandoyle.co.uk/spiritualist

n3storm 3y ago
At that time "mesmerism" was sold as possible new branch of science that will properly explain after life, ghost, etc. without religion. Obviously was a reboot/remake/remix "product" perfectly crafted for a new public as sceptics like Sir Conan Doyle.
- vajrabum 3y ago
  Maybe, but the chronology is a little off--Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) famous for mesmerism (hypnosis).
  - n3storm 3y ago
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355869037_Arthur_Conan_Doyle_in_Mesmeric_Edinburgh_and_Hypnotic_London https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355869037_Arthur_Co...
- babyshake 3y ago
  It's easy in hindsight to see these types of things as being ridiculous and obviously bunk. We do have the equivalents today, although YMMV on what you think is the modern day "mesmerism".
  - n3storm 3y ago
    They may started as legit investigations but I doubt they did not realise soon it was a dead end and still keep selling seances and look for funds to keep their research.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Why wouldn't today's "mesmerisms" be just as ridiculous? I don't think the mockery is about "absurd things people back then believed" but about "gullible people who will believe all sorts of things". I think Conan Doyle was a very gullible man for his time. He would have been gullible for today's quakery if he was still alive.
RobotToaster 3y ago
It's not really a surprise that some men of science try to apply a materialist approach to the spiritual. Wolfgang Pauli's work on the Pauli–Jung conjecture on synchronicity being another example.
b112 3y ago
have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason Most religions have afterlifes, and that implies some kind of spiritualism. And a mere 50+ years ago, Christianity was almost universally accepted in the West.
- morelisp 3y ago
  Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
  - b112 3y ago
    Indeed. But the concept of an invisible spirit, which leaves your body upon death, (or is created by an omnipotent being upon death), is the commonality. Spirits are spirits, be they called souls, vapours, spirits, or what not. And everyone believed in life after death, in the spiritual form.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first rejected the Catholic faith of his Irish mother and father, and then passed through a phase of agnosticism. Speaking of rejection, Agatha Christie was so deeply devoted to the Tridentine form of the Catholic Mass, that she signed a petition that resulted in Papal permission to extend celebrations of this Mass beyond the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. That permission became known as the Agatha Christie Indult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_indult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_indult
  - galaxyLogic 3y ago
    But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much. Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions. Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.
jahnu 3y ago
Well Newton was seriously into alchemy so you never can tell.
- pcl 3y ago
  From a scientific standpoint, nuclear fission is pretty much alchemy, right? I feel like we use the term to dismiss quacks, but changing one element into another is literally something we now know how to do. Lead (atomic number 82) isn’t even that far from gold (atomic number 79).
  - COGlory 3y ago
    Alchemy, by virtue of association with hermeticism, gets an unnecessarily bad reputation. We know it to be mostly false today, but it really did help develop chemistry.
  - pests 3y ago
    We live in an age of technical marvel but the goalposts have constantly shifted so nothing feels amazing anymore.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Except the alchemists weren't practicing nuclear physicists, nor did they actually ever turn lead into gold through nuclear fission, nor would anything in their philosophy have led to doing so, either in theory or practice. Just because it happens to be physically possible to turn lead into gold using a model that alchemists would never have even comprehended (as their principles were based on hermeticism and religion, not experimental science) doesn't mean they weren't quacks, or that they were half right. They were quacks, and it's OK to see them as such.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Alchemy was always quackery. It might have been proto-chemistry, but the minute it adopted scientific method it stopped being alchemy. The problem with alchemy is that there was no rhyme or reason to its method, other than mysticisim; it wasn't scientific in nature. If it sparked chemistry, that's a good thing; but it doesn't stop it from being quakery.
tomcam 3y ago
Even more interesting is the fact that he and Harry Houdini were friends, but they were split over the life after death question. Houdini was sick of all the charlatans, and made the focus of his life’s work in his final years to prove them wrong. It obviously created a wedge between them. Houdini by that time was a megastar. He was easily the most famous person in the western world for about a generation. His fame dwarfed that of people like Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Oscar Wilde.
- mongol 3y ago
  Was he more famous than Chaplin?
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Their careers mostly didn’t overlap. There were a few years, but Houdini was earlier. Even given that, I’d say yes. The thing about Houdini was not just that he was famous M, but he really didn’t have any competition. Chaplin, even at the height of his fame, there were others that weren’t far behind (Buster Keaton, say)
    - mongol 3y ago
      That argument seems to depend on how famous he was relative other celebrities. But in absolute numbers, how many people knew about them, I think should count higher.
      - TylerE 3y ago
        There is no objective, absolute measure of fame.
gumby 3y ago
Conan Doyle was into a lot of pseudoscientific stuff and it runs through his Holmes stories. He didn't think of it as "pseudo-" at all so just presented it as run of the mill science, like the hoary "10% of your brain" nonsense. Holmes' "reasoning" processes were often pretty dubious too. I read those stories as a kid (we had a huge single volume for some reason) and tried to figure out how to emulate Holmes' thinkings so I could be as smart as him (and not be the hapless Watson). That resulted in quite a bit of time in the library chasing things down which caused me to learn that things in books aren't always true and that adults were often idiots. So I can't say that reading Sherloc Holmes stories were bad for me, but the process destroyed any interest I had in anything Holmes related.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Really? Most of the stories are well done even if not every bit of his "ratiocination" holds up. I feel like one can enjoy them for what they are without trying to take them as real-life forensic science.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    It just sits a bit bitter when you used to look at him as an unconventional man who employed the scientific process of deduction to solve his cases.... only for you to later realise that he was applying abductive reasoning the whole time, whilst claiming otherwise and chasing down any lead like a mad dog. Holmes wasn't smart, just driven.
    - krapp 3y ago
      That's one of the problems with mystery writing - the protagonist can never be smarter than the author. The books can say Sherlock Holmes is a genius polymath intellect with brilliant deductive capabilities but he was written by a guy who believed the Cottingley Fairies were real, so...
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Wasn’t the whole concept of detective work fairly new when the books were being written? The earliest Holmes stories are quite indebted to Poe’s work with C. Auguste Dupin and he invented the form.
emodendroket 3y ago
A lot of people speculate it had something to do with his son's death.
TylerE 3y ago
A bit like CS Lewis and Tolkien. Lewis is the one you’d expect to be religious based ont heir popular works, but nope.
- maleldil 3y ago
  Lewis was quite religious himself. He wrote more nonfiction books, many of them Christian books, than fiction.
  - smegger001 3y ago
    Yes but he started out as an atheist and converted largely due to the influence of his friend Tolkien.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
the_af 3y ago
Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
- standardUser 3y ago
  That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people. The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women maintained until her death that the 5th photo was genuine. The photos: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literature-history-science-childrens-books-and-illustrations/cottingley-fairies-complete-collection-of-five https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literat...
  - the_af 3y ago
    I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then. The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and literature, and there's so much evidence they don't exist (along with unicorns, the Yeti, gremlins, etc) that a couple of convincing photographs or videos is simply not enough. Conan Doyle wouldn't have been fooled had he been a skeptical, inquiring mind. Alas! He was just gullible. Famously, Conan Doyle had Sherlock claim: > When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Unfortunately Doyle, because he so wanted to believe, didn't really eliminate the impossible. He carelessly dismissed the most obvious option: that the two girls were playing him for a fool.

by ycan 3y ago

n3storm 3y ago

At that time "mesmerism" was sold as possible new branch of science that will properly explain after life, ghost, etc. without religion. Obviously was a reboot/remake/remix "product" perfectly crafted for a new public as sceptics like Sir Conan Doyle.

vajrabum 3y ago
Maybe, but the chronology is a little off--Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) famous for mesmerism (hypnosis).
- n3storm 3y ago
  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355869037_Arthur_Conan_Doyle_in_Mesmeric_Edinburgh_and_Hypnotic_London https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355869037_Arthur_Co...
babyshake 3y ago
It's easy in hindsight to see these types of things as being ridiculous and obviously bunk. We do have the equivalents today, although YMMV on what you think is the modern day "mesmerism".
- n3storm 3y ago
  They may started as legit investigations but I doubt they did not realise soon it was a dead end and still keep selling seances and look for funds to keep their research.
- the_af 3y ago
  Why wouldn't today's "mesmerisms" be just as ridiculous? I don't think the mockery is about "absurd things people back then believed" but about "gullible people who will believe all sorts of things". I think Conan Doyle was a very gullible man for his time. He would have been gullible for today's quakery if he was still alive.

RobotToaster 3y ago

It's not really a surprise that some men of science try to apply a materialist approach to the spiritual. Wolfgang Pauli's work on the Pauli–Jung conjecture on synchronicity being another example.

b112 3y ago

have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason Most religions have afterlifes, and that implies some kind of spiritualism. And a mere 50+ years ago, Christianity was almost universally accepted in the West.

morelisp 3y ago
Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
- b112 3y ago
  Indeed. But the concept of an invisible spirit, which leaves your body upon death, (or is created by an omnipotent being upon death), is the commonality. Spirits are spirits, be they called souls, vapours, spirits, or what not. And everyone believed in life after death, in the spiritual form.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first rejected the Catholic faith of his Irish mother and father, and then passed through a phase of agnosticism. Speaking of rejection, Agatha Christie was so deeply devoted to the Tridentine form of the Catholic Mass, that she signed a petition that resulted in Papal permission to extend celebrations of this Mass beyond the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. That permission became known as the Agatha Christie Indult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_indult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie_indult
- galaxyLogic 3y ago
  But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much. Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions. Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.

jahnu 3y ago

Well Newton was seriously into alchemy so you never can tell.

pcl 3y ago
From a scientific standpoint, nuclear fission is pretty much alchemy, right? I feel like we use the term to dismiss quacks, but changing one element into another is literally something we now know how to do. Lead (atomic number 82) isn’t even that far from gold (atomic number 79).
- COGlory 3y ago
  Alchemy, by virtue of association with hermeticism, gets an unnecessarily bad reputation. We know it to be mostly false today, but it really did help develop chemistry.
- pests 3y ago
  We live in an age of technical marvel but the goalposts have constantly shifted so nothing feels amazing anymore.
- krapp 3y ago
  Except the alchemists weren't practicing nuclear physicists, nor did they actually ever turn lead into gold through nuclear fission, nor would anything in their philosophy have led to doing so, either in theory or practice. Just because it happens to be physically possible to turn lead into gold using a model that alchemists would never have even comprehended (as their principles were based on hermeticism and religion, not experimental science) doesn't mean they weren't quacks, or that they were half right. They were quacks, and it's OK to see them as such.
- the_af 3y ago
  Alchemy was always quackery. It might have been proto-chemistry, but the minute it adopted scientific method it stopped being alchemy. The problem with alchemy is that there was no rhyme or reason to its method, other than mysticisim; it wasn't scientific in nature. If it sparked chemistry, that's a good thing; but it doesn't stop it from being quakery.

tomcam 3y ago

Even more interesting is the fact that he and Harry Houdini were friends, but they were split over the life after death question. Houdini was sick of all the charlatans, and made the focus of his life’s work in his final years to prove them wrong. It obviously created a wedge between them. Houdini by that time was a megastar. He was easily the most famous person in the western world for about a generation. His fame dwarfed that of people like Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Oscar Wilde.

mongol 3y ago
Was he more famous than Chaplin?
- TylerE 3y ago
  Their careers mostly didn’t overlap. There were a few years, but Houdini was earlier. Even given that, I’d say yes. The thing about Houdini was not just that he was famous M, but he really didn’t have any competition. Chaplin, even at the height of his fame, there were others that weren’t far behind (Buster Keaton, say)
  - mongol 3y ago
    That argument seems to depend on how famous he was relative other celebrities. But in absolute numbers, how many people knew about them, I think should count higher.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      There is no objective, absolute measure of fame.

gumby 3y ago

Conan Doyle was into a lot of pseudoscientific stuff and it runs through his Holmes stories. He didn't think of it as "pseudo-" at all so just presented it as run of the mill science, like the hoary "10% of your brain" nonsense. Holmes' "reasoning" processes were often pretty dubious too. I read those stories as a kid (we had a huge single volume for some reason) and tried to figure out how to emulate Holmes' thinkings so I could be as smart as him (and not be the hapless Watson). That resulted in quite a bit of time in the library chasing things down which caused me to learn that things in books aren't always true and that adults were often idiots. So I can't say that reading Sherloc Holmes stories were bad for me, but the process destroyed any interest I had in anything Holmes related.

emodendroket 3y ago
Really? Most of the stories are well done even if not every bit of his "ratiocination" holds up. I feel like one can enjoy them for what they are without trying to take them as real-life forensic science.
- tetris11 3y ago
  It just sits a bit bitter when you used to look at him as an unconventional man who employed the scientific process of deduction to solve his cases.... only for you to later realise that he was applying abductive reasoning the whole time, whilst claiming otherwise and chasing down any lead like a mad dog. Holmes wasn't smart, just driven.
  - krapp 3y ago
    That's one of the problems with mystery writing - the protagonist can never be smarter than the author. The books can say Sherlock Holmes is a genius polymath intellect with brilliant deductive capabilities but he was written by a guy who believed the Cottingley Fairies were real, so...
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Wasn’t the whole concept of detective work fairly new when the books were being written? The earliest Holmes stories are quite indebted to Poe’s work with C. Auguste Dupin and he invented the form.

emodendroket 3y ago

A lot of people speculate it had something to do with his son's death.

TylerE 3y ago

A bit like CS Lewis and Tolkien. Lewis is the one you’d expect to be religious based ont heir popular works, but nope.

maleldil 3y ago
Lewis was quite religious himself. He wrote more nonfiction books, many of them Christian books, than fiction.
- smegger001 3y ago
  Yes but he started out as an atheist and converted largely due to the influence of his friend Tolkien.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

the_af 3y ago

Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

standardUser 3y ago
That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people. The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women maintained until her death that the 5th photo was genuine. The photos: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literature-history-science-childrens-books-and-illustrations/cottingley-fairies-complete-collection-of-five https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/english-literat...
- the_af 3y ago
  I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then. The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and literature, and there's so much evidence they don't exist (along with unicorns, the Yeti, gremlins, etc) that a couple of convincing photographs or videos is simply not enough. Conan Doyle wouldn't have been fooled had he been a skeptical, inquiring mind. Alas! He was just gullible. Famously, Conan Doyle had Sherlock claim: > When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Unfortunately Doyle, because he so wanted to believe, didn't really eliminate the impossible. He carelessly dismissed the most obvious option: that the two girls were playing him for a fool.