Natural Science and the Spirit World [1]

Wellred

Core Argument

In "Natural Science and the Spirit World," Engels mounts a devastating critique of the English empiricist tradition, arguing that its contempt for theoretical thought paradoxically leads to the most abject superstition. The chapter traces a lineage of eminent scientists—Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Alfred Russel Wallace, and William Crookes—who, despite their empirical credentials, succumbed to occult beliefs precisely because their method rejected theoretical rigour.

Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection, serves as Engels’s central cautionary tale. His mesmerism experiments merely reproduced expected behaviours rather than objective phenomena; his confirmation of Gall’s phrenological map succeeded only because his subjects understood what was required. Engels and a colleague replicated these experiments and found no mystical relation—they could fabricate any organ anywhere on the body, the effects depending entirely on suggestion. Wallace also uncritically accepted spirit photography, including a case where Mrs. Guppy allegedly flew three miles through the air. Crookes, discoverer of thallium, was similarly captivated by the medium Florence Cook, who produced a spirit named Katie. Though Katie was touched, photographed, and conversed with, a clergyman later found the room had a second exit, and a similar “Katie” in Philadelphia was exposed as a flesh-and-blood young woman.

Engels also addresses Zöllner’s work on the fourth dimension, invoked to support spiritualist claims that spirits performed feats impossible in three-dimensional space. Engels notes he reports this second-hand but argues that if true, it would merge spiritualism and mathematics. The real path from natural science to mysticism, he insists, is not speculative philosophy but shallow empiricism that rejects theory. Contempt for theoretical thought leads to incorrect thinking, which, by dialectical law, ends in superstition. Mathematics, with its imaginary magnitudes and fourth dimension, similarly opens the door to spiritualism.

Mere empiricism cannot refute spiritualists, because they dismiss exposure of fraud as irrelevant and demand every alleged miracle be disproved individually. Therefore, only theoretical considerations—specifically, dialectical materialism—can counter spiritualism. The chapter thus functions as both a polemic against positivist science and a defence of dialectical reason as the necessary safeguard against irrationalism.