Comments for Alfred Russel Wallace And The Medium at http://www.randi.org/site , comment 1 to 2 out of 2 comments http://www.randi.org/site Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:51:02 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1935-alfred-russel-wallace-and-the-medium.html#comment-26159 "If nothing else, his strange fascination with spiritualism should serve as a reminder that even supposedly hardheaded scientists can get into trouble when dabbling in areas outside their own expertise." I agree. Humans are naturally fascinated by things they don't understand - unfortunately unless we know how to proceed with an investigation (and how can we if we know nothing) we are easily fooled or else honestly go down the wrong track. Even in the history of orthodox science there is much which has been discarded over the years because it had simply been wrong - one example is Isaac Newton's theory of color. Isaac Newton himself dabbled in alchemy and the occult because he didn't understand physics or chemistry as we do today and readily believed the claims made in his era. He devoted much of his late life to investigating this nonsense but it doesn't seem that he ever sat down and thought "hey, this is going nowhere - could the premises and claimed phenomena all be wrong?" In Wallace's case I suspect he was too trusting and ready to believe stories which purported to confirm things which he had already been predisposed to believe - as he was growing up he would certainly have been told of spirits and a god which died and came back to life and who promised that ordinary humans can do the same. The spiritualists' claims in his opinion were simply the confirmation he had long sought. Unfortunately we are all susceptible to strange beliefs, and in the case of Wallace we also see an example of how distress such as bereavement can make people even more susceptible to strange beliefs. - MadScientist Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:15:46 +0100 http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1935-alfred-russel-wallace-and-the-medium.html#comment-26158 "When Princess Margaret of Orleans asked for a prickly cactus, Lizzie arranged for twenty of them to fall from the ceiling during one séance in France." Ouch! I'm surprised they were ever invited back. - LovleAnjel Fri, 30 Nov 2012 08:39:57 +0100