It took a few hundred years for science to go from wishful thinking to rigorous experimentation. During that time, the most renowned scientists who made great breakthroughs still spent time on alchemy. But each generation considered itself more enlightened than the one before. During the 19th century, there was an explosion of belief in spiritualism, communication with the dead, ghost sightings, and seances. So naturally, scientists of the day wanted to study the phenomena. Some went in looking for logical explanations for eerie events in new scientific fields, such as electrical activity and magnetism, or possibly psychology.
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These scientists included Pierre and Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, and others you may be familiar with. While some discovered intriguing reasons for tables to move and Ouija boards to spell out messages, others revealed the spiritualist’s tricks. And a some became sucked into the wishful thinking aspect of communication with the dead, often for personal reasons. Read the accounts of eight well-regarded Victorian era scientists who studied ghosts and other spiritual phenomena at Mental Floss.
Source: neatorama