FOLLOWING THE FIERY TRAIL

Horace A. Smith. The Great Meteor Procession. The Author, 2023.

If an astronomer supplied an explanation for an anomalous astronomical phenomenon, we can nearly always rely on Charles Fort to come along and explain how he was probably wrong, and it must have been something very much more mysterious. And sometimes he had every reason to raise doubts, as we will see with the case of the Great Meteor Procession and Professor Clarence Augustus Chant.

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THE SCEPTICAL FORTEAN

Martin Shough, with Wim van Utrecht. Redemption of the Damned, Volume 2: Sea and Space Phenomena. Anomalist Books, 2021.

Redemption of the Damned seems an odd title for a book that subjects the strange incidents recorded in the books of Charles Fort to a detailed, scientific re-examination. What exactly is being ‘redeemed’ here? In his Forward to this volume, bibliographer and Fortean researcher George Eberhart says that “Charles Fort has not aged well”

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A BUMP ON THE HEAD

James Poskett, Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920, The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

In Materials of the Mind James Poskett, assistant professor of the history of science and technology at Warwick University, uses phrenology as a case study in the writing of ‘global history’ in order to make a wider point that’s aimed squarely at his profession.

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ABSOLUTELY QUACKERS

S. D. Tucker. Quacks! Dodgy Doctors and Foolish Fads Throughout History. Amberley, 2018.

‘Purity’ has been the theme of a few books I have reviewed lately, basing my views on Peter Rogerson’s comments in his last ever Magonia piece: “… surely all the worst crimes are committed in the name of purity and pure lands: pure religion, pure nation, pure race, new model pure people, a pure world cleared of ‘human pollutant’, pure souls freed from organic bodies, pure lands that no actual-existing human being is ever pure enough to inhabit.”

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RANDOM THOUGHTS ON RANDOMNESS

Persi Diaconis and Brian Skyrms. Ten Great Ideas About Chance. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Though this is primarily about mathematics, and there are some complicated equations, it is more about the philosophy of probability theory. One is presented with technical terms and headings such as: ‘De Finetti’s Theorem on Exchangeability’, ‘Kolmogorov’s View of the Infinite in Probability Spaces’, ‘Borel Paradox’, ‘Hard-Core Frequentism’, The Ergodic Hierarchy’, Boltzmann Redux’, ‘What about the Quantification of Ignorance?’

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DIGGING THE DIRT

Jeb J. Card and David S. Anderson (editors) Lost City, Found Pyramid - Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices. University of Alabama Press, 2016

Archaeologists, it has been said, often find their careers in ruins. Their jobs often entail digging in the dirt for clues. Genuine archaeology involves a lot of hard work, strict procedures, and very little glamour. 
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LEAPING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

Charles M. Wynn and Arthur W. Wiggins, Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends… and Pseudoscience Begins, Oxford University Press, 2017

In her farewell address to the American Statistical Association last year, outgoing president Jessica Utts, who analysed parapsychological experiments for the US government and concluded that they support the reality of psi, drew attention to the irony that many scientists, in their denial of such evidence, adopt the mind set and methods of pseudoscience. 

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EXPLAINING THE EUREKA MOMENT

David N. Stamos, Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka, and Scientific Imagination, SUNY Press, 2017.

The latecomer to a Magonian meeting always runs the risk of finding that they’ve been ‘volunteered’ to review a book that, because the subject matter appears rather recherché, everyone else has passed on. Such is the case here. As someone who has read very little Edgar Allen Poe – a little that doesn’t include the book that’s the focus of this study - I approached this book with more than a few reservations.
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MR SANDMAN, BRING ME A DREAM...

Gary Gilligan. Extraterrestrial Sands. Matador, 2016.

The author introduces himself as a catastrophist who believes that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, which were worldwide in scope. This book is devoted to his theory that the planet Mars entered into hundreds of catastrophic close encounters with Earth.
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FASTEN YOUR SEAT-BELTS!

Ian Niall Rankin. A New Look at the Solar System. Book Guild, 2015.

As if we didn't already have enough to worry about living on Planet Earth in these troublesome times, along comes yet another publication telling us that we're all doomed. Not from a man-made cause such as a Third World War, or the cumulative effects of the climate change purportedly taking place, but from a sudden polar shift of the planet that will wipe out all of civilisation.
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LOOKING OVER THE EDGE

Michael Brooks. At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise. Profile Books, 2015.

The term "discoveries" in the title of this book is rather misleading; it would be better to talk of 11 fields in which interesting and possibly paradigm busting, developments or possible developments are being made.
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HITTING THE BUFFERS

John Horgan. The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. Basic Books, New York, 2015

John Horgan, in his preface to this new edition of this book, first published in 1996, insists that he was right to assert that significant progress in scientific discovery was coming to an end. Scientists these days are just filling in the details.
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SWITCHED ON PEOPLE

Louis Proud. Strange Electromagnetic Dimensions. New Page Books, 2014.

Electricity has been generated and harnessed in bulk by humankind very, very recently in our history. For most of our recorded time on Earth, it has not been something with which we have had to contend. As a consequence of currently using it in every aspect of our lives, our homes, workplaces and leisure buildings are wired up to conduct this energy, as well as the transport that moves us from one to the other.

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WRONG ABOUT ALMOST EVERYTHING

Alex Tsakiris. Why Science is Wrong About Almost Everything. Anomalist Books, 2014.

Alex Tsakris, who runs a podcast called Skeptiko, is basically the paranormalists’ version of the typical American shock-jock, who only invites people onto his show who disagree with him in order to sandbag them, berate them and grandstand to the audience. Like the other shock-jocks he is markedly less critical with those who espouse his world view.
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PLACEBO DEFECT

John S. Haller Jr, Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative Therapies. Columbia University Press, 2014.

The author states his position clearly in the Introduction. His aim is ‘not to lay waste [to] one side or the other in the ongoing feud between the proponents of evidence-based medicine and those supporting unconventional therapies’, and on the whole his objectivity is indeed remarkable, especially for a field that is infamous in its high emotional reaction and indeed academic vendettas.
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IDEAS IN COLLISION

Michael D. Gordin. The Pseudo-Science Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

The ‘Velikovsky Affair’ began in 1950 with the publication of his book Worlds in Collision, which proposed a radical revised cosmology. Venus was a newly formed planet created from material ejected by Jupiter and causing catastrophic changes on Earth, leading a global flood which is recorded in the legends and sacred writings of many cultures.
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SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM

John Cowburn. Scientism: A Word We Need. Mosaic Press, Preston, Victoria, Australia. 2013

Scientism is the belief that only scientific knowledge is valid. Thus, it is thought that everything that is true can, at least in principle, be proved by scientific means. John Cowburn argues that scientism has become too prevalent among scientists and is applied to fields of study where it is not logically applicable.
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UNSETTLED SCIENCE

It's not often - in fact never before - that Magonia has linked to a publication by the Institute of Economic Affairs. However I think this particular one will be of interest to our readers. [Link below] Over on our Book News blog I have just put up details of two new titles from the Chicago University Press which examine aspects of pseudoscience and the ways in which pseudoscientific ideas influence and interact with mainstream culture. I hope that in the near future I may be able to publish reviews of these titles.

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KILLING US SOFTLY

Paul Offit. Killing Us Softly: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. Fourth Estate, 2013.

Dr Offit’s book covers much the same ground as those reviewed HERE. He is no more impressed with much of alternative medicine than any of the other authors, and his account of the promotion of alternative medicine is just as alarming as in those.
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THE NEW SKEPTICS

Jim Baggott. Farewell to Reality. Constable, 2013.

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Alexander Unzicker and Sheilla Jones. Bankrupting Physics: How Today’s Top Scientists are Gambling Away Their Credibility. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

We are used at Magonia to hearing complaints that 'Western materialist science' is stifling imagination and a sense of wonder. Now here are two books saying the opposite; that theoretical physicists are letting their imagination run away with them and are engaging in metaphysics, which is the sort of stuff that has been denounced by writers in Magonia as 'deserts of idle speculation', or perhaps 'backyard theology'.
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