The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science (...) by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways. (shrink)

This article considers a long-neglected episode in the disciplinary evolution of the border sciences in Germany: the so-called animism versus spiritism debate. While historians have long acknowledged the significance of this dispute, which introduced a range of new hypotheses and nomenclature to the field, there has been little detailed analysis of it. Looking closely at the arguments of the main combatants, this article attempts to highlight not just the complex multi-frontal conflicts that took place during the late 19th century between (...) academic psychologists, spiritists and psychical researchers over the parameters and proper objects of the nascent field of psychology, but also the epistemological and methodological battles between spiritists and psychical researchers over the nature of both psychology and the unconscious. It is concluded that researchers such as Hartmann and Aksakow in their pursuit of a new scientific psychology based on the phenomena of the unconscious were just as representative of contemporary psychology as were Wundt and his colleagues. (shrink)

Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease by Jeremy A. Greene On the Trans-Corporeal Action of Spirit by William Stainton Moses Posthumous Humanity: A Study of Phantoms by Adolphe D’Assier The Phantom of the Living: Anatomy and Physiology of the Soul: Experimental Researches on the Doubling of Man’s Body by Hector Durville The Case for Astral Projection by Sylvan J. Muldoon The Phenomena of Bilocation by Ernesto Bozzano The Phenomena of Astral Projection by Sylvan J. Muldoon and Hereward (...) Carrington ESP Projection: Spontaneous Cases and the Experimental Method by Hornell Hart Six Theories about Apparitions by Hornell Hart et al. Esprit: Men and Women of Parapsychology, Personal Reflections, Volume 1, edited by Rosemarie Pilkington Notre Sixième Sens by Charles Richet The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke Electronic Voices: Contact with Another Dimension? by Anabela Cardoso Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease by Gary Greenberg Karl Shuker’s Alien Zoo by Karl P. N. Shuker The Origin of Purportedly Pre-Columbian Mexican Crystal Skulls by Margaet Sax, Jane M. Walsh, Ian C. Freestone, Andrew H. Rankin, and Nigel D. Meeks Crystal Cranium by Owen Edwards Legend of the Crystal Skulls: The Truth Behind Indiana Jones’s Latest Quest by Jane MacClaren Walsh Follow the Kelp by Heather Pringle Kelp Highways by Heather Pringle Radiocarbon and DNA Evidence for a Pre-Columbian Introduction of Polynesian Chickens to Chile by Alice A. Storey, José Miguel Ramírez, Daniel Quiroz, David B. Burley, David J. Addison, Richard Walter, Atholl J. Anderson, Terry L. Hunt, J. Stephen Athens, Leon Huynen, and Elizabeth A. Mattisoo-Smith In Search of the World’s Most Ancient Mariners by Michael Balter. (shrink)