Dissertation Information for Courtenay Grean RaiaNAME:
DEGREE:
DISCIPLINE:
SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: The substance of things hoped for: Faith, science and psychical research in the Victorian Fin de Siecle Abstract: My dissertation explores the philosophical and practical connections between late-nineteenth century psychical research and the sciences. I ask how historically determined notions of the unexplained, the unknown, and the supernatural unsettled the boundaries of belief in both theological and empirical discourses, seeding modern thought with new epistemological possibilities and paradigms for human identity. The three major sections of my project are organized biographically around abnormal psychologist Frederic Myers, cultural anthropologist Andrew Lang, and radiation physicist Oliver Lodge in order to embed their intellectual production within the deeper historical structures of personality. Using the unusually rich archival sources available on my subjects, I explore the link between their coming of age in the 1860's and their attraction to psychical research in the 1880's and 1890's, demonstrating how the curious logic of psychical research, a program dedicated to finding physical proof of metaphysical phenomena, evolved out of mid-Victorian epistemological, religious, and psychological tensions. |
MPACT Scores for Courtenay Grean RaiaA = 0 Advisors and Advisees Graphgenerating graph, please reload |
Students under Courtenay Grean Raia
ADVISEES:
- None
COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None