The Ether and Psychic Phenomena: Some Old Speculations

Abstract

DeMeo’s (2014) article about the idea of the ether in the JSE brings to mind the historical relationship of this concept to psychic phenomena.
Much more than a simple physical theory of force, the ether was one of those powerful and overreaching concepts that captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public during parts of the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries (on the concept see Cantor & Hodge 1981). As argued by Asprem (2014:222):

Ether metaphysics provided a worldview that emphasized the immanence of the divine, through the all-encompassing, interprenetating, but invisible ether. This medium functioned as a kind of “world-soul”; it was the seat of animation in general, the source of life, and also the plane on which much mental functioning was thought to take place.

The metaphysical dimensions of the ether connected the topic to philosophical and religious views, as well as to ideas of the unity of nature, the transcendence of the spirit, and of human faculties. Such issues were discussed by Balfour Stewart and Peter G. Tait (1875) and Oliver Lodge (1925) (on the various dimensions of the ether see Asprem 2014, Noakes 2005, and Wynne 1979), among others.