Quasi-scientific revolutions Science and culture of the paranormal

Revealing the hidden influence of the supernatural on science, literature and belief Parapsychology, clairvoyance, precognition, telekinesis: these attributes of the supernatural mind are widely dismissed as nonsense, but what can exploring these quasi-scientific phenomena reveal to us about accepted scientific and cultural thought? In Quasi-Scientific Revolutions, Derek Lee traces the development of psychological epistemologies across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to reveal how these ideas have moved into scientific fields such as quantum physics and neuroscience, as well as into diverse literary genres including science fiction, ethnography, and even government training manuals. Lee introduces a pioneering concept known as “parallel science,” a dynamic cultural space in which ideas rejected by the scientific system blend with alternative streams of literary, mythological, and philosophical thought, only to be renewed and returned to mainstream discourse. From the early modernist works of James Joyce to the novels of Philip K. From speculative postwar to Ruth Ozeki's ethnofuturist novels, Revolutions of Parallel Science shows how cultural and intellectual currents reshape supernatural ideas across time. By studying psychic surveillance programs like Project Stargate, and strange supersensory particles like the cybertron, Lee shows how notions of the paranormal persist and evolve to influence culture. Quasi-Scientific Revolutions presents pseudoscience as an inevitable product of the scientific process, providing a new vision of how the supernatural mind continually challenges our understanding of knowledge and belief. The book invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between science and the unknown, revealing a world in which speculative ideas and empirical research are closely intertwined.