Boundaries and Legacies

Abstract

“Boundaries and Legacies” uses the Seybert Report as an example of fledgling attempts to test the boundary between science and pseudoscience, the movement of psi research from the parlor to the laboratory, and the subsequent “scientization” of such research. The nineteenth century marked a period during which establishment scientists publicly rejected psi research in order to strengthen cultural narratives about progress and the primacy of a positivist worldview. This chapter explores the complicated academic legacy of “psychical research” and how it contributed to the field we now recognize as modern psychology.