Drawings from "thought transference" experiment (1885)

Mark Frauenfelder 9:24 am Wed Jul 8, 2015

thought

Public Domain Review found this illustration from an 1885 issue of Science that was scanned and saved at archive.org.

An illustration from Science – An Illustrated Journal, a nineteenth-century weekly published in New York by The Science Company. The picture is an experiment carried out according to the ideas of the French physiologist Charles Richet (1850–1935) who believed in thought transmission. Richet did research on such subjects as digestion and breathing, as well as homeothermic animals, whilst later becoming interested in hypnosis and spiritualism. He believed there could be physical explanations to paranormal phenomena. The drawings in this picture were made by one person drawing something, after which another person tried to copy it without seeing the originally drawn picture. As you can see there was limited success.

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