Last autumn, Andreas Sommer defended his PhD at UCL, moved on to Cambridge and started a blog. His PhD thesis was on the relationship between psychical research and the origins of modern psychology, a topic on which Sommer has published some very interesting articles over the last few years (recommended). The blog Forbidden Histories continues and expands these interests: if you haven’t seen it yet, it is a highly recommended history of science blog focusing on, well: “Everything you always wanted to know about science and ‘the miraculous’ (but were afraid to ask)”.
Here is how it’s introduced:
“If you grew up in a western industrialised society, you probably know that you really shouldn’t believe in the occurrence of events commonly referred to as ‘miraculous’ or ‘supernatural’ if you expect to be viewed as a ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ person. If there was something to that sort of thing, surely the greats of science such as Newton, Bacon, Boyle, the Curies and Einstein would have told us?
What may surprise you is that each of the scientific icons named above, and many others of similar standing, took the ‘supernatural’ quite seriously. In fact, the consensus in historical scholarship regarding the relationship between science and the ‘miraculous’ has shifted notably during the past five decades, and even the most conservative historian of science will tell you today what previous generations ignored or denied”
Read the rest here. Clearly there is a lot of overlap with the interests pursued here at Heterodoxology.
While I was at it, I did a minor clean up in the blog roll. Some that didn’t seem as relevant anymore were removed, and instead I added a couple others that I’ve neglected or forgotten for way too long now: Carlos Alvarado’s blog on the history of parapsychology, and Ethan Doyle White’s “pagan studies” oriented blog. Enjoy!
Heterodoxology 
Reblogged this on Wolf and Raven.