For as long as human history has been recorded, that which could not be explained by natural causes was deemed to be the result of supernatural ones. In more recent centuries, when the widespread belief in the supernatural was being challenged by new developments in the understanding of the natural, natural philosophers, and the scientists who eventually replaced them, still sometimes found that in pushing against the boundaries of what was known – and indeed even thought knowable – the limits of the explainable natural world too restricting to allow the full potential of their ideas to take form. Fortunately, recourse to the supernatural could still be made; a demon could be called upon the provide the inexplicable or – momentarily, at least – seemingly impossible element in their thought process that would allow a bridge to be crossed into a bold new discovery. Indeed, it is not a technique that has been entirely abandoned even in the present day.
In her new book, Bedeviled; A Shadow History of Demons in Science, Dr. Jimena Calanes examines how natural philosophers, such as Rene Descartes, to scientists of the modern age have employed adding demons into their cogitations to play roles or produce effects that were outside of anything known to be possible under natural conditions. Partly an examination of archtypal psychology in action, partly an enquiry into metaphors in thought experiments, and through-and-through a decidedly innovative approach to the history of science and its intellectual processes, Dr. Canales’ Bedeviled is a book well worth further investigation.
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