"Johann Zöllner, a German physicist who studied optical illusions, could not believe his eyes. He had carefully prepared a rigorous test of the powers of the so-called spiritualist medium Henry Slade. By sealing both ends of a set of ropes and placing them on a tabletop under keen observation, there was no way that they could have been tied together. Yet, as clear as day, in front of other scientific witnesses – including the electrodynamics expert Wilhelm Weber and the noted philosopher Gustav Fechner – four knots had suddenly appeared where none had been.
In 1879, the same year that the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell died and Albert Einstein was born, Zöllner published Transcendental Physics, a treatise attempting to explain how Slade performed the knot trick and other magical feats, such as removing wooden rings from a long cord, making solid objects disappear and reappear, and ‘summoning’ writing on untouched empty slates. Such acts, Zöllner concluded, were performed through access to the fourth dimension ..." (read more)
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