Ghosts, Scholars and the Nature and Limits of Science

The seventh part of CJ’s ongoing attempt to sort out his ideas on the paranormal and the nature of psychical research is a response to a piece by another blogger on the subject, Higgypop. Higgypop in his piece states that after over a century of investigation, psychic researchers have still been unable to provide proof that ghosts exist. They then go on to suggest that perhaps it’s time the scientific approach to the paranormal pursued by ASSAP and others is abandoned, and researchers instead should concentrate on what the experience of seeing a ghost means to the witness. Here they compare this approach with religion: no-one demands scientific proof of the existence of God. Rather they accept that it is based on faith, personal experience and scripture. So it should be with psychical research. And maybe, if this approach was adopted, psychical research could become academically respectable. This leads CJ to defend ASSAP by pointing out that the society already does this. Since its foundation by Gurney, Myers and co., psychical researchers right up to the present day have been as busy looking through sources like the Census of Hallucinations for the personal impact and meaning ghost sightings have to the people who experienced them as they have looking round haunted locales and setting up experiments to ascertain whether or not they really are haunted. CJ also examines the difference between science and religion and whether ghosthunting, as it is popularly done, is really a form of religion masquerading as science, before turning to a discussion of the methodological foundations of science.

Higgypop is generally right in that people don’t demand that religious belief rest on the same foundations as experimental science. However, for several years after 2007 members of the New Atheist movement founded by Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, the ‘Four Horsemen’ as they styled themselves, did just that. Religion was angrily dismissed as nonsensical because it did not rest on science, which they declared was the only way to gain objectively truthful information about the cosmos and its objects. This was just a rehash of the old Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s. They too declared that metaphysical statements – that is, statements about God, the afterlife and the supernatural – were absurd and nonsensical because unscientific. This statement is self-contradictory, because in dismissing metaphysics they made a statement about metaphysics. It was also somewhat counterproductive. Many people did come out and declare themselves deconverted to atheism thanks to reading Dawkin’s book The God Delusion and other similar works, but the sheer venom and abuse they heaped upon the religious turned many other atheists, from a gentler, more traditionally Humanist strand of unbelief against them. The Australian journo Kim Sterelny describes how shocked he was at this vitriol in his introduction to his book Darwin Wars, about the feud between Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould over the nature of evolution. The British TV presenter John Humphries also describes his shock and revulsion at the vicious rhetoric used by the New Atheists in his book on agnosticism, In God We Doubt. Humphries had considered himself an agnostic for very many years, but came to the conclusion that he didn’t believe the Lord existed after all. Then he came across the virulent invective of the New Atheists, which revolted him so much he went back to being an agnostic.

Despite the arguments of the New Atheists, CJ rightly points out that scientific Empiricism is only one approach to investigating the universe. Another is history. Experimental science can’t tell you if the Battle of Waterloo took place. It also, as CJ says, can’t tell you whether your mother or the cute guy down the road you fancy loves you, or if God and the supernatural exist. Instead you look at such disciplines as history for the Battle of Waterloo, personal experience for your mother and the lad, and philosophy, history, textual criticism and archaeology for the existence of God. Archaeology is a science, and it can certainly help you investigate the Battle of Waterloo, not least by corroborating the descriptions of the Battle in the history books. But without books on the Napoleonic Wars, all the archaeological investigation of the battlefield could tell us would be that there had been a battle there in the early 19th century. It could not tell you why it was fought, who commanded the armies or place it into context in the changing political, religious and social conditions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Despite this, there are some forms of religion and mystical investigation that claim to rest on a scientific foundation. When Spiritualism emerged, it claimed unequivocally to provide proof of the existence of an afterlife, and hence it attracted the attention of scientists and philosophers, as well as radical social thinkers like the founder of British socialism. The terminology it uses in its services still reinforces this view of itself as rational and scientific. Instead of a sermon as in Christian and Islamic worship, Spiritualists instead talk about ‘the philosophy’.

CJ then goes on to make the distinction between psychical research and ghosthunting, at least as it is done at the popular level. This was the subject of a fascinating talk by one of ASSAP’s other members, a lady with a very senior medical background, at the annual ASSAP conference one year. Psychical researchers follow very carefully scientific protocols. In the case of ASSAP, they include both believers and sceptics, and consider alternative explanations for the phenomena they investigate, such as various forms of sleep paralysis, misperception, the effects of ultrasound and other possible causes on the witness, and possible fraud and deception. And as CJ also says, you can also find them poring over the literature of ghost hauntings and other paranormal phenomena. Indeed, Magonia and the small press UFO magazine, Strange Daze, founded by Dave Newton, used to make jokes about the accusations by their opponents that they spent all their time in libraries and their armchairs reading rather than being out in the field looking for mysterious lights in the sky and talking to UFO witnesses.

Ghosthunters, on the other hand, follow the vigil tradition that go back to Elliot O’Donnell and in literature to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the writer who gave us The Last Days of Pompeii and the early SF novel, The Coming Race, about an underground super race, the Vril, gifted with strange electrical powers and preparing to rise up at some point in the future to overthrow and supersede humanity. Such vigils, carried out according to proper scientific methodology like Harry Price’s Investigation of Borley Rectory and those done according to ASSAP guidelines in CJ’s view can indeed add much to our understanding of the ghost phenomenon. I don’t dispute this, just as I don’t dispute his description of ghosthunting as ‘spiritualism on the hoof’.

The medical lady, whose talk on this very subject I attended, made a very similar point. Popular ghosthunting, at the level of a myriad blogs and internet sites and trashy TV programmes, isn’t about objectively investigating the phenomenon. This has the unfortunate possibility of concluding that despite a site’s reputation, there may be nothing supernatural going on there at all. No! Instead, the researchers have decided already that ghosts exist, and it’s all about gathering proof. To do that it uses the paraphernalia of gadgets like EMF meters and supposed ‘ghost detector’ apps on mobile phones. They record footage of anomalous movements and sights they believe are ghosts, and post them up on their internet sites. And oh yes, there’s also the merchandising, such as caps, sweatshirts and other items branded with the name of their group. And anybody who is not convinced by their supposed proof, and states objections to it is a ‘hater’.

What is worse is that often they have a completely cavalier attitude to the safety and wellbeing of the people whose homes they enter in their quest for the supernatural. Respectable psychic investigators are very well aware that they have a duty of care towards the percipients. The sceptical Magonians have pointed out that most people don’t want to be told their house is haunted, but want a rational explanation for the phenomenon. If they are happy with being told that it really is haunted, they want the investigators to send the spook on its way, or put them in contact with someone who can. Instead, there have been cases where irresponsible ghosthunters have told families that they’ve got a portal in their house through which demons are arriving. They can’t close it themselves, but would previously have put them in touch with a shaman who could. They’re unable to do that anymore, ’cause he’s moved away. It would be no bad thing if more ghosthunters were aware of the effect their experiences had on them. As for the adoption of this as one of the aims of psychic research, in reminds me of John Spencer’s witness-led investigations of UFO percipients. This concentrated very much on the effects UFO encounters had on witnesses, some of whom developed psychic powers, or believed they had, as a result of their encounters. The investigators therefore followed the witnesses’ desires over how to proceed.

CJ doesn’t go into these unsavoury aspects of popular ghosthunting, but instead explains why people have regarded it as scientific, or quasi-scientific, rather than as another variety of New Religious Movements. Conceptions of religion are strongly influenced by religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. These are faiths which have a scripture, a set body of doctrine and forms of worship and ritual. But a religion like Hinduism and new religions like Wicca are much more diverse. There is so much variety of faith and practice in Hinduism that scholars have described trying to define it as like sieving spaghetti. So much so that it has been described not as single religion so much as a continuum of related sects.

There is a similar variety in forms of Wicca, from the division between the Gardnerian and Alexandrian forms of religion. One is based on the teachings of Gerald Gardner, the other Alex Saunders. It’s also highly individualistic, so that Wiccans away from the covens – solitaries, as they are called – are free to invent their own forms. There is, or has been, a central text, the Book of Shadows, but practitioners of the religion are invited to write their own versions of it, including their rituals, beliefs and experiences. Popular ghosthunting is therefore similar in that it is a doctrineless religion that nevertheless seeks to put it practitioners in contact with the supernatural. In this respect, it’s rather like how the ‘Wickedest Man in the World’ Aleister Crowley defined ritual magic: ‘the methods of science, the aims of religion’.

There is considerable discussion on the nature of science by philosophers, or even that there is any such thing as science as a single intellectual discipline. Many languages, such as German, don’t refer to science but ‘the sciences’ because of the differences between them. Biology is different from the hard, mathematical sciences like physics and chemistry. And at university level, mathematics is more like one of the arts. Modern science, however, follows the methodology laid down by Francis Bacon in the 17th century. The scientist begins by observing a phenomenon. S/he then formulates a theory to explain it, and then devises an experiment to test this theory. This is the methodology that has allowed humanity to build every more intricate machines, taken us to the Moon and treat and cure terrible diseases.

CJ makes the point here that science is a methodology, not a body of knowledge, as its conclusions are always provisional. We can be sure of some, such as that the Earth orbits the Sun, but others may be changed as more information turns up. For example, Pluto was considered a planet, but has had its status downgraded to dwarf planet because of the discovery of similar objects like Quaor further away from the Sun in the Kuiper belt.

CJ also states that science is also informed by philosophical empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism is the philosophical school that promotes the acquisition of knowledge through sense experience. It assumes a mechanistic universe running according to laws that are logical, comprehensible and unchanging. Experiment is therefore viewed as an excellent way to gather knowledge about the cosmos. This also allows us to share information, and build on our knowledge. Scepticism is a vital part of this process through the careful testing of truth claims and is central to the scientific method.

Coupled with this approach is rationalism. This states that truth can be attained by proceeding logically from fundamental principles, axioms, that are self-evidently true. Examples of this approach are the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and the mathematics of Rene Descartes. CJ could also have added the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who believed that philosophical truth could also be gained through following the mathematical approach of geometry. Rationalists also argue that Empiricists are wrong in their assumption that the world is unchanging. Coupled with this is the problem of induction discussed in the 18th century by the Scots philosopher David Hume. This states that even if the same process or phenomenon is observed a myriad times, there is no guarantee that it will still be the same the next time it is observed. This mixture of rationalism and empiricism has given science tremendous explanatory power and technology. However, it also has clearly defined limits, and there are different philosophies of science.

He gives as an example of the debate over the limits of science the statement the great philosopher, Karl Popper, made about evolution. He denied that it was science, but history. If evolution was wound back and then proceeded again from the very beginning, very different creatures would arise and the history of life on Earth would be very different. It was not predictable, as science assumes, so was history rather than science proper. This greatly offended evolutionary biologists, and Popper was forced to retract this argument. The palaeontologist Steven Jay Gould also held the same view that very different creatures would evolve if the history of the Earth started again, although he had no doubt that evolution was science. However, he did have some connections with the people arguing for Intelligent Design – that neo-Darwinian view of evolution, which stresses random mutation and natural selection – cannot fully explain evolution, and that certain aspects appear consciously designed.

Intelligent Design is dismissed as a form of Creationism by the vast majority of modern scientists, but nevertheless it remains true that science has its limits. Philosophers have stated that science owes its explanatory power to the fact that it asks very specific questions. Science is limited to the observable universe. It can suggest that there are other universes, but these so far exist purely as mathematical theories and not science, unless a means is found by which these theories can be empirically tested. Science also discounts the supernatural, which is the proper domain of theology as they exist beyond our universe. The theory of the multiverse, as it has been formulated, states that there may be other universes with different laws. For these to exist, there must also be a set of laws allowing them to be generated, and which govern the establish of their natural laws. Carl Sagan talks about this in his book Cosmos, which accompanied the blockbusting science series of that name. If this were the case, Sagan states, then metaphysics would refer to a real scientific process.

From here, CJ moves on to Hume’s ‘On Miracles’ which defines a miracle as an arbitrary suspension of natural law. CJ considers that a good definition, but many Christian theologians would disagree. The Greek terms for miracles in the New Testament, unlike other Greek terms for the same thing, do not imply that Christ’s and God’s miracles are arbitrary. Some theologians consider that miracles are the suspension of one set of natural laws through the supervenience of higher laws. Such arguments aside, miracles count as supernatural because, as CJ says, science studies and places emphasis on the natural laws and regularities of the universe. From there CJ goes on to discuss the difference between the paranormal and supernatural. Paranormal creatures, if they are physical entities in this universe, can nevertheless be studied and incorporated into science. Supernatural entities obey no laws, and so are outside the realm of science. This is close to Richard Dawkins’ idea of the ‘perinormal’. Perinormal entities, according to the evolutionary biologist and broadcaster, are entities that are currently outside science, but if they exist, are nevertheless natural entities and phenomena which science could incorporate if one was caught and subjected to proper studies.

CJ then talks about the simulation theory of Nick Bostrom, and its similarity to classical theism. Bostrom believed that as computational power grew, it would be possible to produce a computer simulation of the world that would be indistinguishable from the reality. CJ, following the arguments of, I believe, Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, states that, as far as the entities in such a simulation are concerned, the programmer is God in that he is almighty, omniscient and outside of time and space. The laws of nature become the code governing this reality. Salvation becomes being saved, as when a gamer saves the game he has been playing. If we are in a simulation, we can hope for salvation and an afterlife if we are saved when we die and transferred to another simulation. He also wonders if we are supernatural beings incarnate in the world our senses observe. Both this possibility and that we are in a simulation are both possible. A few years ago something like the simulation hypothesis was explored in one of Stanislaw Lem’s short stories. This was about a computer scientist who set up just such a simulated world populated by intelligent beings, whose metaphysical conversations about the nature of their reality and whether there is a creator the scientist observes. The ending of one of Gregory Benford’s Galactic Centre novels has its hero apparently saved on computer in such a simulation. He is uneasy, as however comfortable and realistic his environment is, based on his memories, it is not the real world of those memories. Then there is the idea in The Matric Reloaded that what the inhabitants of this virtual reality perceive as supernatural entities, such as ghosts, are glitches in the operation of the Matrix rather than supernatural entities.

CJ goes on to state that science is based on methodological naturalism. To gain objective knowledge about the world as it is requires assuming that the laws of nature don’t change, and so rule out miracles, God and the supernatural. If the rules of the universe change, then our science as the study of the universe would also change, and we would be as unable to determine whether such a change had occurred as we would if the world had been created last Tuesday.

CJ correctly states that methodological naturalism is very often confused with ontological naturalism, atheism, as working assumptions are confused with ultimate truth. This is also true. But he states that Higgypop is correct to say that there are other ways of investigating the universe.

CJ concludes

‘However we are ASSAP- the clue is in the name and we will explore the Paranormal scientifically, and we will amass data and evidence. In fact we can combine this with the experiential approach he calls for, by Qualitative research of the type ghost researchers have worked on since 1888 on the reports of experiences. That is probably more scientific than anything we see on our screens as “ghosthunting”.’

Looking through CJ’s essay, it’s clearly that some highly speculative scientific theories are indeed taking on some of the aspects of religion. Multiverse theory is a case in point. If there are other universes, governed by other laws, they are, by definition, supernatural as they are outside this universe and its set of laws. The British Fantasy author, Michael Moorcock, has tackled this problem in his novels. His heroes – Corum, Erekose, Jerry Cornelius and most famously, Elric of Melnibone, are all incarnations of a central character, the Eternal Champion, who takes various incarnations across the multiverse to fight evil in the constant war between Chaos and Order. In this multiverse, the various magical items and weapons wielded by the hero have powers only in the universe in those particular stories. They are both supernatural and natural in the sense that they are the products of natural, scientific laws.

The ASSAP approach similarly assumes that, even if some entities are supernatural, they nevertheless have aspects that make them amenable to scientific study, as CJ has shown in his suggestions for testing the telepathic theory of ghosts. And he is definitely correct in that, when combined with the other approaches suggested by Higgypop, the result is going to be more scientific and academically rigorous than the type of ghosthunting now haunting our TV and computer screens.

For further information, see: https://jerome23.wordpress.com/2024/05/20/ghosts-working-notes-part-7-a-response-to-higgypop-on-science-and-ghost-hunting/

Higgypop’s post is at: https://www.higgypop.com/news/time-to-stop-seeking-scientific-proof/

Sketches of Another Three British Comedy Heroes

Here are three more pictures of British comedy legends of a certain era for your enjoyment: Ken Dodd, Tony Hancock and Michael Bentine.

Ken Dodd is also remembered for the Diddymen from Knotty Ash, which I think was the suburb of Liverpool where he came from. I can remember him being on television with them when I was very young. They were originally puppets, but I can remember a later programme in which they were played by children in a musical number. Dodd was a real trouper, carrying on performing right to the end of his life. He was also notorious for running well over time. I heard at one performance in Weston-Super-Mare, a seaside town just south of Bristol, he carried on performing so long after he was supposed to have ended that the janitor threw the keys onto the stage. As well as the Diddymen his act also involved his notorious Tickling Stick. It was years before I realised it was an ordinary duster and you could get them in Woolworths.

He ran afoul of the taxman in the late 80s/ 90s, and I’ve heard two versions of that story. One is that he really was dodging taxes and had all the money he owed the Inland Revenue hidden in boxes in his attic. This was supposed to be because he had a very poor childhood and that had made him reluctant to part with money. The other version I heard was that he sent it all to the taxman, as demanded, but didn’t say which department and so it just got lost. His problems with the taxman was at just about the same time the jockey Lester Pigott also got caught not paying it. This resulted in a postcard I found in Forever People in Bristol showing Ken Dodd and Pigott on stage in pantomime. Pigott was riding a pantomime horse, while down from the sky was a giant hand pointng at them, saying ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell undeclared income!’

Although he’s been off the TV for years now, there are still DVDs of his performances, particularly the Audience he did on ITV. And way back in the 90s I also found a tape of him telling jokes. Since his heyday in the ’70s, comedy has become far more observational, but his jokes were still funny. One I remember went, ‘What a day, what a day, missus, for going to Trafalgar Square and throwing white paint over the pigeons shouting, ‘Hah! See how you like it!’

Tony Hancock – what can you say? He truly is a British comedy legend. He’s been called a genius, though one critic said that his genius really consisted in performing the scripts written by Galton and Simpson. Even so, they were absolute classics of British comedy and a couple of them, The Radio Ham and The Blood Donor, really are comedy classics. On the radio he was supported by a cast of brilliant actors – Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Bill Kerr and Hattie Jacques. This was cut down to Sid James when the series was transferred to TV, and then even further until Hancock became the sole regular character. His series were on record – I used to listen to them when I was at school and are also on DVD. He also made a series, not written by Galton and Simpson, when he was in Australia. That’s also available, I think, though I deliberately avoided watching it. It may just be prejudice, but I didn’t think it could ever be a patch on Galton and Simpson’s scripts.

Paul Merton, who seems to have given up performing comedy for appearing on panel shows, is a massive Hancock fan. A few years ago, he performed as Hancock in a series of remakes of classic Hancock episodes. I deliberately didn’t watch them, because with remakes I find that it doesn’t matter how good the actors are, you’re always comparing them with the original stars, and they just can’t compete. One of the cable/ satellite channels a few years back tried to remake Yes, Minister with a different cast. This flopped. I think it may have been that the audience it was aimed simply far preferred to see repeats of the original series with Paul Eddington and co. As well as TV, he also appeared in a number of films, such as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, and starred in two: The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man. The Punch and Judy Man, in which he plays that character in a seaside resort, is supposed to be the better film, but I prefer The Rebel. In this movie he plays an office clerk, who gives it up to become a painter in Paris. He’s a failure but becomes a celebrity artist after passing off a friend’s paintings as his own. It all comes crashing down when he’s invited aboard a millionaire’s yacht and the man’s wife wants to run off with him, just as he’s run out of the other fellow’s paintings to sell. Again, he has an excellent supporting cast, including John Le Mesurier as his exasperated boss and Irene Handl as his landlady, outraged at the nudity of his sculpture ‘Aphrodite at the Waterhole’. It’s also on DVD, and I think it’s brilliant.

Michael Bentine – another great actor and writer. He was, as I’m sure many people reading this well know, a member of the Goons, whom he left quite early on. He also had a number of his own series, including Square World and the one I remember, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time. This featured small ‘Potty’ puppets acting out various historical events, like the Battle of Waterloo. He had a similar puppet series, the Bumblies, which got MI5 interested in him. The Bumblies were puppets, but they were supposed to be operated by remote control. This would have been quite an advance at the time, as radio control was impossible because it interfered with the cameras and other equipment. According to Bentine, he left his house and got on the bus to go to work as usual one morning when he was met by someone from the security services, who asked him to follow him upstairs for a little chat. He wanted to know how the Bumblies worked. Bentine explained that they were puppets and not radio controlled at all. ‘Oh thank God!’ said the Man from the Ministry, ‘we thought you were going to defect!’ That gave Bentine the vision of Bumby Six hurtling towards Russia on a missile.

He was also very much into the paranormal, following his father, an engineer who was keenly interested in psychical research. Like the other Goons, he also fought in the Second World War, though he was a member of a bomber crew in the RAF. He was deeply anti-Fascist, and strongly believed that the Nazis had come to power through real black magic. In the 90s he toured the country with his one-man show, From the Sublime to the Paranormal. I and a few friends went to see him when it came to Bristol. He was a hilarious raconteur, especially when describing how the army chased him round Britain to get him to join up when he was touring in repertory theatre. Wherever they were playing, his name was naturally on the cast list. When he asked the army, why they had ignored the posters for the theatre company when they finally caught up with him, they replied that they thought it was a ruse! During the performance he also demonstrated the power of the Nazis use of light and sound to mesmerise their audience. He described the Nuremberg rallies and the way it would start with the great searchlights blazing up into the sky as a ‘temple of light’. Then the drumbeats would start up, performed by the Hitler Youth, the twisted version of the boy scouts, and the soldiers and Nazis would start chanting ‘Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!’ He repeated this, getting louder each time, and the lighting in the theatre dropped. The atmosphere immediately changed, became far more sinister. Then he snapped out of it, and said, ‘Sorry to scare the sh*t out of you.’ A friend of mine told me later that wasn’t the reason he cut that bit short. He reckoned it was because some people were responding to it in the way the Nazis intended. He asked me if I hadn’t noticed the pair in one of the boxes who were nearly out of their seats giving the salute. He was very critical of the power of television and the way it could be used for propaganda and mass brainwashing and urged people to complain if they saw anything they found offensive.

I think he was also very scientifically interested and literate. He appeared a long time ago on the Beeb’s popular science programme, Tomorrow’s World, presenting his own scheme for turning the Amazon jungle into productive farmland. And then there was the flea circus. This was entirely mechanical but was supposed to be worked by fleas performing high dives and so on. He was interviewed by Wogan when the dulcet-toned Irishman took over from Parkinson back in the 1980s. He told the broadcasting legend that he’d been stopped by customs when he tried to take it into America. The customs officer thought that he was bringing real fleas into the country. And so Bentine had to show him the entire act in order to convince him that it was, indeed, mechanical.

From the Sublime to the Paranormal was broadcast on the radio back in the ’90s. I don’t know whether it’s available on CD or on YouTube. He also wrote his autobiography and two books on spiritualism and the paranormal, The Door Marked Summer and Doors of the Mind. He was truly another great titan of British comedy.

Charles Bell: Surgeon, Expert on the Nervous System, and Christian Apologist

One of the contributors to the volume of Natural Theology, The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation was the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century surgeon and anatomist, Charles Bell. Bell was the son of a Scots Episcopalian minister, who studied medicine at Edinburgh University. After graduation, he moved to London, where he set up a school of anatomy. As well as doctors and surgeons, Bell also taught anatomy to artists, and his lectures for them were published in 1806 as The Anatomy of Expression. With his partner, Wilson, he took over the Windmill Street School of Anatomy. He conducted research on the human nervous system, publishing A New Idea of the Anatomy of the Brain and Nervous System in 1811. In it he noted that stimulating the anterior root of the spinal nerves resulted in contractions. This did not occur when the posterior root was stimulated. This formed the basis of Magendie’s identification of sensory and motor nerves. Bell also described the trigeminal and facial nerves of the face. It was Bell’s student, Mayo, however, who realised that the facial nerves were motor and the trigeminal sensory. He became surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital in 1814. After the Battle of Waterloo the following year, he and his brother-in-law, John Shaw, rushed over to the battlefield to provide medical aid for the wounded troopers on both sides. During his work there he sketched the horrific wounds the soldiers had sustained during the Battle. In 1830 he published a further edition of his work, Nervous System of the Human Body, which has been recognised as a classic of medical literature. In 1836 he moved back to Edinburgh, where he had been appointed to the chair of surgery. It was Bell, who gave his name to the condition, Bell’s Palsy, and the thoracic nerve of Bell.

Bell was also deeply religious, and he was invited to contribute to the above book of Natural Theology by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. The book was written according to the provisions of the will of the Earl of Bridgwater, who set up a trust fund for that purpose. Bell’s contribution was the chapter, ‘The Hand: its Mechanisms and Vital Endowments, as evincing design, and illustrating the power, wisdom and goodness of God’, published in 1833.

Bell’s career demonstrates that during the 19th century a prominent and brilliant surgeon and medical scientist could not only be a devout Christian, but also use his knowledge to proclaim God’s existence and glory. While the argument from biological design has been largely discredited following Darwin, nevertheless Bell is outstanding as a both a medical figure and someone who tried to put their faith into practice for God’s glory and the welfare of humanity.