Chapter 20—Reflexivity and the Trickster

1 In a letter to his mother, 3 April 1950. Translated and quoted by Dawson,

1997, p. 30. Emphasis is Dawson’s.

Quoted in Ashmore (1989, p. 24), citing: “Latour, Bruno, 1978, Observing scientists observing baboons observing … New York: Wenner Grenn Foundation for Anthropological Research, July. (Latour 1978:24, n. 14).”

Mehan and Wood, 1975, p. 167.

Ashmore, 1989, p. 234.

5 Babcock, 1980, p. 2.

6 Ashmore, 1989, p. 25.

7 Ashmore, 1989, p. 22.

8 Wallace, 1968, p. 125.

Garfinkel, 1967, p. 37.

10 Ibid. p. 38.

11 Mehan and Wood, 1975, p. 90.

Mehan and Wood, 1975, pp. 208-209. Although their book is jointly authored, Mehan and Wood use the singular voice. In the Preface they say “Whoever enters the form of life this book embodies becomes the ‘I’ who speaks here” (p. vii). This statement appears to have been derived independently of deconstruction-

ist literary theory.

Mehan and Wood, 1975, p. 6.

14 Leach, 1974, p. 34.

15 Mehan and Wood, 1975, p. 209.

16 Ibid. p. 223.

17 Edmund Leach was one of the first to call attention to the fictional nature of Castaneda’s work. See his review of The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Leach,1969). Leach was not the only British structuralist to comment on Castaneda. Rodney Needham’s book Exemplars (1985) has a relevant chapter; and it has another chapter on a confidence artist.

18 De Mille‘s The Don Juan Papers also discusses Garfinkel and the Agnes

case.

Woolgar, 1996, p. 828.

20 Woolgar, 1988, p. 17.

An incident in Latour’s career demonstrates the antagonism SSK evokes. Clifford Geertz, the head of the school of social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, wanted Latour appointed to a position at the Institute. There was such an outcry against him that the nomination was withdrawn, and eventually the school returned $500,000 to the foundation that would have sponsored Latour‘s position. See Undressing the Emperor by Madhusree

Mukerjee, Scientific American, March, 1998, pp. 30, 32.

Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: A Source Book edited by H. M. Collins, Bath, U.K.: Bath University Press, 1982. Collins and Pinch (1982, 1993). Collins (1985, 1989).

Those interested in the replicability issue in parapsychology may wish to examine The Repeatability Problem in Parapsychology: Proceedings of an International Conference Held in San Antonio, Texas October 28—29, 1983 edited by Betty Shapin and Lisette Coly, New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1985.

Robert Rosenthal, 1966, 1994.

Pygmalion in the Classroom by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Letter and telephone call, 02 & 06 October 1998. See The Silent Languages of Classrooms and Laboratories by Robert Rosenthal, Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Number 8, 1971 edited by W. G. Roll, R. L. Morris, and J. D. Morris, 1972, pp. 95-116, Copyright by the Parapsychological Association, Durham, North Carolina.

See the article by Palmer, Honorton and Utts (1989, p. 38) for details.

Goleman, 1988, p. 105.

28 Hofstadter, 1979, p. 251.

Psi and Internal Attention States by Charles Honorton (1977). A fair amount of this research involved groups of subjects, where the problems of deception were relatively minor.

For a discussion, see Gödel’s Proof by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, New York: New York University Press, 1958.

Ellenberger, 1964/1968.

Dawson, 1997, pp. 29-30.

For his interest in demons, see Kreisal, 1980, p. 218. I examined some of Godel’s private papers now held by Princeton University and found references to demons. Relevant papers on demons in the Princeton University archives are found in the Godel collection in Box 7A, Folders 03/107 (Theology Notebook 1) and 03/108 (Theology Notebook 3). Unfortunately most, but not all, of his notes

were made in an obscure German shorthand.

Wang, 1987, p. 5.

Deconstruction Reframed by Floyd Merrell, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1985, p. 64.

36 Rucker, 1982/1983, p. 2.

Smullyan is a mathematician, philosopher, and also a magician. Pound-stone’s connection with magic should not go unnoticed. He publicly revealed a number of conjurer’s methods in his books Big Secrets (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983) and Bigger Secrets (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986), to the annoyance of magicians.

Gardner took issue with some of Rucker’s ideas on psychic phenomena.

Some biographical material is available. See the September 1979 issue of The Two-Year College Mathematical Journal, which carried a long autobiographical piece (Gardner, 1979) and an interview with him (Barcellos, 1979). John Booth’s Dramatic Magic (1988) has biographical material on Gardner, as well as on James Randi and Walter Gibson. All three have written extensively on

the paranormal.

For a reprinting of that review of his The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener and an additional commentary, see Gardner’s The Night Is Large, 1996, pp. 481—487.

e.g., Science 81, July/August, pp. 32—37; Newsweek, November 16, 1981,

p. 101.

The Mathematical Gardner edited by David A. Klarner, Boston, MA: Prin-dle, Weber & Schmidt, 1981.

Review by Marion Dearman, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 484-485.

44 Ibid, p. 280.

Booth, 1988, p. 194.

The source of information for his not attending the MAA meeting is John Booth’s Dramatic Magic (1988), p. 196.

Gardner is not the first to have such diverse interests. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) wrote on mathematics and logic puzzles, dabbled in conjuring, and was a member of the Society for Psychical Research. Gardner did The Annotated Alice (New York: Bramhall House, 1960) which explained the subtleties of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Gardner mentioned that he felt spiritual kinship with Carroll. See The Universe in

a Handkerchief: Lewis Carroll’s Mathematical Recreations, Games, Puzzles, and Word

Plays (New York: Copernicus An Imprint of Springer-Verlag, 1996), p. ix.

See A Bibliography of Martin Gardner in Magic by Dana Richards. In Martin Gardner Presents by Martin Gardner (Edited by Matthew Field, Mark Phillips, Harvey Rosenthal, and Max Maven). Published by Richard Kaufman and

Alan Greenberg, 1993. Pp. 399-415.

Elsewhere I have discussed the differing safeguards required in research with groups as opposed to that with gifted individuals. See Hansen, 1990a.

Jurgen Keil, How A Skeptic Misrepresents the Research with Stepanek: A Review of Martin Gardner’s How Not To Test A Psychic, Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 54, 1990, pp. 151-167. See also Milan Ryzl’s letter in the Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 54, 1990, pp. 282-284. Gardner responded to Keil in a letter in the Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 55, 1991, pp. 116, followed by a rebuttal by Keil in the same issue, pp. 116-118. John Beloff reviewed the book in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (Vol. 56, 1990, pp. 171-175) and seemed to admit the problems with the controls. However, Beloff’s ability to evaluate technical merits of experiments, and criticisms, might be charitably described as limited.

My own article “The Research with B.D. and Legacy of Magical Ignorance” (1992) reinforced this message, and Gardner provided helpful information

when I prepared that critique.

“The Ganzfeld Psi Experiment: A Critical Appraisal” in the Journal of Parapsychology, 1985, Vol. 49, pp. 3-49. That was immediately followed by a rebuttal by Charles Honorton, “Meta-analysis of Psi Ganzfeld Research: A Response to Hyman,” pp. 51-91.

Letter from Milan Ryzl, Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 54, 1990, p. 284.

Barcellos, 1979, p. 243.

Parapsychology has suffered a long history of invalid statistical criticisms. Even back in the 1930s Rhine was subjected to attacks from ignorant psychologists. Professional statisticians, who were not as well established as they are today, became alarmed because they recognized that the attacks on Rhine also besmirched their own discipline. Eminent statisticians Thornton Fry, S. S. Wilks, Edward Huntington, and Burton Camp were in touch with Rhine. A statement was prepared and issued by Camp, president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, defending Rhine’s statistics. For more on this see Mauskopf and McVaugh’s The Elusive Science, p. 258.

Gardner, 1977/ 1981b, A Skeptic’s View of Parapsychology, Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, p. 141.

57 His statement about the inability to evaluate the Honorton and Schmidt experiments was made 12 years before he published his Stepanek critique. Presumably Gardner would not make such a statement now.

58 Pinch and Collins, 1984. For CSICOP policy, see Policy on Sponsoring Research, Testing Individual Claims, and Conducting Investigations of Alleged Paranormal Powers and Phenomena, Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1982, p. 9.

59 Gardner, 1983/1988, Fool’s Paradigms, The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher, pp. 184-187.

60 The quote is from How Not to Test a Psychic, p. 56. Gardner also raised the point earlier in lengthy a debate on parapsychology in the pages of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1987, see p. 587.

61 Gardner, 1988, p. 18.

62 See the earlier chapter Conjurors and the Paranormal; Truzzi, 1997; Hansen, Magicians Who Endorsed Psychic Phenomena, 1990, Magicians on the Paranormal, 1992.

63 Order and Surprise by Martin Gardner, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1983, p. 213.

64 Prince, 1930.

65 The two quotes are from pages 57 and 58 of The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.

66 Gardner, 1983, p. 239.

67 Ibid. p. 232.

68 A Mind at Play: An Interview with Martin Gardner by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer, March/April, 1998, pp. 34-39, see p. 38.

69 Gardner, 1983, p. 330.

70 Ibid. p. 331.

71 Though The Flight of Peter Fromm was narrated by a secular humanist professor, the author’s sympathies were more with his young protagonist who maintained a belief in God. Not everyone understood this, but one who did was Phillip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a prominent Christian creationist. Johnson bought a dozen of Gardner’s remaining copies of the 1973 edition of the novel and gave them to students and friends, resulting in a surprising, almost paradoxical, audience. Paul Kurtz’s publishing house, Prometheus Books, reprinted the novel in 1994, and one wonders whether Kurtz understood Gardner’s message and whether he was pleased with the readership. Johnson’s interactions with Gardner are described in Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (1995), Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press, pp. 236-238.

72 Latour, 1988, p. 168.

73 Ibid. p. 167.

74 Gatling and Rhine, 1946.

75 Rhine made it clear that experimental parapsychology had implications for religion, and he included a full chapter on it in The New World of the Mind (1953).

76 Gardner, 1988, pp. 57-64.

77 Gardner, 1992, pp. 111-117.

78 Harper’s magazine (March 1991, pp. 28-31) carried a transcript of a telephone conversation between Mims and Jonathan Piel, editor of Scientific American, which demonstrated the overt religious discrimination by Scientific American.

In an article he wrote under the pseudonym of George Groth for the October 1952 issue of Fate magazine. (He Writes with Your Hand, by George Groth, Fate, Vol. 5, pp. 39-43.) That issue of Fate also carried an article by J. B. Rhine.

80 Ashmore, 1989, p. 21.

81 Ashmore, 1989, p. 42.

82 Mehan and Wood, 1975, p. 159.