Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
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Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1843) by journalist Charles Mackay is a compendium of examples of strange and silly beliefs historically held by societies, and the humorous, destructive, and occasionally murderous consequences of these beliefs.
An entry on the book is in James Randi’s Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. The book is occasionally recommended in his weekly commentaries ([1]).
Contents |
[edit] Subject Matter
The scope of the book is quite broad, covering the following topics:
- Economic market manias
- Alchemy
- Fortune-Telling and Astrology
- Eschatological prophecies
- Magnetisers (a term for those who today might be called “hypnotists” or “faith healers”.)
- Haunted Houses
- Witch-Hunts
- The Crusades
Minor topics include fascination with duels, adoration of relics, and idolization of criminals, and on the lighter side, beard fashion and popular slang phrases.
Particularly in-depth treatment is given to economic bubbles. The first three chapters are detailed accounts of historical economic “bubbles”, including the Dutch “tulip mania” of 1636-1637. Readers may recognize many similarities between the dynamics of these events and later modern economic catastrophes.
The chapter on alchemy outlines the historical development of the pursuit, and provides biographies of its most renowned practitioners.
[edit] Discussion
Unlike more modern books on the subject of delusions and madness, Extraordinary Popular Delusions makes little speculation on the psychological causes of widespread delusion. This is due, perhaps, to the fact that at the time of writing, psychology was a less mature science than it is today, and practically unknown outside philosophical circles. For example, while the chapter upon the “Alchymists” finds the origin of the belief in “[Man’s] dissatisfaction with his lot”, it does not speculate on why such a belief would find tenacious devotion among its practitioners.
While Mackay is undoubtedly incredulous of the delusions he catalogues, this is not a skeptical book in the sense of rationally debunking those delusions. It may be read as an overview of presumed-ridiculous notions, and not as a reference for skeptical arguments. In most cases, the book makes little attempt to demonstrate the folly of the delusions. A few particularly weak arguments are occasionally offered in way of introduction to each matter, for example:
- [Preoccupation with fortune-telling] can only be conquered by a long course of self-examination, and a firm reliance that the future would not be hidden from our sight, if it were right that we should be acquainted with it.
While intended as a criticism of fortune-telling, this argument is particularly anti-science as well; we are “acquainted” with much that was once “hidden from our sight”, in spite of any “firm reliance” on the righteousness of ignorance.
It should be noted that Mackay was a popular writer, and not a historian. Many of the stories reproduced from the historical beliefs of the day have been later subject to a more nuanced view. For instance, scholars today dispute whether the Tulip-mania was the economic disaster that Mackay claims, or whether the end of the first millennium, AD brought about widespread panic within Christendom. As an introduction to the chapter on “Magnetisers”, he makes the incredible claim that an imaginary medicine caused multitudes of scurvy victims to “grow well rapidly”. While it is entirely possible that the placebo effect could make scurvy sufferers feel better, Mackay may himself have adopted a popular delusion in supposing that they had actually been cured.
[edit] Trivia
- An excerpt from the “Crusades” chapter is quoted in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
[edit] Quotes
- Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
- Three causes especially have excited our discontent; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future ... . The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death ... . From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of life... . From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury... .
- How flattering to the pride of man to think that the stars in their courses watch over him, and typify, by their movements and aspects, the joys or the sorrows that await him! He, less in proportion to the universe than the all but invisible insects ... are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines that eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his fate.
- There are so many wondrous appearances in nature, for which science and philosophy cannot, even now, account, that it is not surprising that, when natural laws were still less understood, men should have attributed to supernatural agency every appearance which they could not otherwise explain.
