Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
by Lewis Wolpert
Faber and Faber, £8.99 (pb), ISBN 978-0-571-23166-3

In some ways I feel these 243 pages are too few. There are so many interesting leads that cannot be followed up (there are references, of course). Occasionally the ideas tumble out so quickly as to muddle the words. “According to the ancient Greeks and their humours, mental illness came from the gods”. The theory of humours was essentially a naturalistic explanation: two ideas seem to have got jumbled. Again, in some places the author is so keen to tell us more, that (it seems to me) the balance of the book is upset. Many false beliefs are listed, particularly in health and religion. Interesting, but perhaps not really advancing the argument.
The essence of the argument is that a “belief engine” has evolved in humans because it was useful, but it may also be inappropriate. The origin, in Wolpert’s view, lies in tool-using. Early hominids used found objects as proto-tools, e.g. stones to break open bones or shellfish.
Unlike other species, they took the next step of modifying their instruments, for example to produce sharp edges, and then the further jump of combining two disparate elements to make a completely new tool, such as a spear from a stick and a sharpedged flint. This involved a new mental process, the realization of what leads to what, that is causality. Envisaging a new product was the origin of belief.
Thus we have a strong tendency to seek causes, even when there are none or they are unknown. Illness is attributed to witchcraft or some incorrect natural cause, and so on. Scientific thinking, which is the only reliable way to discover true causes, is not evolutionarily based, but was invented by the Greeks. Some might think that causality is also the foundation of science. Some may query Wolpert’s view of what a ‘belief ’ is, or think it a long way from flint-knapping to beliefs that daily produce martyrs and murderers. But overall, this is a fascinating and rewarding book.

John Radford

Fakers, Forgers and Phoneys: Famous Scams and Scamps
by Magnus Magnusson
Mainstream, £9.99, ISBN 978-1-84596-210-4

I must begin by admitting that the author of this book, who died in January 2007, was a friend of mine. However, if he weren’t I would still say it’s an excellent and fascinating work. There are four sections, on art forgeries (Keating, van Meegeren, the Cottingley fairies); archaeological frauds (Piltdown Man, the Vinland Map); impostors and hoaxers (the Tichborne claimant, George Psalmanazar); and literary forgeries (Thomas Chatterton, William Henry Ireland).
A constant theme is how easy it is to fool people, even experts: Magnus begins, somewhat inevitably perhaps, with the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Van Meegeren, facing imprisonment or even death for selling a ‘Vermeer’ to Goering, said he had painted it himself and was, of course, disbelieved by the experts who had authenticated it until he painted another before their very eyes. The Cottingley fairies were a joke by two girls that got out of hand: after Conan Doyle fell for it, the perpetrators felt they had to carry on rather than reveal that such a famous and distinguished man had been fooled.
Some of the most interesting stories are those told more briefly than as the subjects of complete chapters, such as: the woman who claimed to be Anastasia; the Hitler diaries; Dr James Barry, the woman who masqueraded as a man and had a successful career as a naval doctor, which might be understandable if she had been big with a deep voice, but she was small and slight with a high voice; the Kensington Stone, allegedly found in Minnesota (the most Nordic state in the USA) and apparently showing that Vikings penetrated that far, but in fact an obvious fake, its ‘runic’ inscriptions being a bizarre mix of modern Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and English; and Nat Tate, a nonexistent artist about whom a book was published with great fanfare, no-one daring to admit never having heard of him. As Magnus says: “The fact is that credulous people can be persuaded to believe anything; there seems no end to people’s gullibility, no matter how crude the forgeries might be.” A good read, and a fitting epitaph to a splendid man.

Ray Ward

The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day
by David S. Katz
Pimlico, £8.99 (pb), ISBN 9780712667869

The main aim of occult practices is “to bring together widely disparate aspects of God’s Creation within a complex structure of connections, sympathies and affinities”. In other words, a supernatural Unified Theory. As Katz points out, this does tend to result in “the readiness to relate the unrelated”, a tendency seen in believers in general.
This is a thorough, highly detailed history of the occult, starting with the ancient Greeks, tracing its development through the Renaissance Neoplatonists, Hermeticists and Kabbalists to the Rosicrucians, Freemasons and Swedenborgians. He also notes the Hermetic roots of Mormonism, which were conveniently forgotten about.
In among the believers there were always sceptics; Hermeticism was debunked by Casaubon in the early 17th century, while the poet Blake challenged Swedenborg. But as ever, they were lone voices in the face of popular belief. The Victorian era was a fertile time, with a revived interest in all things supernatural, the start of psychology, psycho-analysis and anthropology feeding occult interest and Indian ‘mysticism’ thrown into the mix. Jung in particular tried to amalgamate psychoanalysis and the occult.
Meanwhile in America, fundamentalism was born. Perhaps the most speculative part of the book is Katz’s description of it as occult because, he says, fundamentalists believe “firmly in the supernatural world, its influences and manifestations”. Focussing on Revelations and Daniel, they “predict the future through deciphering a document whose meaning is occult, hidden”.
Although this element of fundamentalism is occult in that sense, whether the whole of it can be so described is not entirely proven here, as distinct from a more general (and perhaps more lurid) belief in supernatural forces or predicted events common to many religions, myths and superstitions. Belief in the rapture, speaking in tongues, public faith healing and fundamentalism’s grass-roots appeal rather than shrouds of mystery are perhaps a little too overt to qualify as occult.
That said, this is a useful resource, illustrating both the influences of different people and groups on the occult and the occult’s own influence on society, science and modern beliefs, from the born-again to New Agers.

Tessa Kendall

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think
edited by Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley
Oxford University Press,  ISBN 0-19-929116-0

This sparkling collection of essays is published to mark the 30th anniversary of Dawkins’ first, and most famous book, The Selfish Gene. The 25 contributions are parcelled into sections entitled, Biology, The Selfish Gene, Logic, Antiphonal Voices, Humans, Controversy, and Writing. Daniel Dennett lauds that book as a philosophical essay, and Seth Bullock explains the invention of algorithmic biology, showing the broader intellectual significance of Dawkins’ work. Sceptics will be well aware of his outstanding efforts on behalf of rationalism, and Michael Shermer praises his contribution, along with A. C. Grayling, writing of “the virus of faith”.

Unappetizingly sandwiched between their texts, however, is an essay called A Fellow Humanist by Richard Harries, who turns out to be the Bishop of Oxford, but suspiciously resembles the Reverend J. C. Flannel of Private Eye fame, deploring creationism while clinging to “the divine rationality and ordering of all things”, not quite getting how deadly Universal Darwinism is for cosmic purposive design.

Robert Aunger wonders What’s the Matter with Memes?, and psychologist David Barash makes an unexpected connection with Albert Camus: “the greatest triumphs of human existence arise from human beings struggling to make sense of what is, biologically, a purposeless world”. Consonant, at least, with this overture to existentialism, is Dennett’s reminder that, “one of the central lessons of Darwinian thinking is that essentialism must be abandoned”.

From a literary angle, Philip Pullman celebrates Dawkins as “a storyteller whose tale is true”, and Matt Ridley relates that “an unexpected effect of the success of The Selfish Gene was to revive the central role of the book as a scientific art form”.

For philosopher Helena Cronin, that book and its brilliant successor, The Extended Phenotype, “taught me how, holding steadily to a gene-centred view, I could find the way through muddle.” She aptly likens this gene’s-eye view to “Einstein’s imagined ride on a beam of light”, as “an invitation to journey into unreachable worlds for a clearer understanding of reality”.

Overall, this is an illuminating, even encouraging, guide to the invaluable work of a champion skeptic.

Paul Taylor

Freemasonry
by Giles Morgan
Pocket Essentials, £9.99 (hb), ISBN 13: 978 1 904048 87 9

Freemasonry is often called a “secret society”, but this seems to be an example of a common confusion between a body, membership of which is kept secret, and one which possesses secrets. Freemasons would generally claim the latter status. This book offers a short (160 pp) survey of the subject. Frankly it is rather a poor one. The first two chapters give a reasonable outline of the organization and grades of membership within it. The next fifty pages discuss various supposed origins, which the author does not support or refute, but describes as “speculative”. A cynical reader might prefer the word “rubbish”. The usual suspects are paraded: the Temple of Solomon, Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras, the cult of Dionysus, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Gnostic Gospels, Mithraism, Druids, the Essenes, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Priory of Sion (which the author accepts as a complete hoax, dating from 1956).
The next part is more factual on the development of Freemasonry, though we still wander off into the Invisible College, the French Revolution, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Boston Tea-Party, the death of Mozart and the Order of the Golden Dawn. Finally there is a bit about Freemasonry today, but nothing about its size, or the nature of its membership, or its numerous non-ritual activities. The book is carelessly written, with information repeated unnecessarily and some awkward expressions.
A quick trawl of the internet, or the Encylopaedia Britannica, would have yielded a more informative and factual account. One would like to say that it is good in parts. But the original Punch cartoon (Bishop, at breakfast, to young curate: ”I am afraid you have a bad egg, Mr Jones”. Jones: “Oh no, my lord, I assure you! It is very good in parts”) rests on the fact that eggs cannot be partly good. When so much is (avowedly) speculative, can we rely on the remainder? Perhaps, but only by checking with other sources.

John Radford

The History of Witchcraft
by Lois Martin
Pocket Essentials 2007, £9.99, ISBN 1-904048-77-3

There is no solid evidence that real organised witch cults ever existed. Martin shows how elements of pagan religions and folk beliefs lingered and were framed as witchcraft by the Church – a rival to be stamped out. She takes a chronological approach, showing how a new concept of the Devil emerged in the Middle Ages, along with the idea that magic could be performed only through demonic agency.
The idea of magic as a legitimate natural science was replaced by ideas of servile and heretical pacts with the Devil. Academic necromancers controlled demons while witches served them (conveniently, necromancers were mostly wealthy, well-connected men).
The idea of the coven didn’t appear until the 17th century but the Sabbat’s origins were in Roman accusations against Christians of cannibal orgies.
The magical broomstickflight to the Sabbat emerged in the 11th century, from the night ride where women rode with the goddess, generally doing good deeds.
Trials also came out of the 11th century but took a while to develop into organized seek and destroy missions with an instruction manual. Different countries framed witchcraft differently, in some it was a secular matter while in others it was tried in religious courts and, from the 13th century, by the Inquisition – which, Martin shows, used torture far less than its secular counterparts. Scotland executed three times more witches than England, for example, preferring Continental-style burning to English hanging. In more recent times, after Reason prevailed and witch hunting died out, the witch became a romanticized figure, a force of nature rebelling against the male establishment, adopted by some early feminists as an icon of female power and knowledge. Modern Wicca beliefs have little in common with Mediaeval witchcraft in which there was no white magic, only evil. There is a lot packed into this short book. It is scholarly and readable, neatly summing up the main points without skimping on detail; some of the examples of trials, accusations and significant events almost defy belief.

Tessa Kendall

How to Start Your Own Secret Society
by Nick Harding
Oldcastle, £6.99, ISBN 1-904048-84-6

The title is enough of a hint that this is hardly likely to be a serious academic study. Can it be a manual? Can there be a market out there of people desperate to know how to form secret societies? Is it a satirical work? This is about as useless a book as can be imagined, and as if that were not bad enough, it is one of the worst-written texts outside of school classrooms. This has all the linguistic flair of Mrs Malaprop with the wit of Mr Pooter from The Diary of a Nobody. The pages are littered with gems like these: “Many are desperate to join but they have, perhaps in the past, somewhat sullied their reputations and copybooks or more likely, and this is often the case, their ‘faces do not fit’.” (p. 12) “It will be without question something of a new start, a resurrection, a turning point, and a breath of fresh air to an otherwise (possibly) stale and bland existence.” (p. 33) “Ruins and spurious points of interest on the landscape, if you are able, and this can often be seen as a real tour de force, can be linked up to form some meaningful pattern loaded with symbolism.” (p. 39) “It is worth noting that you must remember to avoid paranoia as this can lead to no end of problematic trouble.” (p. 59) “The Fuhrer was venerated with deference.” (p. 141) “To advertise your existence do not take the direct route, although you can do this of course.” (p. 175) If only Harding had kept his book a secret from society.

Laury Plato

Paranormal Claims: A Critical Analysis
by Bryan Farha
University Press of America, £18.99, ISBN 0-7618-3772-8

An anthology of skeptical writings that includes contributions by James Randi, Michael Shermer and Carl Sagan is not likely to go far wrong, but that last name will alert skeptics to the fact that some of these texts are far from recent. In fact, nearly everything in the book is reprinted from The Skeptical Inquirer, or [the other] Skeptic. Some are taken from the excellent quackwatch.org website.
Among other chapters, Shermer asks “Why Smart People Believe Weird Things”, Ray Hyman explains cold reading, Susan Blackmore delves into near-death experiences, Randi recounts his experiences with his demolition of homeopathy on BBC TV’s Horizon, and Geoffrey Dean astutely reviews the sorry state of astrology. It is very pleasing to read a paper from the Journal of the American Medical Association, co-authored by Emily Rosa, who devised a test when she was only nine years old that ruined the case for “therapeutic touch”.
There are 18 articles altogether. Naturally, the more such analyses are disseminated and read, the better, and subscribers to the above journals will no doubt be glad to re-read these articles in book form. Reluctantly, then, I venture a quibble or two. Professor Farha calls this a critical analysis, which is fair enough, as it instructively and often amusingly leads us around the usual fairground of irrationalities, but it doesn’t seem quite right for the publisher to call it an academic text: one of Farha’s own efforts is a jokey piece about numerology, and Randi’s account of his invaluable TV show is hardly the stuff of learned journals. It may then be better targeted at what used to be called “the intelligent layman”, or, more urgently, at young people in need of a handy antidote to the effluents of New Age whimsy. If so, it’s a shame that this 167-page book is both far too big and far too expensive for the average pocket.

Paul Taylor