Mesmerism: Effects On Modern Science And Society

Effects of Mesmerism on Modern Science and Society

The 1700’s is considered to be the age of enlightenment. What is enlightenment? This question has been inquired about by historians for years. To me, enlightenment is the wonder and curiosity one shows to expand their mind. In this period, scientists were asking perplexing questions and even came up with quality explanations for these questions, but some scientists had far fetched ideas that would become a type of pseudoscience. The far-fetched idea that will be discussed is Mesmerism. When the idea came to be, it didn’t sound as ludicrous because years earlier, Newton had constructed his theory on gravity. Which explained that every body of matter extorts a force on other bodies of matter.

First off, mesmerism showed the social control of the audience. People could easily be persuaded by flashy shows of pseudoscience. This has a negative effect because if people are that susceptible to these fads of science, then it might affect the way people interpret the truth. An example would be that if everyone believes that mesmerism is better than drugs, some people might die because they don’t know which one holds the truth, so they can’t determine which one will meliorate their symptoms. Another negative effect was that it discredits natural science. Mesmerism used natural science in a way that made it seem like a caricature. It exemplifies the vulnerabilities of its subjects and holds the subject as an arbiter of truth. Mesmerism, in a sense, ruins sentimental empiricism because it can’t be proven wrong, but was discovered to not be right. In a way, mesmerism posed a threat to the social politics made at the time. Some scientists had their ideas rejected from the scientific society and believed in mesmerism. The people of the scientific society thought that these people only believed in mesmerism to take down their society. This would pose a major threat to the government because if these people were indeed about to take down the society then they would have oodles of numbers on their side. As stated earlier, most the people who believed in mesmerism were everyday people (Chapter