VIII. Table-Turning as a Problem of Physics

VIII. Table-Turning as a Problem of Physics.VIII. Das Tischrücken als physikalisches Problem.

The Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar says in his Kural: “The learned are called those with eyes; two sores in the face have the unlearned.” The having of eyes that is meant here does not consist in the learned man’s seeing things no one has seen yet, but in his drawing a revelation from everyday phenomena that thousands have already seen. Newton saw the apple fall and discovered gravitation. The lamp Galileo saw swinging in the cathedral at Pisa led him to the discovery of the laws of pendulum motion. Galvani saw frogs’ legs twitch and discovered galvanism. Watt saw the lid of his tea kettle lift and discovered the power of steam. The shirt puffed out by a stream of warm air led Montgolfier to the discovery of aeronautics. Such examples, which can easily be multiplied, show how much the progress of the sciences depends on chance, on an insignificant process being observed by a man with eyes. “Il faut beaucoup de philosophie,” says Rousseau, “pour observer les choses que nous voyons tous les jours” (It takes a great deal of philosophy to observe the things we see every day). But although insignificant observations have often led to the greatest discoveries, there is still the prejudice among the guild scholars that it is not befitting the dignity of science to occupy itself with insignificant things. So Galvani was mocked as the “frogs’ dancing master,” and the telephone would certainly have been perfected much earlier if it had not long been in use as a children’s toy.

Table-turning, which in the fifties spread over Europe like an epidemic, is likewise such an insignificant discovery, which would have had to lead to important physical insights if it had not appeared so very insignificant that our scholars were ashamed to occupy themselves with so silly a thing. But a learned man with eyes can also draw from apparently very silly phenomena new insights: “To blow soap bubbles,” says Herschel, “can become the serious and praiseworthy occupation of a wise man, while children stand round him and gape, and bigger children point their fingers at him in astonishment at such waste of time and folly.”¹⁾ Table-turning was taken up as a children’s game, and as a children’s game it was long ago laid aside again. The blame lay partly in its not staying at the physical phenomenon. It was soon observed that questions put to the table were answered by rhythmic raising and lowering of its feet: the so-called table-rapping. Later small elliptical tables were made, so-called planchettes, which rested on three feet, one of which was a pencil, and now the questions were answered in writing as well. So one had arrived all too quickly at spiritism, and for the learned the matter was thereby done with. They threw out the baby with the bathwater; for the original phenomenon, table-turning proper, is indeed a purely physical problem, and its insignificance may not excuse us from investigating it. Science regards it as one of its tasks to suppress superstition. But this does not happen when one laughs at the phenomenon, but only when one uncovers the natural forces underlying it. If these are enough to explain the phenomenon, we need no spiritism at all; if on the other hand they are not enough, the spiritistic explanation will at least be narrowed down to the field belonging to it.