The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [27]
In his more mainstream, scientific pursuits, Crookes was also fascinated by sources of energy invisible to the human eye. Even as he conducted his studies with D. D. Home, Crookes worked to refine the design of a piece of laboratory equipment used to observe a still mysterious kind of radiation. This device—which would come to be known as a “Crookes tube”—consisted of a sealed glass bottle, with almost all air removed, and with two electrodes set inside. When a high-voltage electric current passed between the electrodes, the tiny amount of air in the tube would begin to glow. If Crookes then removed all the air, creating a vacuum, a patch of fluorescence would appear on the wall of the tube. Because the light patch was aligned with the negatively charged electrode (called a cathode), the mysterious stream of luminous energy was named a cathode ray. Crookes continued to experiment with this strange radiation, eventually proving that the “rays” traveled in a straight line and could be blocked by objects in their path. Cathode rays themselves remained mysterious for more than a decade until the physicist J. J. Thomson—also using the controlled environment of a Crookes tube—deduced that the rays were streams of highly charged particles that Thomson called electrons.
At the time of his invention, and of his experiments with Home, neither Crookes nor his colleagues had any understanding of the structure of the atom, or of the energy embedded in subatomic particles like the electron. But the sense of natural sources of energy, of physical explanations waiting to be found, simmered in the science community. And it was that awareness of powers yet to be discovered that William Crookes found so compelling when he raised the possibility of a “psychic force” and urged his colleagues to abandon earlier misunderstandings and join with him in the search for it.
Crookes was such a smart scientist, and his reputation still so solid, that his psychical experiments proved difficult to dismiss, even among skeptics. Despite the attacks on his competence, and even his sanity, Crookes knew he was, at least, unnerving some members of the research establishment. Even Charles Darwin, after reading Crookes’s reports, confessed himself “a much perplexed man. I cannot disbelieve Mr. Crookes’ statement, nor can I believe his result.” In genuine dismay, Darwin turned to his friend Huxley for reassurance. Huxley was quick to reply. He did not doubt that a talented conjurer—which he thought defined the mysterious Mr. Home— could fool even a talented scientist. That, he could promise Darwin, was the entire story of the Crookes reports.
Darwin replied with real relief; he disliked wobbling away from the solid ground of scientific reality. He was now content in the knowledge, Darwin told Huxley, that “an enormous weight of evidence would be requisite to make one believe in anything beyond mere trickery.”
In fact, Crookes also agreed that it would take an enormous weight of evidence to accumulate anything like belief. But his response was to advance rather than retreat. There was no one better qualified, he insisted, to dismantle the specious claims and to decipher the credible ones. He wanted researchers who believed, as he did, that “the supremacy of accuracy must be absolute.” If Darwin and Huxley demanded hard evidence, then—in Crookes’s view—unimpeachable researchers were required to cast the “worthless residuum of Spiritualism” away and reveal the promising remainder.
THE SAME YEAR that Crookes issued his call for help, John Tyndall, newly elected