Parascientific Revolutions by Derek Lee, Hardcover, 9781517918880 | Buy online at The Nile
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Parascientific Revolutions

The Science and Culture of the Paranormal

Author: Derek Lee   Series: Proximities

Parascientific Revolutions
Hardcover
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25th November 2025
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Hardcover

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Description

Unraveling the hidden influence of the paranormal on science, literature, and belief

Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis: these attributes of the paranormal mind are widely dismissed as nonsense, but what can an exploration of such pseudoscientific phenomena tell us about accepted scientific and cultural thought? In Parascientific Revolutions, Derek Lee traces the evolution of psi epistemologies across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to uncover how these ideas have migrated into scientific fields such as quantum physics and neurology, as well as diverse literary genres including science fiction, ethnic literature, and even government training manuals.

Lee introduces the groundbreaking concept of "parascience," a dynamic cultural space where ideas rejected by the scientific establishment blend with alternative strains of literary, mythic, and philosophical thought to regenerate and return to mainstream discourse. From early modernist works by James Joyce to postwar speculative fiction by Philip K. Dick to ethnofuturist narratives by Ruth Ozeki, Parascientific Revolutions demonstrates how cultural and intellectual currents reshape paranormal ideas over time. Examining psychic surveillance programs like Project Stargate and bizarre particles of extrasensory perception such as the psitron, Lee illustrates the ways paranormal concepts persist and evolve to influence culture.

Presenting pseudoscience as an inevitable by-product of the scientific process, Parascientific Revolutions offers fresh insight into how the paranormal mind continually challenges our understanding of knowledge and belief. It invites readers to reconsider the boundaries between science and the unknown, revealing a world where speculative thought and empirical investigation are deeply intertwined.

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Critic Reviews

"In these pages, Derek Lee engages the 'pseudoscience' moniker, that ultimate rhetorical insult, and seeks to replace it with a more accurate 'parascience'--a place where science and that which is other than science meet and express themselves in literally global pathways as distinct as pulp and science fiction, environmental thought, Asian and Indigenous ways of knowing, U.S. secret espionage, and ethnic fiction. Lee shows all of this with consummate skill and rigor, pushing us beyond our present impasses. This thing is not going away. This is a revolution."--Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else

"Derek Lee delves into the rich history of the paranormal to instigate a captivating discussion of its influence on literature and science into the twenty-first century through SF and ethnic fictions with the unproven concepts of parascience--precognition, telekinesis, clairvoyance, spectral communication, and telepathy. A classic in the making!"--Isiah Lavender III, author of Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement

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About the Author

Derek Lee is assistant professor of literature at Wake Forest University.

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Product Details

Publisher
University of Minnesota Press
Published
19th August 2025
Pages
296
ISBN
9781517918880

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