Scientists and the historians who study them have, mostly, shied away from paying too much attention to the fringes. They find them unsavoury, perhaps embarrassing, and distracting from studying ‘real science’. I disagree. For one, fringe views about nature are part of the scientific milieu we live in, and you cannot claim to understand how science operates without taking a more catholic perspective. In addition, there are some pretty interesting puzzles that emerge the longer you study the fringes. This essay is about two of them.
We started with the first: that most devotees of a fringe theory are usually committed to more than one. They might start with just one, but fringes have a way of agglomerating. The second puzzle emerges when you scrutinise the first. The accumulation of fringe theories is often not random – it has a structure: fringe theories stack…
Sometimes, the stacking of fringe theories is pretty straightforward. Believing that Earth is flat and that the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 was faked on a soundstage are conceptually distinct beliefs. Nothing about the latter impels you to believe the former. However, believing that Earth is flat essentially requires that you think that NASA’s achievements are part of an elaborate conspiracy: there is no ability to travel to the Moon, nor are the photographs of a globular Earth from space authentic. These fringe theories stack through logical interconnection. Fringe doctrines can also share a political sensibility. The mid- to late-19th-century enthusiasm for spiritualism – communication with ethereal spirits by groups of individuals seated around a séance table in a dimly lit room – tracked with socialism, women’s suffrage and vegetarianism. All were heterodox theories concerned with liberating the oppressed.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member