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Paper short abstract:

In the nineteenth century, Spiritualists turned to machinery in a bid to raise the objectivity of their research. The attempt of the Dutch investigators Matla and Zaalberg van Zelst to build a machine for spirit contact is analyzed, with a focus on the problems they encountered persuading others.

Paper long abstract:

New technologies have a way of shaping every single aspect of a given culture. Religion in this way is no exception. After the upsurge of Spiritualism in the second half of the nineteenth century, proponents of a scientific investigation of the afterlife more and more turned towards machines for their alleged objectivity.

In this paper, the case study of the Dutch amateur psychical researchers Matla and Zaalberg van Zelst is taken into consideration. These two men claimed to have built machines that allowed communication with spirits independent from mediums (therefore attempting to exclude explanations such as fraud). Using these machines, they wrote a new chemistry-based view of what happens after death, with their main informant being the alleged spirit of Zaalberg van Zelst's father. Four books were dedicated to the endeavor, but without much success in the form of continued research (barring one falsification by a fellow psychical researcher).

Cases such as the one of Zaalberg van Zelst and Matla show the difficulties that arise when technology is used to prove a religious point of view right. The researchers' search for objectivity, and the criticisms of their opponents, show the negotiations that can ensue when claims are made for a scientifically proven (form or aspect of) religion. Other, shorter, examples will highlight how the problems Zaalberg van Zelst and Matla encountered were far from unique: their approach was structurally very similar to many afterlife-related research before and after them.

The study of religion can learn from such attempts what happens when technology is attempted to be utilized for the verification of a religious view of the afterlife. Of special interest is the active engagement such attempts brought with it, proving that we should be careful with labeling such endeavors as mostly rhetoric in nature.