From the Radford Files archives:

The film Creation, starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin, tells the story of Darwin’s revolutionary book On the Origin of Species. Darwin, steeped in the ways of science, was also a skeptic who demanded good evidence for extraordinary claims.

Darwin’s correspondence to friends, family, and colleagues reveals he held very skeptical views about psychics, the paranormal, and alternative medicine. For example, in a September 4, 1850, letter to his second cousin Rev. William Darwin Fox, Darwin was scathingly dismissive of psychic powers (clairvoyance) and homeopathy:

“You speak about Homeopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one’s ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homeopathy common sense & common observation come into play, and both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever.” (Here Darwin is referring to the illogical homeopathic premise that tiny amounts of a drug are more effective than larger doses.)

Darwin then notes that in order for homeopathy to be scientifically tested, it would need to be studied against a control group: “How true is a remark I saw the other day…in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homeopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything…”

A year earlier, in a letter dated March 19, Darwin had written of the gullibility of physician James Manby Gully, who had treated Darwin’s father: “Dr. Gully was a spiritualist [a member of a group that regularly communicated with the dead] & believer in clairvoyance [also known as ESP or mental telepathy]. He bothered my father for some time to have a consultation with a clairvoyant, who was staying at Malvern, and was reputed to be able to see the insides of people & discover the real nature of their ailments.”

To pacify his physician friend, Darwin’s father finally agreed to meet with the self-proclaimed psychic who had so impressed Dr. Gully. But, he insisted, he wanted to test the psychic’s power for himself. “Accordingly, in going to the interview he put a banknote in a sealed envelope. After being introduced to the lady he said \’I have heard a great deal of your powers of reading concealed writings & I should like to have evidence myself: now in this envelope there is a banknote—if you will read the number I shall be happy to present it to you.’”

It was a very simple and fair test: if the psychic could see through a patient’s clothing and flesh to diagnose diseases, surely she could see through a simple, paper-thin envelope and determine the denomination of a bank note. The psychic refused, saying she was insulted at being asked to prove her amazing abilities: “The clairvoyante answered scornfully ‘I have a maid-servant at home who can do that.’”

She did, however, go on to (incorrectly) claim that Darwin’s father had horrible internal diseases—perhaps her spite at the skeptic clouded her psychic abilities.

Darwin’s letters provide a fascinating historical context to paranormal claims. 160 years after Darwin and his father debunked homeopathy and fraudulent psychics, such unproven are still very much with us. Homeopathic remedies can be found on the shelves of most chain drug stores, and many people today claim to diagnose and treat diseases using psychic powers; they no longer call themselves clairvoyants but instead “medical intuitives.”

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