# Levitation as a scientific claim

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH09.P016](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH09.P016/#char=570,633): "Science will even admit the Ascension if you call it Levitation"

William Crookes supplies a concrete contemporary comparison. In *Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism* (1874; inspected in Esalen’s digital transcription of the original edition), he reported seeing D. D. Home rise from the floor on three occasions, and argued that rejecting the accumulated testimony would undermine human testimony generally (pp. 89–90, Class VI). The resemblance to Chesterton’s argument is striking, but does not establish direct borrowing.

Crookes’s opening essay also complicates the claim that science was simply accepting miracles under new names. He distinguished unexplained phenomena from their supposed spiritual cause and demanded instruments and precautions against deception (pp. 3–7). His report documents one investigator’s affirmative judgment, not a scientific consensus. Chesterton’s joke exposes the possible power of terminology to change reception; it does not establish that a séance levitation and Christ’s Ascension have the same cause or religious meaning. The invented ‘Regalvanisation’ extends the joke by dressing resurrection in the language of electrical reanimation.

## Sources

- [William Crookes, Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (1874), digital transcription](https://www.esalen.org/ctr/crookes-researches), ‘Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science,’ pp. 3–7; ‘Notes of an Enquiry,’ Class VI, pp. 89–90

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