The Soul of Things

The Soul of Things, by William Denton and Elizabeth M. F. Denton, published by Walker, Wise and Company in 1863, is the primary nineteenth century text recording the Dentons' geological-specimen reading experiments, an extension of Joseph Rodes Buchanan's earlier psychometry claims into geology and paleontology. As a primary source, it is authoritative for what the Dentons themselves claimed to observe and how they described their method, which is the fact this atlas draws on it for. Its claims of psychically reading the history of mineral specimens were never independently replicated under controlled conditions and have no standing in modern science; cite it for the historical claim, not as evidence the phenomenon is real.