The Ragged Edge of Science is a science book

Science book

A science book is a work of nonfiction, usually written by a scientist, researcher, or professor like Stephen Hawking , or sometimes by a non-scientist such as Bill Bryson...

 by L. Sprague de Camp

L. Sprague de Camp

Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...

, illustrated by Don Simpson

Don Simpson (cartoonist)

Don Simpson is an American freelance cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator, most noted for creating Bizarre Heroes, Megaton Man, Border Worlds, and the official comic adaption of King Kong....

. It was first published by Owlswick Press in 1980.

The book is a collection of twenty-two articles (two of them book reviews) on various curiosities and wonders exploring the boundaries between science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 and pseudo-science. "The[ir] common thread is [their] skeptical takes on subjects that are often muddled by paranormal and pseudoscientific claims." De Camp viewed such phenomena from a skeptically rational viewpoint, pointing out the fallacies in supernatural and otherwise fantastic explanations. His debunking efforts were an important and characteristic feature of his nonfiction, and the present collection is a notable instance of it.

Most of the book's constituent articles were originally published in a variety of science magazines, science fiction magazines, and other publications from 1950-1976, including Science Digest

Science Digest

Science Digest was a monthly American magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from 1937 through 1986. It initially had an 8 x 5 inch format with about 100 pages, and was targeted at persons with a high school education level...

, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...

, Astounding Science Fiction

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...

, Science Fiction Stories and its successor Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, Science Fiction Quarterly

Science Fiction Quarterly

Science Fiction Quarterly was an United States based pulp science fiction magazine that was originally published from 1940 to 1943 and then again from 1951 to 1958. While the magazine did not last long, it helped early science fiction writers reach early audiences in the genre. The magazine also...

, Dynamic Science Fiction, Fate, Exploring the Unknown, Fantastic Universe

Fantastic Universe

Fantastic Universe was a U.S. science fiction magazine which began publishing in the 1950s. It ran for 69 issues, from June 1953 to March 1960, under two different publishers. It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishing in the 1950s in the United States, and was moderately...

, the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin

Philadelphia Bulletin

For the 2004 resurrection of the Bulletin, see The Bulletin .The Philadelphia Bulletin was a daily evening newspaper published from 1847 to 1982 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the largest circulation newspaper in Philadelphia for 76 years and was once the largest evening newspaper in the...

, and Amra. Others were published for the first time in the collection.

Contents

• "The Falls of Troy"
• "The Mayan Elephants"
• "The Pyramids of Kush"
• "The Street of the Dead: Teotihuacan"
• "The Tower of Mystery"
• "Tula and the Vanished Toltec
  Toltec
  The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology...
  
  s"
• "The Quarter-Acre Round Table"
• "Faery Lands Forlorn"
• "Bridey Murphy
  Bridey Murphy
  Bridey Murphy is the alias of U.S. housewife Virginia Tighe ; the name of the woman Tighe claimed to have been in her previous life.-Hypnotic regression:...
  
   and the Martian Princess"
• "The Mysterious Kabbalah"
• "The Great Charlatans"

• "The Great Satanist Plot"
• "A Modern Merlin"
• "The Mountain of Light"
• "The Mystic Trance"
• "So You Want to Be a Prophet?"
• "The Decline and Fall of Adam"
• "Worlds in Collision" (book review)
• "The Great Pseudomath"
• "How to Talk Futurian"
• "The So-called Fourth Dimension"
• "Chariots of the Gods?" (book review)

Synopsis

The essays in the book fall into three general categories, dealing with ancient civilizations and certain unscientific theories regarding them, occult-related subjects, and pseudoscience in general. Anecdotes from history and de Camp's travels to some of the locales he writes about pepper the narrative.

The first eight chapters fall into the first category. Discussions of Bronze Age Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

 and the ancient Sudanese civilization of Kush

Kingdom of Kush

The native name of the Kingdom was likely kaš, recorded in Egyptian as .The name Kash is probably connected to Cush in the Hebrew Bible , son of Ham ....

 counter romantic speculations with a resume of what is known of them from historical sources and archaeological investigations. In contrast, the section on King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

, of whom little factual information has been established, puts to rest unverified notions regarding him by tracing the development and elaboration of his legend down through the ages. The chapter on the Maya

Maya civilization

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

 debunks diffusionist theories seeking the origin of their culture in Old World civilizations rather than from indigenous factors. Later sections about Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...

 and the Toltecs serve more as general introductions to these cultures. There is also a brief discussion of the Tour Magne, a Roman ruin in Nîmes

Nîmes

Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and a chapter on myths that discounts them as reliable reportage of prehistoric events.

Chapters in the second category include discussions of memories of previous lives supposedly recovered via hypnosis, the Kabbalah

Kabbalah

Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...

, lives of famous charlatans claiming to have been magicians, such as Cagliostro and Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

, the hoax perpetrated by Leo Taxil

Léo Taxil

Léo Taxil, originally Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès , was a French writer and journalist who became known for his strong anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views....

 and others that purported to expose Freemasonry

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 as devil worship, theosophist

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

 C. W. Leadbeater, the development of occultist cultism around Mount Shasta

Mount Shasta

Mount Shasta is located at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California and at is the second highest peak in the Cascades and the fifth highest in California...

 in Northern California (demonstrated to have a literary basis), and the origins of the mystic trance, with rational explanations for the visions experienced. A satirical chapter of advice on how to set one's self up as a prophet rounds out the section.

An account of the early history of Fundamentalist

Fundamentalist Christianity

Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...

 movement to prohibit the teaching of evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 in schools leads off the third category. There is also a biography of Populist

Populist Party (United States)

The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away...

 politician Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly was a U.S. Congressman, populist writer and amateur scientist, known primarily now for his theories concerning Atlantis, Catastrophism , and Shakespearean authorship, all of which modern historians consider to be pseudoscience and pseudohistory...

 focusing on his speculations regarding Atlantis

Atlantis

Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....

 and like matters, and then a speculative chapter regarding future languages, essentially a didactic piece on language change with application to science fictional treatments of time-travel. It leads in to a discussion of nonscientific claims about the "fourth dimension" in general. This part of the book also includes reviews of Immanuel Velikovsky

Immanuel Velikovsky

Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...

's Worlds in Collision

Worlds in Collision

Worlds in Collision is a book written by Immanuel Velikovsky and first published on April 3, 1950. The book proposed that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth...

and Erich von Däniken

Erich von Däniken

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken is a Swiss author best known for his controversial claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, in books such as Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968...

's Chariots of the Gods?, both of which de Camp discounts.

Reception

Critical reviews of the book were generally positive. Writing in the wake of its release, Tom Easton observed in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact that "[i]f you know L. Sprague de Camp's work at all, you know what to expect ... He's always readable and entertaining, as he sticks his thumbs into gaping holes of fact and logic ... He's full of the straight dope (though he often doesn't go into things as deeply as I would like)." He urged readers to "buy the book." Michael Schuyler, writing for Library Journal, took a more neutral stance, judging only that "[m]ost of these mysteries have been well documented elsewhere, and De Camp [sic] presents no revelations."

More recently, an exhaustive review from 2007 sums up the book as "a very pleasant and readable collection of essays, an excellent and classical example of skeptical writing and debunkery of various kinds of pseudoscientific and paranormal nonsense." The reviewer notes de Camp's "accessible, down-to-earth style," humor, and story-telling expertise, as well as "somewhat conservative opinions ... which occasionally show in his writing." Its conclusion is "[o]verall I highly recommend this book."