Supernature by Lyall Watson

A book of kookery, by the looks of it.

Did you know that

A blunt razor blade left overnight inside a cardboard model of the Great Pyramid of Cheops will be sharp again in the morning?

A Chicago hotel porter can produce photographs by staring into cameras?

A potted plant registered emotion on a lie detector when an experimenter just decided to burn one of its leaves?

Doesn't sound promising, does it? These sort of factoids fascinated me when I was little, and thought that being published in a book indicated at least some degree of veracity. Let's take a look inside:

John Addey, an english philosopher, has found such rhythms in human birth times. He [found no corellation between being Pisces and dying of polio, but he] found a wave pattern running through the year. This was a regular pattern, which had 120 peaks in the year - it was vibrating in the 120th harmonic. A horoscope is built around an ecliptic circle of 360 degrees, so if the wave pattern is applied to this, it peaks every 3 degrees. Addey went back to his test data and found that a child born every third degree was 37% more likely to contract polio than a child born at other times.

He seems to be arguing that astrology has some scientific validity and is based on interference patterns in the various radiations from stellar bodies. Which sounds like typical pattern-seeking kookery to me.

I expected the book to be written by some fucking hippie, but according to wikipedia he was a respected zoologist and a disciple of Desmond Morris. He died the month before last.

Discard. This book is older than me, if I want to read about kooky theories there are fresh ones on the internet. I feel a little sad to see it go, as though a little of my inclination to seek the unknown is going with it.