Chapter Summary Of The Book 'Speaking Into The Air'

In chapter two: History of an Error: The Spiritualist Tradition, in his book “speaking into the air”, author John Peters explains about the spiritualism tradition and communication. He talks about early Christianity, especially the writing of Saint Augustine, British empiricism, especially the writing of John Locke, and the varieties of nineteenth century from mesmerism through psychical research (pg63). He explains that the spiritual view of communication rests on a vision of the self as an eternal, self-identical soul whose nature is not affected by its embodiment, and claims that communication involves establishing some identity between two souls (pg 65). Saint Augustine claimed that the best communication is the divine communication between God and angels and human communication is not completed because there is words and sounds involved because a perfect communication doesn’t need any medium.
He states that communication depends on language and speech. He believed that communication is a successful act of speech that at the end of the speech hearer may understand the ideas of the teller. Also, writer explains that nineteenth century’s spiritualism is about vocabulary and a repertoire of imagines to thinking about what communication might be (pg63), talks about Mesmer and his ideas animal magnetism and controlling other people’s thought. J.G. Fichte, the founder of German idealism, called animal magnetism “the physicalization of idealism” (pg 93). Invention of telegraph and radio a new way of communication appears for human being. Peters, through this chapter, claims that this concept of communication how goes from connection of god and angels goes to the modern notion of