MachineMachine /stream

One of the epigraphs that punctuate Invented Knowledge is from Pascal: "It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false". Whether it is natural or not, it would seem that the false – the extravagant, the fantastical, the grandiose – can at times be so seductive that we suspend our critical faculties in its consideration. Ronald Fritze, a historian and dean at Athens State University in Alabama, is concerned about, and clearly fascinated by, the pseudo-histories and pseudo-sciences – the stories of Atlantis, pre-Ice Age civilizations, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and cosmic catastrophes – which, as he argues, developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and are still with us. "The delivery system for pseudohistorians and pseudoscientists of all stripes", Fritze writes, "now encompasses a charlatan’s playground of film, television, radio, magazines, and the net." Fritze, a committed posit