This essay focuses on the history of psychometry, the science of soul measuring. For its founder, Dr Joseph Rodes Buchanan, the soul was simultaneously an object for anthropological research and a measuring instrument capable of revealing human character, interpreting natural history, and demonstrating the reality of an immortal soul. Psychometry taught that human souls, especially those of women, were capable of acting as instruments because they could feel the mysterious energies that people and objects radiated. Although orthodox male scientists rejected the visions of sensitive women as the antithesis of reliable data, psychometric researchers believed that the feelings of women were both the instruments and information that made their science possible. Psychometry promised to revolutionize science by insisting that sympathy and subjectivity, not detachment and objectivity, ought to undergird research. Yet as male experimenters worked to prove psychometry’s effectiveness, they almost invariably cast themselves as detached observers accurately recording the data provided by their female instruments. Thus, despite pushing for scientific reform, the methods and discourse of male psychometric experimenters eroded their field’s core arguments about connectedness and subjectivity and, instead, reinforced the notion that detachment and objectivity were essential to legitimate science. Challenges to objectivity could prove just how thoroughly it dominated scientific discourse and practice. Still, some psychometers, particularly women who practiced at home, were untroubled by the fact that their research was predicated on subjective feelings, and psychometry remained a viable pursuit among spiritualists even as it faded from the realm of science. Psychometry emerged and, ultimately, fractured amid tensions between widespread enthusiasm for sciences that emphasized spiritual connectedness and the mounting pressure to legitimize scientific knowledge through the language and practices of objectivity.

中文翻译：

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测量灵魂：心理测量、女性仪器和主观科学，1840-1910

这篇文章的重点是心理测量的历史，灵魂测量的科学。对于其创始人约瑟夫·罗德斯·布坎南 (Joseph Rodes Buchanan) 博士而言，灵魂既是人类学研究的对象，也是能够揭示人类性格、解释自然历史和展示不朽灵魂现实的测量仪器。心理测量法教导说，人类的灵魂，尤其是女性的灵魂，能够充当工具，因为他们可以感受到人和物体散发出的神秘能量。尽管正统的男性科学家拒绝将敏感女性的愿景视为可靠数据的对立面，但心理测量研究人员认为，女性的感受既是使他们的科学成为可能的工具和信息。心理测量承诺通过坚持同情和主观性来彻底改变科学，不是超然和客观，应该支持研究。然而，当男性实验者努力证明心理测量的有效性时，他们几乎总是把自己塑造成超然的观察者，准确地记录他们女性仪器提供的数据。因此，尽管推动科学改革，男性心理测量实验者的方法和话语侵蚀了他们领域关于连通性和主观性的核心论点，相反，强化了超然和客观性对合法科学至关重要的观念。对客观性的挑战可以证明它是多么彻底地主导了科学话语和实践。尽管如此，一些心理测量师，尤其是在家练习的女性，并不担心她们的研究是基于主观感受，即使心理测量法从科学领域中消失，它仍然是唯心论者的可行追求。心理测量法出现并最终在强调精神联系的科学的广泛热情与通过客观性的语言和实践使科学知识合法化的压力越来越大之间的紧张关系中出现并最终破裂。