The Mystery of Space. A Study of the Hyperspace Movement in the Light of the Evolution of New Psychic Faculties and an Inquiry into the Genesis and Essential Nature of Space.
London / New York: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd / Dutton, ND [ 1919 ]. First UK Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. xvi + 396pp. Original navy cloth with gilt lettering to spine, blind rules to upper board, bibliography and index. The scarce first UK edition of this unusual work on the metaphysics of space and human consciousness: it is presumably bound up from sheets of the first US edition. The author Robert Tecumtha Browne (b. 1882), was Secretary General of the "Academy of Nations", an organisation that promoted what would now be regarded as fringe science (for example it firmly rejected Einstein's reletavism). Browne wrote largely on the occult and his "The Mystery of Space" has been described as a "parapsychological book on the dimensions of space": more specifically he sought to apply the theory of hyperspace (a realm whose dimensions number more than three) to the study of concsiousness. Chapters are: Prologue, Historical Sketch of the Hyperspace Movement, Essentials of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Dimensionality, The Fourth Dimension; Part II: Spatiality: An Inquiry into the Essential Nature of Space as Distinguished from Mathematical Interpretation: Consciousness the Norm of Space Determination, The Genesis and Nature of Space, The Mystery of Space, Metageometrical Near-truths, Media of New Perceptive Faculties. Cloth lightly rubbed overall, spine darkened, spine ends and corners bruised and chafed, endpapers unevenly darkened, shadow from old bookshop sticker on front blank. Overall a tight bright VG+ copy (no dust jacket). Item #61614
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