When Gustav Kuhn was 13, a friend pulled an egg out of his ear.
Kuhn was astounded – but his wonder didn’t abate, even after he learned that the egg was made of foam and had been easily hidden in his friend’s hand.
“I was quite fascinated by those eggs,” he recalls. The trick sparked an obsession with how the brain can be hoodwinked into believing the impossible. “My whole life during my teenage years was centred [on] magic and deception,” he says. “I became completely addicted.”
Kuhn’s adolescent fascination eventually led to a career in magic – although he hasn’t exactly followed the trajectory he had in mind at 13. Though he is a practising magician, he is primarily a psychologist, working to understand what the cognitive quirks that lead us to perceive a rabbit being pulled from a hat or a levitating £5 note can reveal about the brain. “I’ve been trying to create the science of magic, which uses [tricks] as a way of exploring the human mind,” Kuhn says.
It seems to be working – more than 150 “science of magic” papers have been published since the late 2000s. This research attempts to peel back the layers of conscious experience to demonstrate how expectation seems to control our perception of reality and how easily we can be led into making decisions while retaining a sense of agency.
The field, though, has attracted criticism from members of both disciplines. Some scientists worry that it lacks rigour, while some magicians are concerned that these experiments strip the…
