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Patricia S. Churchland
Braintrust, 02/2011Book Chapter
Trial by ordeal seemed to me, as I learned about it in school, ridiculously unfair. How could it have endured as an institution in Europe for hundreds of years? The central idea was simple: with God’s intervention, innocence would plainly reveal itself, as the accused thief sank to the bottom of the pond, or the accused adulterer remained unburned by the red hot poker placed in his hand. Only the guilty would drown or burn. (For witches, the ordeal was less “forgiving”: if the accused witch drowned she was presumed innocent; if she bobbed to the surface, she was guilty,
