Occult Scientific Mentalities

Brian Vickers (Author)

9780521338363, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 June 1986

424 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.64 kg

'This stimulating and scholarly collection of essays … will be of interest not only to students of the history of science but also to all who have occasion to reflect on the nature of history itself.' British Book News

The essays in this volume present a collective study of one of the major problems in the recent history of science: To what extent did the occult 'sciences' (alchemy, astrology, numerology, and natural magic) contribute to the scientific revolution of the late Renaissance? These studies of major scientists (Kepler, Bacon, Mersenne, and Newton) and of occultists (Dee, Fludd, and Cardano), complemented by analyses of contemporary official and unofficial studies at Cambridge and Oxford and discussions of the language of science, combine to suggest that hitherto the relationship has been too crudely stated as a movement 'from magic to science'. In fact, two separate mentalities can be traced, the occult and the scientific, each having different assumptions, goals, and methodologies. The contributors call into question many of the received ideas on this topic, showing that the issue has been wrongly defined and based on inadequate historical evidence. They outline new ways of approaching and understanding a situation in which two radically different and, to modern eyes, incompatible ways of describing reality persisted side-by-side until the demise of the occult in the late seventeenth century. Their work, accordingly, sets the whole issue in a new light.

Editor's preface
Introduction Brian Vickers
1. At the crossroads of magic and science: John Dee's Archemastrie Nicholas H. Clulee
2. The occult tradition in the English universities of the Renaissance: a reassessment Mordechai Feingold
3. Analogy versus identity: the rejection of occult symbolism, 1580–1680 Brian Vickers
4. Marin Mersenne: Renaissance naturalism and Renaissance magic William L. Hine
5. Nature, art, and psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler–Fludd polemic Robert S. Westman
6. The interpretation of natural signs: Cardano's De subtilitate versus Scaliger's Exercitationes Ian Maclean
7. Kepler's attitude toward astrology and mysticism Edward Rosen
8. Kepler's rejection of numerology Judith V. Field
9. Francis Bacon's biological ideas: a new manuscript source Graham Rees
10. Newton and alchemy Richard S. Westfall
11. Witchcraft and popular mentality in Lorraine, 1580–1630 Robin Briggs
12. The scientific status of demonology Stuart Clark
13. 'Reason,' 'right reason,' and 'revelation' in mid-seventeenth-century England Lotte Mulligan
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]