Occult Scientific Mentalities

The essays collected in this volume were originally given at a symposium that I organized in June 1982 at the Centre for Renaissance Studies of the ETH, Zürich. The Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule was founded in 1855 on the model of Napoleon's Ecole Polytechnique at Paris and in the wake of similar foundations at Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and Stuttgart, all of which were designed to supplement the arts curriculum of the older universities with teaching and research in science, technology, and architecture. Because the ETH has had a department of the humanities from its foundation (the first professor of art history was Jacob Burckhardt; Francesco de Sanctis held the first chair of Italian), and because its modern luminaries include both Einstein and Jung, it may be thought a not inappropriate setting for a conference on the relations between science and the occult. Whether or not the genius of the place exerted an influence on the proceedings is a question that had better be left open. At all events, the discussions were extremely lively and were marked by frequent challenging references to the texts (delegates seemingly happening to have with them copies of Thomas Aquinas, Newton, Cornelius Agrippa, and others). Among those who took a valuable part in the discussion, but who are not represented in this book, I should like to thank J. E. McGuire (University of Pittsburgh), Richard Gordon (University of East Anglia), G. A. J. Rogers (Keele University), and Keith Hutchison (University of Melbourne).