Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Editor's preface
- Introduction
- 1 At the crossroads of magic and science: John Dee's Archemastrie
- 2 The occult tradition in the English universities of the Renaissance: a reassessment
- 3 Analogy versus identity: the rejection of occult symbolism, 1580–1680
- 4 Marin Mersenne: Renaissance naturalism and Renaissance magic
- 5 Nature, art, and psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler–Fludd polemic
- 6 The interpretation of natural signs: Cardano's De subtilitate versus Scaliger's Exercitationes
- 7 Kepler's attitude toward astrology and mysticism
- 8 Kepler's rejection of numerology
- 9 Francis Bacon's biological ideas: a new manuscript source
- 10 Newton and alchemy
- 11 Witchcraft and popular mentality in Lorraine, 1580–1630
- 12 The scientific status of demonology
- 13 “Reason,” “right reason,” and “revelation” in midseventeenth-century England
- Index
12 - The scientific status of demonology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Editor's preface
- Introduction
- 1 At the crossroads of magic and science: John Dee's Archemastrie
- 2 The occult tradition in the English universities of the Renaissance: a reassessment
- 3 Analogy versus identity: the rejection of occult symbolism, 1580–1680
- 4 Marin Mersenne: Renaissance naturalism and Renaissance magic
- 5 Nature, art, and psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler–Fludd polemic
- 6 The interpretation of natural signs: Cardano's De subtilitate versus Scaliger's Exercitationes
- 7 Kepler's attitude toward astrology and mysticism
- 8 Kepler's rejection of numerology
- 9 Francis Bacon's biological ideas: a new manuscript source
- 10 Newton and alchemy
- 11 Witchcraft and popular mentality in Lorraine, 1580–1630
- 12 The scientific status of demonology
- 13 “Reason,” “right reason,” and “revelation” in midseventeenth-century England
- Index
Summary
We use the word “supernatural” when speaking of some native belief, because that is what it would mean for us, but far from increasing our understanding of it, we are likely by the use of this word to misunderstand it. We have the concept of natural law, and the word “supernatural” conveys to us something outside the ordinary operation of cause and effect, but it may not at all have that sense for primitive man. For instance, many peoples are convinced that deaths are caused by witchcraft. To speak of witchcraft being for these peoples a supernatural agency hardly reflects their own view of the matter, since from their point of view nothing could be more natural.
In a treatise on witchcraft first published in Trier in 1589 a German bishop explained that all apparently occult operations that were not in fact miracles could be ascribed in principle to physical causes. For whether or not any particular instance was actually demonic in inspiration, “magic” was simply the art of producing wonderful natural effects outside the usual course of things and above the common understanding of men. It followed that “if this part of philosophy was practised in the schools in the manner of the other ordinary sciences … it would lose the name of ‘magic’ and would be assigned to physics and natural science [et Physicae naturalique scientiae asscriberetur].” Likewise, in a set of theses on magical operations and witchcraft published a year later in Helmstädt, a natural philosopher and physician began by arguing that “magical actions and motions are reducible to considerations of physics [Ad Physicam considerationem reducuntur motus et actiones magicae]”.
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- Occult Scientific Mentalities , pp. 351 - 374Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984
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