Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

MAGIC, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE by Mark A. Waddell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. x + 220 pages, including an annotated bibliography and index. Paperback; $25.99. ISBN: 9781108441650. *For decades, it has been commonplace among historians of science to recognize the essential interconnections between Christianity and the early origins of the natural sciences, even if some non-historians continue to struggle to relinquish the more titillating revival of a conflict between them. The reality is that the social and intellectual history of theology and natural philosophy have vast overlapping boundaries. The history of the modern natural sciences is no less continuous with the ideas and practices of magic, alchemy, and astrology. While Enlightenment sensibilities chafe at the notion, historical research, much in the same vein as studies in "Science and Religion," is incontestable. Mark A. Waddell's brief introduction to the subject quickly brings the reader into this consensus without sacrificing the nuance needed to avoid oversimplification. *The strongest chapters are in the first half of the book, where Waddell introduces the Renaissance interest in Hermetic philosophy (chap. 1), then newly discovered among ancient texts (though not so ancient as they were first thought to be). The author proves to be a practiced communicator, able to simplify and condense a range of philosophical principles. He also succeeds in connecting philosophies with the perennial social problems and questions of ordinary human experience. In this way, he is consistent with a long line of scholars writing on the subject, from Keith Thomas's, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) forward. The subject of witchcraft and demonology (chap. 2) is treated as the manifestation of social anxieties within European culture more generally. *The broadest principle of magic is covered in chapter 3, "Magic, Medicine, and the Microcosm," in which Waddell explains the overarching analogy between the greater universe out there and our mundane existence down here. This forms the basis for both astrology-based medicine (noting concordances between either herbs or organs with their astrological counterparts and using them to heal) or judicial astrology, which sought to understand the past and map the future by virtue of astrological motions. And Waddell presents this as a normal part of early-modern thinking among churchmen and commoners alike. *The second half of the book covers topics which may be more easily recognized as parts of modern natural science: Galileo, Copernicus, Boyle, and Newton. Chapter 4, "A New Cosmos," uses a most creative and pedagogically sensitive introduction to the radical proposal of a world system in which the earth is not motionless and at the center of the universe. Waddell uses the demotion of Pluto from planetary status in 2006 and the subsequent public backlash, and asks the reader to imagine, a fortiori, how the public might react to an even greater disruption of received astronomical dogma, however empirically informed. Waddell returns again in chapter 5, "Looking for God in the Cosmic Machine," to ancient philosophy, showing how Epicurean atomism presented an old philosophical problem anew in the philosophies of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi, focusing on the question of the nature of the soul. Here the continuity of ancient and new philosophies is maintained, illustrating the ongoing development and connected history between modern natural science, magic, and religion. *That continuity might have been better represented with more emphasis on the philosophy of Aristotle and scholasticism. While Aristotle's philosophy is discussed in several places throughout the book, such as in the discussion above on the soul, a dedicated chapter would have been appropriate given the dominance of Aristotle in Western intellectual culture from the end of the thirteenth century through the end of the seventeenth. This weakness of the book was evident in chapter 6 in the section on Francis Bacon and the inductive method. Waddell says, "Bacon founded his ideas about experience and experiment on what is known as inductive reasoning, or induction … In choosing to focus on singular observations, Bacon was of course doing exactly what Aristotle taught his students not to do" (p. 166). *Aristotle never gave such instruction. In fact, Aristotle describes induction in his Posterior Analytics, Book I, in the first sentence: "All teaching and learning of an intellectual kind proceed from pre-existent knowledge … Similarly with arguments, both deductive and inductive: they effect their teaching through what we already know, the former assuming items which we are presumed to grasp, the latter proving something universal by way of the fact that the particular cases are plain" (Barnes translation, 1975). *Waddell misses that Bacon's emphasis on induction was not novel except in emphasis. The new science was an extension of old principles newly revived. *This introduction closes with a coda, extending briefly into the Enlightenment. This section is handled a little too quickly, but well enough to present some of the subtleties necessary to link it to its past. Not only does he present how Enlightenment intellectuals were embarrassed by Newton's alchemical adventures, but how the mechanical forces of modern science themselves still betray underlying occult qualities that formerly traveled under other names. *The author often used the word "problematic" (over twenty times) throughout the book: for example, in the sentence, "It is important to note that, however problematic the idea of a mechanical universe might have been, it did not disappear." The author uses the word so often, it is unclear if he merely means something less specific, like "challenging," as in "difficult to absorb" in one's concepts of the natural world, or more narrowly as something that violates social and political norms. Since Waddell in other places in the book seeks to contextualize these events of four hundred years ago within a modern idiom, it is at least plausible that he wishes us to connect the intensity of the social dramas of today with those past events. If so, an explicit recognition of that would have been helpful to the reader. *This book is suitable for an undergraduate course in the history of science, especially if flanked by primary source readings under the guidance of the instructor. A person with no background in the subject would also find this an accessible entry point into the subject, from which they could move on to more detailed studies, such as those noted in the bibliography. *Reviewed by Jason M. Rampelt, History of Science and Medicine Archivist, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.