Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Good in Good+ dust jacket. (1984). First Edition. Hardcover. 0521258790 . Ex-library. Library labels and markings. Light creasing to some leaves. Dampstain to margin of some leaves at rear. Fading to dust-jacket spine. Dust-jacket protected in archival mylar cover.; [2 (blank)], xiv, 408, [8 (blank)] pages. Brown cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine. Page dimensions: 227 x 149mm. Various contributors. Contents: "At the Crossroads of Magic and Science: John Dee's Archemastrie" by Nicholas H. Clulee; "The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance: a reassessment" by Mordechai Feingold; "Analogy versus Identity: the Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680" by Brian Vickers; "Marin Mersenne: Renaissance Naturalism and Renaissance Magic" by William L. Hine; "Nature, Art, and Psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler-Fludd Polemic" by Robert S. Westman; "The Interpretation of Natural Signs: Cardano's 'De Subtilitate' versus Scaliger's 'Exercitationes'" by Ian Maclean; "Kepler's Attitude toward Astrology and Mysticism" by Edward Rosen; "Francis Bacon's Biologial Ideas: a new manuscript source" by Graham Rees; "Newton and Alchemy" by Richard S. Westfall; "Witchcraft and Popular Mentality in Lorraine, 1580-1630" by Robin Briggs; "The Scientific Status of Demonology" by Stuart Clark; "'Reason,' 'Right Teason,' and 'Revelation' in mid-seventeenth-century England" by Lotte Mulligan; Index. "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." .