Religion Magic And The Origins Of Science In Early Modern England

Author : John Henry
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351219286
Total Pages : 554 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Magic, and the Origins of Science in Early Modern England written by John Henry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these articles John Henry argues on the one hand for the intimate relationship between religion and early modern attempts to develop new understandings of nature, and on the other hand for the role of occult concepts in early modern natural philosophy. Focussing on the scene in England, the articles provide detailed examinations of the religious motivations behind Roman Catholic efforts to develop a new mechanical philosophy, theories of the soul and immaterial spirits, and theories of active matter. There are also important studies of animism in the beginnings of experimentalism, the role of occult qualities in the mechanical philosophy, and a new account of the decline of magic. As well as general surveys, the collection includes in depth studies of William Gilbert, Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry More, Francis Glisson, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Isaac Newton.

Author : Allison P. Coudert
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 422 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America written by Allison P. Coudert and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study looks at how the seemingly incompatible forces of science, magic, and religion came together in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to form the foundations of modern culture. As Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America makes clear, the early modern period was one of stark contrasts: witch burnings and the brilliant mathematical physics of Isaac Newton; John Locke's plea for tolerance and the palpable lack of it; the richness of intellectual and artistic life, and the poverty of material existence for all but a tiny percentage of the population. Yet, for all the poverty, insecurity, and superstition, the period produced a stunning galaxy of writers, artists, philosophers, and scientists. This book looks at the conditions that fomented the emergence of such outstanding talent, innovation, and invention in the period 1450 to 1800. It examines the interaction between religion, magic, and science during that time, the impossibility of clearly differentiating between the three, and the impact of these forces on the geniuses who laid the foundation for modern science and culture.

Author : Steven P. Marrone
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1137029781
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of Science, Magic and Belief written by Steven P. Marrone and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-12-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Science, Magic and Belief is an exploration of the origins of modern society through the culture of the middle ages and early modern period. By examining the intertwined paths of three different systems for interpreting the world, it seeks to create a narrative which culminates in the birth of modernity. It looks at the tensions and boundaries between science and magic throughout the middle ages and how they were affected by elite efforts to rationalise society, often through religion. The witch-crazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth century are seen as a pivotal point, and the emergence from these into social peace is deemed possible due to the Scientific Revolution and the politics of the early modern state. This book is unique in drawing together the histories of science, magic and religion. It is thus an ideal book for those studying any or all of these topics, and with its broad time frame, it is also suitable for students of the history of Europe or Western civilisation in general.

Author : Mark A. Waddell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108425283
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe written by Mark A. Waddell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible new exploration of the vibrant world of early modern Europe through a focus on magic, science, and religion.

Author : Keith Thomas
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141932406
Total Pages : 931 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and the Decline of Magic written by Keith Thomas and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-01-30 with total page 931 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.

Author : Bruce Janacek
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271078022
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Alchemical Belief written by Bruce Janacek and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national—and in some cases royalist—loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England’s church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.

Author : Ofer Hadass
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271081759
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England written by Ofer Hadass and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astrologer-physician Richard Napier (1559-1634) was not only a man of practical science and medicine but also a master of occult arts and a devout parish rector who purportedly held conversations with angels. This new interpretation of Napier reveals him to be a coherent and methodical man whose burning desire for certain, true knowledge contributed to the contemporary venture of putting existing knowledge to useful ends. Originally trained in theology and ordained as an Anglican priest, Napier later studied astrological medicine and combined astrology, religious thought, and image and ritual magic in his medical work. Ofer Hadass draws on a remarkable archive of Napier’s medical cases and religious writings—including the interviews he claimed to have held with angels—to show how Napier’s seemingly inconsistent approaches were rooted in an inclusive and coherent worldview, combining equal respect for ancient authority and for experientially derived knowledge. Napier’s endeavors exemplify the fruitful relationship between religion and science that offered a well-founded alternative to the rising mechanistic explanation of nature at the time. Carefully researched and compellingly told, Medicine, Religion, and Magic in Early Stuart England is an insightful exploration of one of the most fascinating figures at the intersection of medicine, magic, and theology in early modern England and of the healing methods employed by physicians of the era.

Author : Randall Styers
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190287926
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Magic written by Randall Styers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.

Author : Helen L. Parish
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1441100326
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader written by Helen L. Parish and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Author : Frank Klaassen
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271085177
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Magic in Elizabethan England written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-12-11 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic. Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.