Skip to content
Libra Esoterica

Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance

by Brian Vickers

  • First published:
  • 20th century
  • Language: English

Description

Description from OpenAlex (opens in a new tab)

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.

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Alchemy and Hermeticism, Astrology, Divination and oracles, Occultism and esotericism, and Ritual magic and grimoires.

  • Occultism and esotericism

    Controlled discovery queries from openalex matched “occultism”. Retained metadata contains “occult” in the title, “occult” in the description, “Occult sciences” in the description, and 2 additional metadata match(es).

    • “occultism”· via OpenAlex
    • “occult”· in title
    • “occult”· in description
    • “Occult sciences”· in description
    • “occult”· in subject
    • “occult”· in edition title
  • Ritual magic and grimoires

    Retained metadata contains “Magic” in the description and “Magic” in the subject metadata.

    • “Magic”· in description
    • “Magic”· in subject
  • Alchemy and Hermeticism

    Retained metadata contains “Alchemy” in the description and “Alchemy” in the subject metadata.

    • “Alchemy”· in description
    • “Alchemy”· in subject
  • Astrology

    Retained metadata contains “Astrology” in the description and “Astrology” in the subject metadata.

    • “Astrology”· in description
    • “Astrology”· in subject
  • Divination and oracles

    Retained metadata contains “Numerology” in the description.

    • “Numerology”· in description

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

Read & download

Where a scan or ebook exists, it is listed here.

No public full text is known for this record.

None of our sources reported a scan or ebook. It may exist elsewhere — these searches are a good next step.

Buy or borrow

No ISBN on record, so the Amazon link searches by title and author. WorldCat shows libraries near you that hold a copy.

Editions

One edition cataloged here.

OpenAlex scholarly book record

1984-01-01Cambridge University Press; Cambridge University Press eBooksEnglish—Unknown

Subjects

25 subject headings

Identifiers & provenance

How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.

Cataloged from

Catalog id
openalex:W4300826946
Edition coverage
Openalex source record
Retrieved