Part of the Casswiki article series Books
Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance is an academic book, edited by Brian Vickers, of 13 essays, first published in 1984.
The essays in this book demonstrate a combined study of one of the major problems in the recent history of science: To what extent did the “occult sciences” contribute to the scientific revolution of the late Renaissance (16th - 17th century)? It also provides some of the general complexities of renaissance “magic” and discusses the transition from natural magic to natural science.
The essays collected for this book were originally given at a symposium that Vickers organized in June of 1982 at the Centre for Renaissance Studies of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich.
The editor briefly mentioned how he had chosen the contributors:[1]
Contributors were chosen with an eye to balancing distinguished historians of science with less well-known scholars in a variety of subjects: mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, philosophy, history, English and French literature, and the history of universities.
The contributors looks at many of the received ideas on this subject of “occult sciences” and outline new ways of understanding a situation in which two radically different and separate mentalities (“occult” and “scientific”) of describing reality existed side-by-side until the rejection of the “occult sciences” in the late seventeenth century.
See also
- Occult
- Spiritualism
- New Age
References
- ↑ Vickers, Brian (editor). Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, p. xiii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.