From Paracelsus to Newton. Magic and the Making of Modern Science (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 12 5 phy." The recent research of John Henry, for example, has shown bow such midseventeenth century thinkers as Thomas White and Kenelm Digby, working within an essential!y Aristotelian tradition, formulated a theory of atomism which was of profound importance for the development of the "mechanical philosophy." Such research is already illuminating one aspect of the terrain indicated by Charles Schmitt as warranting further attention and is confirming the validity of his historical approach. The blurring of edges of individual ancients and moderns, progressives and reactionaries , has more general historical implications, noted by Schmitt himself. First, our neat periodizations come under threat, and it makes more senseNat least in intellectual and cultural history--to study the whole "period of Aristotelianism," from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, as a unit. Second, the period 1575-164o takes on a new importance, as being the time of an English Aristotelian "renaissance," underpinning the scientific revolution. And, as a corollary, the historical scales are tilted away from the much-labored Puritan Revolution; the English intellectualrevolution was already well under way by 164o and did not await a Cromwellian government. Such suggestive points indicate further lines of thought, and Dr. Schmitt's book opens up numerous other areas for future research. The figure of John Case himself is far from exhausted, and work on the wider milieu is obviously of potentially indefinite extent. The historical picture needs, for example, to be amplified by studies of other Aristotelian thinkers, some of whom, interestingly, saw themselves as followers of "the philosopher" himself, but rejected subsequent Aristotelians (like Case?) who, as Kenelm Digby claimed in 1644, "have introduced a modell of doctrine (or rather of ignorance) out of his wordes, which he never so much as dreamed of." John Case himself, it is conceded, "cannot be called an intellectual giant" (124), and our objects of study may increasingly be such "minor figures" who prove to be the more representative of their times. Certainly, Case's own belated resuscitation is greatly to be welcomed. Charles Schmitt's important study will act as a positive stimulant to further research and will undoubtedly serve as a scholarly model for subsequent researchers. B. C. SOUTHGATE The HaqleldPolytechnic England Charles Webster. From Paracelsusto Newton. Magic and the Making of Modern Science. The Eddington Memorial Lectures Delivered at Cambridge University, November 198o. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198~. Pp. xi + lo7. $19.95. This short book by Charles Webster comprises the Sir Arthur Eddington Lectures, delivered at Cambridge in November 198o, plus the author's documentation. Dr. Webster's work on Samuel I-Iartlib, on the development of science in the first half of the seventeenth century in England, and on the history of medicine, have already made him one of the major interpreters of the "scientific revolution." In these lec- 126 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24: I JANUARY 198{] tures he sought to show the continuity of thought between the seemingly mad Renaissance astrologer, alchemist, and mystic, Paracelsus, and the supposedly eminentl) rational Isaac Newton. Contrary to those who have stressed the discontinuity betweer Renaissance magical and religious thinking and the mathematical and mechanistic views of the seventeenth-century philosopher-scientists, Webster stresses the continu. ity with regard to three basic themes--prophecy, spiritual magic, and demonic magic--from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the early eighteenth century. The Copernican theory and Vesalius's medical work are supposed to have ended Paracelsus's reign as a sage or magus. Webster shows instead that modern astronomy and medicine led to an increased need to understand man and nature in terms of the eschatology presented in Scripture. Paracelsus saw the need for prophecy and for understanding man's fate in terms of it. He used Biblical and natural materials to base his predictions concerning the climax of human history. Webster shows that this continued after Copernicus, possibly with greater vigor, because of the Reformation, the Turkish invasion of Europe, the Thirty Years War, and the English Revolution, all indications that one was living at the end of days. The harmonizing of astrology and biblical prophecy and the development of a calculus for interpreting Daniel...