Wonders of Mathematical Magic: Lists of Automata in the Transition from Magic to Science, 1533–1662

This essay examines lists of automata that appear in five texts from the Renaissance and the early Enlightenment period with the purpose of not only identifying the items that have captured the imagination of both Hermetic magicians and early modern scientists, but also of elucidating the various symbolic and philosophical uses they were made in different historical and intellectual contexts. The author begins by pointing to the odd situation of similar groups of wondrous objects used to support ideas that are commonly regarded as antithetical, namely spiritual magic and empirical science, and links it to recent scholarship on the transitional period of the seventeenth century that sees a closer connection between Hermetic thought and the origins of modern science. The fascination with automata gives evidence to interest in what we call applied science shared by Renaissance Hermetics and early modern natural philosophers. The authors of the texts are Cornelius Agrippa, John Dee, Tommaso Campanella, John Wilkins, and Florentius Schuyl.