History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol 1

by Lynn Thorndike

Excerpt from A History of Magic and Experimental Science

Galen: the Man and His Times, in The Scientific Monthly, January, 1922; Early Christianity and Natural Science, in The Biblical Review, July, 1922; The Latin Pseudo Aristotle and Medieval Occult Science, in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April, 1922 and notes on Daniel of Morley and Gundissalinus in The English His torical Review. For permission to make use of these pre vions publications in the present work I am indebted to the editors of the periodicals just mentioned, and also to the editors of The Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, The American Historical Re view, Classical Philology, The M onist, Nature, The Philo sophical Review, and Science. The form, however, of these previous publications has often been altered in embodying them in this book, and, taken together, they constitute but a fraction of it. Book I greatly amplifies the account of magic in the Roman Empire contained in my doctoral dis sertation. Over ten years ago I prepared an account of magic and science in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries based on material available in print in libraries of this country and arranged topically, but I did not publish it, as it seemed advisable to supplement it by study abroad and of the manuscript material, and to adopt an arrangement by authors. The result is Books IV and V of the present work.

Genres: History, Science, Esoterica, Nonfiction, Occult, Religion, History Of Medicine

835 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Lynn Thorndike was an American historian of medieval science and alchemy.

He was the brother of the psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike and of scholar Ashley Horace Thorndike.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

All 8 volumes are excellent, but volume one is, for me, the best. Thorndike casts his scrupulous eye over such figures as Philo, Plotinus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Iamblichus, Origen etc etc. His writing style is surprisingly entertaining, and far from being dry and difficult, this and the other eight volumes are enjoyable to read. The level of research Thorndike must have undertaken is dizzying in its scale; a massive, and underrated piece of scholarship.

[Lhyriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very boring if I'm honest, and this is due to mainly the format. Whilst there it's lots of information there, it is presented very vaguely over large catalogues of information. It is also one of those books that leaves you remembering little of what you've read afterwards. In other words, I would rate it much higher if the author had decided to present the information in a different format.

But there is still lots to be read for those interested in this sort of subject. If you are the type to enjoy lengthy paragraphs about ancient peoples and their practices of magic, then you might enjoy this.

For the presentation of content, I rate it one star. But for the content itself (and the long years the author must have taken to find it) I rate it four stars. Hence, I give this book three.

[Joy]

Too wordy and not much information.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surveys the relationship between magic and experimental science during the Roman Empire's transition into the Middle Ages -- specifically pagan, Christian, and Arabic traditions and their combinations. Because science and magic emerged from the same impulse to understand, classify, and influence nature-> magic functioned as an early theory of causality, and writers like Pliny cataloged natural phenomena alongside folklore and extraordinary properties as part of a single system of knowledge. I came to this collection through my interests in worldbuilding, which I think of as less than the design of a place and more as the design of an epistemology where the rules that determine how reality becomes legible within a world.

I think magic can function as something more useful than fantasy decoration. it offers a model of knowledge organized around hidden relations (resemblance, contagion, sympathy, celestial influence, etc). Beyond stylistic elements, these can be used as alternative logics of causation! I think a compelling fictional world, then, depends less on invented entities than on the underlying system that decides what counts as cause and effect.

Overall a very comprehensive survey, though (ironically) I'm not sure how it'll hold up to modern academic practices.

[Darnell]

Reading such old academic work is always a bit odd, given changing standards. No rating because I've gone too far: this is probably a good academic source, but it goes into much more detail than my interest in the topic.

[Brian Engelhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply amazing. Ranks with The Golden Bough for those who like that sort of thing, though not quite so imposing a task. We'll see how long it takes me to get through all of them.