The Demise of Magic in the Scientific Revolution

The following is a paper I wrote for a class in British history. I'm posting it because of its relevance to science and social progress. What held science back at the start was an unwillingness to reject all superstitions and putting full confidence in rational inquiry. Philosophers like Bacon had the methodology down, but no one at the time was able to part with their pet belief in God. This problem exists still today.

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From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, a “revolution” occurred in the investigation of reality. The immense difference between medieval and Enlightenment thought resulted in part of the Scientific Revolution. What is now called the scientific method was developed amongst a collection of autonomous individuals across Europe, whose discoveries contributed to a shift in thought that fundamentally changed the way Europeans perceived the universe. On the island of Great Britain, intellectuals worked to develop this new science from the preserved remains of ancient Greek philosophers. This was a long and muddled process, but by the eighteenth century a clear and consistent methodology was being used, albeit inconsistently, to fuel the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. During the confusion of the seventeenth century, however, science and magic were inseparable; rational inquiry and what were later called pseudo-scientific superstitions coexisted as equals.

Superstition, broadly defined, is the act of holding a belief despite not having acceptable justification for it. Because the idea of justification weighs so heavily, what is seen as superstitious and what is seen as a reasonable belief will change over time and will correspond with changing epistemic beliefs. What passed as acceptable justification in the Middle Ages was to be seen as a joke by the end of the seventeenth century. To the medieval church, superstition was either that which was not grounded in nature or that which was not approved by the Church; religious authorities both praised and denounced certain magical beliefs. This norm was undermined along with the authority of the Catholic Church in the Protestant Reformation, forcing thinkers to discover new methods by which to validate their knowledge. By the eighteenth century, superstition had become that which is not grounded in reason and, for many British thinkers, that which is confirmed through experience. In the period between the English Renaissance and the Enlightenment, thinkers in Great Britain were in a process of testing beliefs for their veracity; however, at this time it was unclear by which epistemic standards intellectuals should judge claims about the world. It is in this context that seventeenth-century intellectuals discussed magic.

Magic in the Middle Ages is not to be taken as a symbolic or purely ritual pursuit; its adherents believed it was governed by coherent principles and truly believed it would work. In the medieval period, magia or magica were words used to denounce heretics and implied a sinister act that invoked the intervention of demons. The Protestant Reformation coincided with the English Renaissance, and with this rediscovery of ancient texts came a new conception of magic, which was known as “natural magic”. Rather than an invocation of dark spirits, natural magic was rooted in Greco-Roman philosophical and scientific discourse and referred to the occult or hidden powers of nature. According to Francis Bacon, natural magicians sought to explain eternal and unmoving forms, metaphysical substructures thought by Neo-Platonists to account for the invisible forces present in the world. Bacon found this magic to be incompatible with the new scientific method.

The Scientific Revolution is, at best, a confusing terminology. The modern conception of a rapid, chaotic overthrow of traditional norms or paradigms was not applied to the term “revolution” until after 1789. The development of science and its public acceptance, however, was a transition that took centuries to complete, and during the transition the two paradigms of Neo-Platonic metaphysics and the new scientific empiricism, now seen as mutually exclusive, were not always competing influences. The new beliefs gained through science were often reconciled with the old. The astronomer Tycho Brahe made prophecies based on his astronomical observations, and even Isaac Newton held a great interest in astrology and alchemy. Naturalism was coupled with creationism, mechanism was made compatible with final causes, and materialism was joined with vitalism. Even Francis Bacon could not entirely escape the metaphysical assumptions shared by alchemists and magicians; he sought instead to reform the study of natural magic into its ancient glory. To do this, Bacon emphasized a systematic, exhaustive methodology that would sort out the true beliefs from the false ones; this approach inevitably led him into increasingly skeptical beliefs concerning the merits of magic.

Science developed in the context of Neo-Platonic philosophy, wherein a hierarchy of spirits existed in an organic universe that was full of mysterious occult influences and sympathies. To investigate and describe these occult phenomena was the task of magicians, who studied reality through three sources: the elemental world, the stars, and the spiritual beings who could influence the workings of nature. Systematic disciplines like astrology or alchemy differed from popular magic, which had evolved from pre-Norman tribal cultures; these well-developed fields of natural magic were comprehensive in their scope and had elaborate theoretical bases. Widely held hermetic beliefs that God had revealed certain truths about the universe to the ancients persisted until Newton’s time. Although thinkers like Bacon, who described alchemy as “more curious than sensible,” thoroughly rejected these beliefs, certain magical claims extended into the late seventeenth century and were popular even among intellectuals.

Magical beliefs had a certain tenacity during the Scientific Revolution that is difficult to imagine today. It was a convenient and popular way to explain that which was not understood. Most magical beliefs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries persisted in areas where no mechanistic explanation existed. The fields over which magic predominated were also those in which a lack of control may have been discomforting, in areas like medicine and agriculture. Life depended on medicinal prescriptions and crop yields; perhaps in a time where no rational explanations could be offered, irrational explanations were preferred over no explanation. Alchemy and astrology were both attempts at power, both over the material world and over destiny, and claims of such power would have undoubtedly been appealing to social elites. Although magic was backed by tradition and a luring appeal to power and security, it could not withstand the force of the new standards for knowledge.

Science developed out of magic—the formalization of natural magic created an environment of experimentation and induction, a methodology that eventually undermined the disciplines for which it was originally intended. Bacon believed that the usefulness of a science depends on its propensity to bear fruit in the form of invention. This led Baconians to a bold skepticism of astrology and its prophetic claims; however, these beliefs were integral to contemporary understanding of religion and politics, and their foundations were legitimated through Scripture. Faith in astrology, therefore, did not end with Bacon but persisted in the works of later scientists, including Newton, who sought a unity between scriptural prophecies and hermetic writings. The late seventeenth century was dominated by an apocalyptic worldview, preserving the image of the scientist as a magus figure, wherein Newton saw himself as an intervening personality between God and His creation. There was a trend in this period, albeit an unclear one, towards belief in a fundamentally mechanistic universe. This view was unable to exist in its pure form at the time, as the intellectual landscape was inhospitable to it.

It was hazardous for the scientific community to consistently argue for a mechanistic universe—mechanism led to materialism, which in turn led to atheism. Mechanistic philosophy was thus adopted in a weaker form, in which scientists did not reject supernatural phenomena but instead sought to explain them using the new methodology. Robert Boyle was interested in the investigation of the supernatural as a way to disprove atheism; if science could prove the supernatural, the arguments of non-believers and skeptics would be falsified. A wave of interest in witchcraft appeared among scientists, as well as a rush to prove the existence of spirits, demons, or ghosts. Quasi-mechanical explanations appeared for black magic, whereby normal mechanistic forces were intervened by an inexplicable supernatural force; thus, when a witch caused it to rain frogs, frogs would be levitated into the sky where they would form frog clouds and eventually drop as frog rain. This sort of unity between magic and science did not last long; by the mid-seventeenth century, most serious scientists favored a mechanistic over an animistic worldview. The transition was gradual and inconsistent, but by the end of the century most intellectuals were skeptical of natural magic, dismissing alchemy and astrology as, in Bacon’s terms, “lazy and idle conjectures … for surprise and novelty”.

Scientific experiments soon destroyed the foundations upon which astrological or alchemical theories were based. The ancient Greek wisdom cherished by medieval thinkers held that earth was the unmoving center of the universe and the heavens, which consisted of everything outside of the moon’s orbit, were perfect and unchanging. Astronomical observations by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries undermined these assumptions: comets were found to be above the moon, new stars were found to appear in the sky, and spots were found on the sun. Furthermore, entirely new celestial spheres were discovered orbiting around Jupiter; what influence would these new bodies have in an already comprehensive astrological theory? In the first half of the seventeenth century, astrologers tried to incorporate these new discoveries into their schemata, but by the end of the century astrology had to a large extent died out among intellectuals. An author writing on “the academy of sciences” in 1687 defined astrology as “that science, by the help of which Men pretend [emphasis mine] to judge of things to come,” a noticeably skeptical definition when compared to the certainty with which the same author speaks of disciplines like astronomy or “logick.” Astrology and earthly twin alchemy were on their way out of academia by the eighteenth century.

Ultimately, it would take both social and intellectual change for the new science to triumph over magic. In the seventeenth century magic was becoming decreasingly socially acceptable in light of the Calvinist doctrine of self-help. Such an ideology would frown upon invocations of magical or supernatural spirits who are believed to intervene on behalf of pious—or excessively impious—believers, which left them utterly dependent on outside forces. There was no room for intervening ghosts in Protestantism, which advocated an individual responsibility for one’s salvation. This was a fierce blow to popular magic, but Calvinists were still able to hold that success in natural magic was a sign or a reward for the elect; the ideology of self-help alone could not dissuade seventeenth-century Britons from magic.

Other developments in seventeenth-century Britain that contributed to a decline in magic involve an increase in human power over the forces of nature. Advanced agricultural techniques put faith in human ingenuity and skill rather than in mystical charms and hope, and the development and spread of insurance policies and deposit banking relieved the fear of sudden, unexpected misfortune. In light of these increases in human confidence, magic lost much of its immediate practical value. The same methodology that logically disproved magic enabled the technological and economic development that made it no longer socially or psychologically necessary.

Magic, which had been so tied to theological metaphysics, had to be exorcised from religion if the Christian faith was to survive the Scientific Revolution. The doctrine of self-help made it possible for people of faith to reject former beliefs involving malignant spirits and divine intervention. The implications of mechanistic philosophy, however, forced thinkers to reconcile their beliefs about the world with their faith in God. Scientists like Robert Boyle devoted themselves to discovering with science the inexplicable aspects of nature that would prove the supernatural and, therefore, God. Francis Bacon separated religion from his philosophy; he described three sources of knowledge: divine revelation, one’s own mind, and the senses. A member of the Royal Society in 1691 wrote that “religion is … easie to be understood” and that it “…lies not in Systems of Opinion, but in Faith and Patience, Innocence and Integrity, in Love to God, and Charity to all the World.” Religion’s social importance allowed it to outlive magic; communities were organized around the church, and religion was the basis for moral philosophy. Most believed that without faith in an omnipotent God, society would fall into chaos. Fears of atheism were prevalent amongst philosophers, both British and Continental, and every important philosopher writing after the Protestant Reformation had a disproof of atheism and a proof of God. Once science was accepted as an epistemic methodology, Enlightenment intellectuals engaged themselves in a process of sorting through society’s superstitions and deciding which were revealed through the “light of true religion” and which were explainable through natural science.

The above processes developed within the collective body of knowledge held by British intellectual elites, especially those in academia. Most people living in Great Britain during this period would have never heard of Isaac Newton or Robert Boyle, much less understand their theories. The great names of the Scientific Revolution would not become household names for decades or centuries after their deaths. In deciding a society’s epistemic basis for its beliefs about reality and the world in which its people reside, one must analyze the academia and/or the intellectual elite. It is questionable whether the majority of the population ever fully comprehends the specific reasoning behind their beliefs, or whether they are reacting primarily to social pressures towards intellectual conformity. The intellectual elite, however, represent the collective consciousness of a society’s reasoning.

From the onset of the Protestant Reformation and the diminishment of Roman papal authority, intellectuals in Britain were forced to devise new schemes to validate different religious views based on individual interpretations. They were helped in this process by the arrival of Renaissance ideas, wherein they discovered an ancient Greek proto-science in the form of natural magic. Through the development of pseudo-sciences like astrology and alchemy, intellectuals developed a new scientific methodology, whose purpose Francis Bacon claimed was to “endow human life with new discoveries and resources.” Early scientists soon did just that, undermining the basic assumptions underlying natural magic. These scientists were aided by developments in religion and society, which allowed the intellectual and material freedom to pursue mechanistic explanations of the world. However, their faith in God and dislike of materialist philosophy prevented thinkers in the Scientific Revolution from advocating a purely mechanistic worldview; instead, they attempted to reconcile their old beliefs with new discoveries. This sometimes provoked bizarre pursuits like scientific ghost hunts, but eventually led to a separation of rational philosophy and arational faith. This separation, in part, led to the rational analysis of superstition during the Enlightenment. What was not explainable through natural science was reserved as articles of faith; in the optimism of the Enlightenment, there was no longer room for superstition, the acceptance of an unjustified belief was now itself unacceptable.


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