Bibliofinds

I acquired a series of books last week that have had me mesmerized. It was Lynn Thorndike's History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947-1953), covering in six volumes the interaction between magic (from shamanism through the various western machinations of alchemy and astrology) and early science (as expressed most profoundly in the writings of Aristotle) between the first and 16th centuries.

Page one of the first volume begins with the heading: A history of magic and experimental science and their relation to the christian thought during the first thirteen centuries of our era. And opens with a quote from Hegel, "magic has existed among all peoples and at every period." Its opening paragraph explains the nature of the work:

This book aims to treat the history of magic and experimental science and their relations to Christian thought during the first thirteen centuries of our era, with especial emphasis upon the twelfth and thirteenth centuries....Magic is here understood in the broadest sense of the word, as including all occult arts and sciences, superstitions, and folk-lore...My idea is that magic and experimental science have been connected in their development; that magicians were perhaps the first to experiment; and that the history of both magic and experimental science can be better understood by studying them together.

And he continues...

Magic is very old, and it will perhaps be well in this introductory chapter to present it to the reader, if not in its infancy--for its origins are much disputed and perhaps antecede all record and escape all observation - at least some centuries before its Roman and medieval days. Sir J. G. Frazer, in a passage of The Golden Bough...remarks that "sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest savages...they are the only professional class that exists."

The wording is somewhat antiquated, but the point is that magic historically tends to predate religion.

Lenormant affirmed in his Chaldean Magic and Sorcery that "all magic rests upon a system of religious belief," but recent sociologists and anthropologists have inclined to regard magic as older than a belief in gods. At any rate some of the most primitive features of historical religions seem to have originated from magic.

Thorndike's hermeneutic study is vast in scope and deep in detail. Volume II introduces the early scholastics Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor, and the Jewish thinker Maimonides.

It was not surprising that Albert and Aquinas should cite Maimonides, for he did for Jewish thought what they attempted for Christian, namely, the reconciliation of Aristotle and the Bible, philosophy and written revelation...he tried to discover in the Old Testament and Talmud all the Aristotelian philosophy, and was convinced that the prophets of old had recieved further revelations of a philosophical character, which had been transmitted orally for a time but then lost during the periods of Jewish wandering and persecution.

Volume III & IV finish out the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while V & VI are devoted to the culmination of experimental science in the sixteenth century. Chapter XLII of volume VI begins with a quote from Hallam:

The ancient philosophers, and especially Aristotle, were, with all their errors and defects, far more genuine high-priests of nature than any modern of the sixteenth century.

Thorndike's metahistory deserves some special attention, especially since it is so unfamous. It is a melting of many metals into a strong alloy, a filtering of esoteric thought through a screen of reason and method. It is a masterful work from one of the great historicists of the twentieth centry.