As a naturalist, I like to think of myself as well-grounded in the ideas of science. I cringe whenever someone confuses astronomy with astrology. I try (always unsuccessfully) to remind family members that, despite how much time they spend picking lottery numbers, simple probability renders all their cogitations moot. Equally unsuccessful are my encouragements to leave itinerant spiders transiting the living room in peace as they will eat a number of creatures that, left un-predated, will do far more damage to hearth and home that any local arachnid could ever aspire to do.
And yet, as one who enjoys reading about the history of science, I know very well that, as Derek K. Wilson explains in his new A Magical World; Superstition and Science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, it wasn’t so very long ago that astrology, numerology, and omens held near-absolute sway over the minds of even the most educated women and men in the most technologically advanced societies of their time – including some of the minds who would eventually overthrow portions of these superstitions and replace them with the foundations of the sciences we now look to for a more complete understanding of the world in which we live – as well as those to which we may one day travel.
