One of the sublime joys in my life is the making of connections. I receive an inexpressible tingle of delight each time I discover a link between two – or more – things of which I hd previously known no such linkage. Not surprisingly, more often than not, at least one of the things I am able to connect is a book – such as recently when, upon listening to a podcast of the LSE lecture “The Rise of Modern Europe,” delivered as part of that institution’s Shape the World Festival , I found Prof. Helen Parish citing Prof. Michael Hunter‘s recently published The Decline of Magic; Britain in the Enlightenment during her lecture.
Ever since reading of Prof. Robyn Arianrhod‘s brilliant Thomas Harriot; A Life in Science, I have found myself absolutely fascinated by the remarkable intellectual transitions that took place in early modern Europe, particularly the shifting of astrology and alchemy into astronomy and chemistry. So when I learned of Prof. Hunter’s book, I made haste to secure a copy to discover what the good professor had himself discovered about the subject. As it turns out, his is a somewhat diverging thesis – breaking from the simple “science displaced magic” paradigm and following a more complex path. More to come about all this very soon.
