Abstract
A. Rupert Hall, Henry More. Magic, Religion and Experiment . Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Pp. 304, £30.00. ISBN 0631172955 On first acquaintance it may appear strange that the 17th-century Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, should earn a place in the hall of fame represented by the Blackwell Science Biographies. Among such giants as Galileo and Newton, Lavoisier and Darwin, where stands this stalwart defender of Christianity, this seemingly credulous champion of a hidden world of spirits, a conservative thinker who joined forces with Joseph Glanvill to publicize the reality of witchcraft, a member of the Royal Society to be sure, but one who, in Professor Hall’s own words, was a wholly inactive Fellow? Described by one contemporary as the ‘Holiest Person upon the Face of the Earth’, More has enjoyed a place in the history of religious thought as an opponent of sectarian enthusiasm and architect of a more ‘latitudinarian’ creed. But what are we to make of a man who valued the experiments conducted under the aegis of the Royal Society precisely because they were ‘serviceable ... to the clear knowledge and Demonstration of the Existence of immaterial Beings’?
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