Science and the Occult: Where the Twain Meet

Abstract

July/August 2004 · Historically Speaking21 Science and the Occult:Where the Twain Meet David Grandy When I was in graduate school, one ofmyprofessors—an eminenthistorian of medieval science— espoused in his lectures what one student affectionately tagged as "the Old Man River theoryofscientific progress." The professor asserted that in his research he found no evidence ofsocial or cultural factors impinging on the development of medieval science: driven purely byintellectual thought, the science "just kept rolling along." I suspect the professor would not have made this claim to a more sophisticated audience; although he had little patiencewith any attempt to explain science as nothing but a reaction to outside cultural forces, hewas savvyenough to knowthatthere is more to the storyofscience than just intellectual thought. Like my professor, I enjoy science enough to see it as something truly remarkable. Perhaps, however, I am more inclined to admit that there is no clear Une of demarcation between scienceperre and culture. Actually, this is not much of an admission: it has become a commonplace understanding amonghistorians ofscience. Gone are the days that scholars of science portray it as humankind's sole instrument oftruth in a confused and superstitious world. Despite this, manypeople still talk as if modern science is wholly distinct from and clearly superior to such traditions as alchemy, astrology, magic, Cabala, and 19th-century Spiritualism. These movements, so this line of thought goes, have all been repudiated by science and are therefore intellectual dead ends. This outlookis rendered problematic byhistorical scholarship (mostofitinthe last fifty years) that indicates complex and subtle interactions between now discarded beliefs and contemporary scientific principles . This is to say that scientific theories often emerge from circumstances that later may be seen as scientifically dubious. A case in point is Isaac Newton's law ofuniversal gravity. The law, as presented in textbooks, consists ofa straightforward factual statement (every body in the universe is attracted to every other with a force proportional to the product oftheir masses and inverselyproportional to the square ofthe distance between them) and a matching mathematical equation . Given only this much, students reflexively assume that Newtonian physics is a world apartfrom alchemyor magic. After all, there is a conciseness and clarityto the theory that is rarely found in other domains of Alma Paget paints a watercolor in front of Sir Isaac Newton's birthplace.She is next to a remnant ofthe apple tree that supposedly inspired Newton's work on gravity.©Jim Sugar/CORBIS human experience, let alone in the murky depths ofalchemy. One is surprised then to learn that Newton invested much time and energy seeking to produce the Philosopher's Stone, the ultimate aim ofalchemy. What is more, this quest cannot be simplywritten off as an intellectual dead end because it appears to have played intoNewton's scientific thinking , quite possiblyinto his theoryofgravity.1 Today alchemy is considered an occult pursuit, and it is hard to imagine how itmay have once figured into Newton's formulation ofuniversal gravity. Whatwe tend to forget, however, is that while the law can be clearly and succinctlystated, itisnotaltogether obvious how gravity works. Most people today, following Newton, describe it as an actionat -a-distance force, but this introduces difficulties ^—atleastit did for Newton. In explainingthe tides, he proposed thatthe moon (and the sun) reaches across apparently empty space to tug on the earth. For some ofhis contemporaries, however, this explanationwentnowhere because it afforded no understanding of the mechanism by which gravitational forces propagate. Indeed it introduced a puzzle for anyone (like René Descartes) wishingto evacuate the cosmos of non-contact forces, the like of which bespoke astrological influences and alchemical sympathies and antipathies. Newton privatelysummed up his misgivings in this way: That gravity should be innate, inherent , and essential to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation ofany thing else by and through which their action or force may be conveyed from one to another is to me so great an absurdity that I believe that no man who has in philosophical matters any competent faculty ofthinking can ever fall into it.2 Newton later defended his law of gravity by arguing that its validity is secured...