The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns

Abstract

A present-day physician, practicing "modern" scientific medicine, works within a rather specific intellectual framework. He may not realize that many quite different intellectual patterns have, at various times, exerted profound influence on thought and action generally and on medicine in particular. The occult sciences, for example, have shaped men's thoughts into patterns quite at variance with modern science. In the history of ideas, the occult occupies an important place and is not without presentday influence. Professor Shumaker has provided an interesting study of intellectual patterns in the Renaissance, the era when occult sciences were, perhaps, at their peak. With great scholarship he traces the doctrines and conflicts in five specific areas—astrology, witchcraft, white magic, alchemy, and the so-called Hermetic writings. He brings to his task vast learning and extensive reading in the primary sources. In his presentation he takes up the principal authors and many minor ones, and gives summaries,