The Reenchantment of the World (50 page)

Encyclopaedia Judaica
, 5 (1972), 1478-82. The plate from Fludd occurs
in the second volume of his book,
Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et
minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia, in duo secundum
cosmi differentiam divisa.

 

 

47. Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the Arts
, p. 149.

 

 

48. On Dee see Peter J. French,
John Dee
(London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1972), and the work by Debus cited above, note 43. On Campanella see
Yates,
Giordano Bruno
, passim. The "blurring" of magic and technology
can be seen in Agrippa's
De Occulta Philosophia
.

 

 

49. Quoted in Hill,
Intellectual Origins
, p. 149.

 

 

50. On Ficino's astrology, and Bacon's reaction, see Walker,
Spiritual
and Demonic Magic
.

 

 

51. Erwin F. Lange, "Alchemy and the Sixteenth Century Metallurgists,"
Ambix
13 (1966), 92-95. Apparently the first of this tradition, the
Bergb¨chlein
of 1505, contained an equal mixture of the metallurgical
and the alchemical (see the discussion in Eliade,
Forge and Crucible
,
pp. 47-49). Biringuccio's work of only thirty-five years later denounced
alchemy, although according to Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the
Arts
, p. 52n, he was uncertain about his own opinion on the subject. The
first edition of Agricola appeared (without illustrations) in 1546,
and he was definitely not confused about his attitudes toward alchemy.

 

 

52. Quoted in Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the Arts
, p. 71.

 

 

53. Ibid., pp. 43-55, and the Preface to
De Re Metallica
, trans. Herbert
Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (New York: Dover Publications, 1950;
orig. English trans. 1912).

 

 

54. Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
, chap. 2.

 

 

55. The following discussion is based on Jung, CW 12 and 14.

 

 

56. Dobbs,
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
, pp. 34-36.

 

 

57. The usual symbol for Christ used in this way was the unicorn, and
this can be seen, for example, in the famous unicorn tapestry cycle on
display at the Cloisters in upper Manhattan.

 

 

58. The discussion below is based on the following sources: Richard
H. Popkin, "Father Mersenne's War Against Pyrrhonism,"
The Modern
Schoolman
24 (1957), 61-78; A. R. Hall,
The Scientific Revolution
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1956),pp. 196-97; Robert H. Kergon,
Atomism in
England from Hariot to Newton
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); Michael
Maier,
Laws of the Fraternity of the Rosie Cross
(Los Angeles: The
Philosophical Research Society, 1976, from the English edition of 1656;
orig. Latin edition 1618); A. G. Debus,
Renaissance Alchemy and the Work
of Robert Fludd
,
The English Paracelsians
(London: Oldbourne Book Co.,
1965), and "The Chemical Debates of the Seventeenth Century: The Reaction
to Robert Fludd and Jean Baptiste van Helmont," in M.L.R. Bonelli and
W. R. Shea,
Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism
, pp. 19-47; and Dobbs,
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
, pp. 53-63. Also useful are Robert
Lenoble,
Mersenne ou la naissance du mécanisme
(Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1943), and Francis A. Yates,
The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).

 

 

The French attempt to establish a stable world philosophy based
on mechanism, and directly opposed to the dialectical principles of
Hermeticism, occurred in the context of growing political absolutism and
peasant rebellion, the latter especially frequent from 1623 to 1648. This
theme is explored by Carolyn Merchant in
The Death of Nature
(New York:
Harper & Row, 1980), chapter 8, and I am grateful to her for allowing me
to read the manuscript version of this part of her work. My own discussion
deals primarily with the religious aspects of the attack on Hermeticism,
but the reader should be aware that church issues were not separate from
issues of state in the minds of the protagonists. Thus my own discussion
necessarily follows the line of reasoning developed by Professor Merchant.

 

 

59. In the context of the time, as Robert Kargon points out in
Atomism
in England
, there were significant differences between the various
atomists and corpuscularians. Gassendi's idea was that motion was
essential to matter, bestowed on it by God at the creation. Hence,
his system was based on the views of the ancient atomist Epicurus, but
heavily Christianized so as to be acceptable. From the vantage point
of the late seventeenth century and after, however, Descartes, Hobbes,
and Gassendi had all formulated an impact physics.

 

 

60. A more rational debate than the attack on alchemy, however, was
the one between Fludd and Johannes Kepler, which also weakened alchemy
publicly and helped to establish the fact-value distinction. Nevertheless,
I do not think this debate, which came just before the attack by Mersenne
and Gassendi, can be seen apart from the rise of the technological
tradition and the religious developments described above. Kepler
certainly was (despite his own very extensive Hermeticism) arguing for
an empirical, rather than an allegorical, view of the cosmos; but the
"conditions enabling that system to be thought" (as Foucault puts it)
lay in the exoteric-esoteric split that had been building for more
than a century before the debate took place. What we call empiricism,
which by definition is an exclusion of occult causes, is precisely the
product of the changes described in this chapter.

 

 

An interesting discussion of the Kepler-Fludd debate may be found in
W. Pauli, "The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories
of Kepler," in C. G. Jung and W. Pauli,
The Interpretation of Nature
and the Psyche
, trans. Priscilla Silz (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1955), pp. 151-240.

 

 

61. Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
, chap. 3.

 

 

62. Ibid., p. 130.

 

 

63. Manuel,
Portrait of Isaac Newton
, pp. 59, 380.

 

 

64. Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down
, p. 262.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4. The Disenchantment of the World (2)

 

 

1. Actually, Newton's interest in alchemy was revealed soon after
his death, but as noted below, in the context of eighteenth-century
rationalism the priority was to "clear" him of any "charges" of having
been an alchemist. L. T. More apparently neglected, or did not have
access to, Newton's alchemical and theological manuscripts when he
wrote
Isaac Newton: A Biography
(London: Constable, 1934), and thus
did not have to trouble himself too much about integrating the rational
and the mystical aspects of the man (a dichotomy which, I hope to show,
is spurious in any event).

 

 

2. Quoted in B.J.T. Dobbs,
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 13-14.

 

 

3. Frank E. Manuel,
A Portrait of Isaac Newton
(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, Belknap Press, 1968). For Kubrin's study see Harry
WooIf, ed.,
The Analytic Spirit
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1981). Kubrin's essay is given fuller treatment in an earlier work of his,
How Sir Isaac Newton Helped Restore Law 'n Order to the West
(Privately
printed, 1972), copies of which are on deposit in the Library of Congress.

 

 

4. The following sketch is taken from Manuel,
Portrait of Isaac Newton
,
pp. 23-67. Manuel's model is based on the work of Erik Erikson, who sees
in all leading figures of the age (his own studies were of Luther and
Gandhi) extreme expressions of trends already present throughout the
populace. Manuel was able to develop this theme well in Newton's case
because of the existence of four adolescent notebooks that reflect the
severe repression and depression of the Puritan mentality.

 

 

On anxiety reactions see N. O. Brown,
Life Against Death
(Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1970; orig. publ. 1959), esp. pp. 114ff.;
John Bowlby,
Separation
(New York: Basic Books, 1973); and Erikson's
pioneering work,
Childhood and Society
, 2d ed., rev. and enl. (New York:
Norton, 1963).

 

 

5. Manuel,
Portrait of Isaac Newton
, p. 380.

 

 

6. Géza Róheim,
Magic and Schizophrenia
(Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1970; orig. publ. 1955).

 

 

7. D. P. Walker,
The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian Platonism from
the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
(London: Gerald Duckworth, 1972).

 

 

8. Cited by Rollo May in John Brockman, ed.,
About Bateson
(New York:
Dutton, 1977), p. 91.

 

 

9. This emerges as an important theme in Betty Dobbs's study,
The
Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
.

 

 

10. Kubrin, "Newton's Inside Out!" The discussion that follows relies
heavily on this essay, and I am very grateful to Mr. Kubrin for allowing
me to read the unpublished version. On the volume of alchemical publications
see also Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
(Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1973), p. 270.

 

 

11. See works such as
The Century of Revolution, God's Englishman
,
and especially
The World Turned Upside Down
(New York: Viking, 1972).

 

 

12. See, for example, the revelation recorded by the Ranter Abiezer Coppe,
reprinted in Norman Cohn,
The Pursuit of the Millennium
(London: Paladin,
1970; orig. publ. 1957), pp. 319-30. Cohn is horrified by such a text,
but one's attitude clearly depends on whether one is inside or outside
the experience.

 

 

13. Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
, p. 322.

 

 

14. Cf. the concluding pages of Chapter 3. Note that I am using the
term "middle class" here in the traditional Marxist sense, that is (in
the English case), to refer to the economic and political interests
that opposed the king, not in the modern sociological sense of group
identification, socioeconomic stratification, and so on.

 

 

15. Some of the radical leaders/occultists include William Lilly, John
Everard, Lawrence Clarkson, Nicholas Culpepper, Gerard Winstanley, William
Dell, John Webster, John Allin, and Thomas Tryon. Statements by clerics
may be found in P.M. Rattansi,
Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution
,
Ambix
11 (1963), 24-32.

 

 

16. Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down
, pp. 144, 238, 287.

 

 

17. The quotes from Newton are cited in Kubrin, "Newton's Inside Out!" For
alchemical language in Newton, see H. S. Thayer, ed.,
Newton's Philosophy
of Nature
(New York: Hafner, 1953), pp. 49, 84-91, 164-65.

 

 

18. R. S. Westfall, "The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Career," in
M. L. R. Bonelli and W. R. Shea, eds.,
Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism
in the Scientific Revolution
(New York: Science History Publications,
1975), pp. 189-232.

 

 

19. See Newton's
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended . . .
(London,
1728), esp. pp. 332-46, and "A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of
the Jews," in John Greaves,
Miscellaneous Works . . .
(London, 1737),
vol. 2.

 

 

20. On this see also Margaret C. Jacob,
The Newtonians and the English
Revolution
, 1689-1720 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977).

 

 

21. I. B. Cohen and Alexandre Koyré, "The Case of the Missing 'Tanquam':
Leibniz, Newton, and Clarke,"
Isis
52 (1961), 555-67.

 

 

22. For a contemporary view of the earth as alive see Lewis Thomas,
The Lives of a Cell
(New York: Viking, 1974).

 

 

23. E. P. Thompson,
The Making of the English Working Class
(New York:
Pantheon, 1964), esp. chap. 11.

 

 

24. Quoted in Brown,
Life Against Death
, p. 108.

 

 

25. The same hardening can be seen in paintings of a later president
of the Royal Society, Humphry Davy, in Plates 11 and 12 of my
Social
Change and Scientific Organization
(London and Ithaca, N.Y.: Heinemann
Educational Books and Cornell University Press, 1978), and should be
compared to Plates 24 and 25, which juxtapose portraits of the young and
old Michael Faraday. As I discuss in that work, Faraday was a religious
mystic and something of a closet Hermeticist, believing that matter was
essentially spiritual in nature, The photograph of Faraday as an older
man is remarkable for its childlike nature: the gentle expression and
the bright, almost glowing eyes.

 

 

26. Quoted in Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down
, p. 287.

 

 

27. David V. Erdman, ed.,
The Poetry and Prose of William Blake
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), p. 693.

 

 

28. Milton Klonsky,
William Blake: The Seer and His Visions
(New York:
Harmony Books, 1977), p. 62.

 

 

29. Hill,
The World Turned Upside Down
, p. 311.

 

 

30. Ibid., p. 236.