PAST

mmm
'ithout the tradition Magic and the origins of conjuring of demons is the

W of European magic,
science and scientific
medicine could hardly have
modern science
essence of old magic, but this is
a mistaken view since the secret
powers of magic lay in the
developed as successfully as John Henry natural world.
they have. The historical The natural-magic tradition
evidence for the crucial role of magic in the origins of had a profound influence on the origin~ of modem science.
m o d e m science is totally compelling. But to recognise this All the leading thinkers of the so-called Scientific
evidence we have to become historically aware that magic Revolution in late 16th and 17th century turned away from
was once rather different from what it has become. Barely the kind of study of nature that was being pursued in the
understood today, natural magic was, for the first universities, known as natural philosophy, and embraced
700 years of this millennium, the an ei:npirical approach closer
predominant kind of magic. It to that of the natural-magic
was based upon the assumption tradition. Natural philosophy did
that God had created the world as not seek to exploit natural
a continuous "Great Chain of phenomena for pragmatic
Being", and that all the individual purposes, and did not recognise
elements in creation were not the experimental method as a
only linked to one another fully valid way of gaining
through this unbroken chain, but knowledge of the world. The
that there were correspondences leaders of the Scientific
by which a creature in one part of Revolution, however, like the
the chain might resonate with, or magicians, developed and
somehow correspond to, a extended the experimental
creature in another part of the method to make it one of
chain. Underlying all this was a the most fruitful means of
pervasive belief in purpose. God, investigating nature. The new
or Nature, did nothing in vain, so philosophers recognised the
there must be a reason for validity of experimentally defined
everything. Clues left by God, The Great Chain of Being from God to Nature and occult qualities. The fact that this
suggested the correspondences-- from Nature to Man (the "Ape" of Nature) approach led to phenomenal
eg, the flesh of the walnut in Taken from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi Maioris scilicet et success is best exemplified by
Minoris . . . Historia (History of Both Cosmoses, the Macrocosm
its shell and the human and the Microcosm), Oppenheim, 1617.
Isaac Newton's treatment of
brain. Corresponding things were gravity. In response to G W
assumed to have occult powers or forces by which they Leibniz's disparagement of his concept of gravity as an
could affect one another. The magician's role was to occult force, Newton did not deny it. Newton simply
discover the correspondences and their precise occult maintained that one should not make up hypothetical
effects in order to put them to use. explanations of phenomena, but rather rely on the
The discovery of such occult knowledge was difficult and experimentally established facts and the mathematical
the only sure way to discover, say, the healing powers of analysis of the behaviour of objects. Any magician from the
herbs or minerals was by empirical experiment, or trial and preceding 700 years would have agreed with him. By
error. The "signatures" sometimes helped, but often they Newton's time, however, this empirical way of thinking was
didn't. Just how is one meant to use the walnut to the beginning to be regarded as "scientific", not "magical"~ and
benefit of the head? Is it a treatment for headache, or for the new philosophers wanted to distance themselves from
mental disturbance? But if the natural-magic tradition. Having appropriated what they
the adept failed to discover wanted from this tradition, they joined in the chorus of
the secrets of nature disapproval of magic and disparaged what they had left
empirically, he could behind in a distorted travesty of what magic had once been.
summon a demon for help. So history reveals that m o d e m science was able to make
Before the 17th century, such rapid gains in the 17th century only by plundering
nobody believed in the natural magic. Although Newton's work on gravity
supernatural powers of provides the most striking single example of the fruitfulness
demons, because only of notions of "occult" qualities, many medical men
God could perform the contributed to this story. Indeed, it was the newly
supematural. Demons were discovered medical remedies whose efficacy defied
thus God's creatures and so understanding in terms of natural philosophical or medical
part of nature, but had theory, which stimulated reassessments of occult qualities
greater knowledge of occult and powers. It was this new work in medicine that led many
powers. Demonology was, intellectuals away from natural philosophy and back to the
therefore, inferior to natural magical tradition. Although the real benefits of such
magic. Consulting a d e m o n reassessments were felt first in the physical sciences, the
was a means of taking a debt to medicine was later paid back with interest as
short-cut to the knowledge medicine benefited from the advance of science. Both
of natural magic. For us, the science and medicine, however, remain indebted to magic.

sty23 The Lancet ° 2000 • 354 ° December • 1999