Magic and Intellectual History

This symposium will explore the place of magic in the intellectual culture of early modern England and Europe. It will focus on how magic was perceived and understood in philosophical, religious and scientific thought, and the ambivalence that surrounded it as topics of scholarship. 

Papers might attend to the following:

How did early modern thought accommodate magic into its disciplines?

Why was magic the object of so much ‘elite’ scientific and philosophical thought?

Magic and the study of nature

Magic and the ineffable

Redefining the parameters of magic

Magic and religion.

The occult and hidden operations of nature

Scepticism and magical thought

Magic and language / magic and metaphor

Literature and the portrayal of magic

Magic and the devil

Magicians and their day-jobs. 

Contact: Kevin Killeen, [email protected]

This symposium is part of a diffuse and ongoing Thomas Browne Seminar that has digressed quite far: