Argument

This paper examines Paracelsus and Paracelsianism in the light of the ideas of Max Weber concerning the social consequences of the Reformation, with special reference to his theories of Entzauberung and secularization. He linked these tendencies both to the rise of capitalism and the growth of experimental science. The detailed case study of Paracelsus' account of diseases linked with saints, in common with his interpretation of many other conditions, demonstrates that he self-consciously extended the boundaries of medicine and eroded the role of magic and witchcraft associated with the church. On the other hand, Paracelsus adopted the Neoplatonic worldview, was immersed in popular magic, and evolved a system of medicine that self-consciously revolved around magic. These factors seem to place a distinct limit on his role in the demystification of knowledge. However, the magic of Paracelsus entailed a decisive break with the entrenched elitist and esoteric tradition of the occultists and hermeticists. It is argued that this reconstructed magic re-establishes the credentials of Paracelsus as a significant contributor to the disenchantment and secularization of the worldview.

Argument

In the sixteenth century, several Central European Jews argued, with greater emphasis than their forebears, that the realm of nature and the realm of the divine are largely independent. This argument was expressed in three related claims. First, nature itself came to be seen as indifferent to creed. Though Jews may have assumed that they enjoyed an elevated status in the supernatural realm, the notion that their status and characteristics differed in the natural realm was, for some at least, discredited. Second, once nature was divorced from creed, natural philosophy and allied disciplines too came to be seen (by some) as a theologically neutral discipline. Third, once nature and natural philosophy were seen as insensible to differences in religious belief, discourse about natural philosophy came to be seen as a scholarly pastime that might be shared companionably by peoples of different beliefs. In short, among certain early modern Jews, nature, the discipline of natural philosophy, and the profession of natural philosophy all came to be seen as drained of religious particularity. These views bear an interesting and sometimes paradoxical relationship to secularization. On the one hand, the distancing of nature and creed may have been a harbinger of the actual secularization that portions of European – especially Ashkenazi – Jewish culture later experienced. On the other hand, these same attitudes may also have deterred interest in the physical world itself, discouraging the sort of “this-worldliness” that Max Weber and many others have associated with secularization.

Argument

How did Boyle’s religious concerns and views cause his experimental philosophy to differ from received views on the goals and methods of natural philosophy? I argue that Boyle predicated his experimental philosophy on two fundamental doctrines. The first claimed that attributing causality to natural entities was idolatrous, that is, intellectually and morally erroneous. The second doctrine claimed that causal relations in the natural world were the property of God’s benevolent government. Boyle’s experimental studies were accordingly intended to identify specific manifestations of this property, while philosophers traditionally construed experiment as an aid to observation of phenomena. Boyle rendered experiment a learning tool that enabled believers to accommodate themselves, theoretically and practically, to God’s benevolent rule. As a servant of the public good, this experimental philosopher formed an important turning point in the emergence of modern science and its role in the social division of labor.

Argument

Notwithstanding the preponderance of clerics among early modern scientific practitioners, only scant attention has been paid to the ramifications of their “calling” on their ability to engage freely in scientific studies. Indeed, the overall failure to calibrate the compatibility between full-fledged secular studies and a clerical vocation has led to misconceptions concerning the nature of the participation of ordained men in early modern science. It is not simply that ministerial duties imposed considerable demands on their time and energy; more significantly, the essence of this vocation was such as to impinge fundamentally on their ability to dedicate themselves to science or, most important of all, on their willingness to acknowledge publicly their contribution. A focus on the inner tensions that plagued practitioners in holy orders during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will both highlight the insurmountable challenges posed by the specialized and secularized nature of the “new science” on clerics – irrespective of denomination – and explain their eventual marginalization in the scientific endeavor.

Argument

This article depicts the emergence of the modern, secular Jewish intellectual in the eighteenth century as a process of intellectual seduction and irresistible attraction of young men to knowledge outside the boundaries of Jewish culture. In the rhetoric of the Haskalah (Enlightenment), the cultural conversion was often described metaphorically as sexual attraction to a forbidden woman. The passion for knowledge inaccessible within the traditional Jewish culture (mainly of the natural sciences, but also of Hebrew, European languages, and philosophy) and intense curiosity were the hallmarks of the early maskilim (Jewish Enlighteners). It is difficult now to assess the sense of audacity, the awareness of sin, of guilt, and of subversion entailed in the desire to enter the realms of extra-Jewish and extra-religious knowledge, as well as the barriers of language and social norms that had to be crossed. The encounter of the Ashkenazi elite in eighteenth-century Europe with extra-Jewish knowledge was a traumatic conflict that grew in intensity as the shelf of Hebrew books and the number of maskilim grew.

Argument

Augustus De Morgan was faced with a delicate balancing act in his attempt to interpret mathematics from his position as a professor at the secular University of London. He had learned mathematics at Cambridge, where the subject was intimately connected to Anglican natural theology. In his adult life, his challenge was to understand his subject in such a way that it would remain centrally important, but be suitable to a secular education. De Morgan's attempts to interpret mathematics within his secular world led him to consider the nature of algebra, probability theory, and logic. At times, particularly in logic, this work led him into fierce controversies. Behind the specific twists and turns of his thought, however, De Morgan maintained a remarkably consistent position from which he defended the religious values of his upbringing and education within a secular society.

Argument

Changing conceptions of science at the beginning of the twentieth century questioned the link between science and secularism, thus contributing to the development of a process of desecularization.

Science was no longer viewed as automatically relating truth to reality. This development was in part a consequence of the influence of mathematics on conceptions of science. The mathematical “existence” of true yet “non-existent” worlds permitted the inference that the connection between the true and the real is contingent. Alongside this problematization of science's link to nature there also developed a quite different critique of the cultural effects of science, which viewed science as being some kind of threat to human capacities for decoding the self or the social environment. Vis-à-vis both nature and culture, science could no longer serve as the basis for a program of secularization.

One motive for the cultural significance of the non-rational has been the perceived lack of identity between consciousness and rationality. But the equivalence between consciousness and rationality was the essence of the project of modernity. Their perceived non-equivalence made modern secularism untenable.