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From Paracelsus to Newton
Magic and the Making of Modern Science
By Charles Webster Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1982 Cambridge University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-16913-2
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
One of the chief effects of the history of science as the subject has developed in the present century has been to drive a wedge between the cultures of Paracelsus and Newton. It may even seem like an act of perversity or lapsed historical judgement to bracket together the names of Paracelsus and Newton in the title of a book. By convention the two are regarded as inhabiting entirely discrete intellectual worlds. Our image of Newton is firmly associated with the values of the Enlightenment and the modern world, whereas the name of the enigmatic and inaccessible Paracelsus conveys alien associations of a tortured mind wrestling unsuccessfully to escape from the labyrinths of the dark ages.
Accounts of the 'Scientific Revolution' or' Mechanization of the World Picture' have understandably concentrated on the appealing story of technical and conceptual innovation. As a natural adjunct to this operation, there is a tendency to generalize the distinctions between the dark age of pre-Copernicanism and the Enlightenment of Newtonianism. The remarkable extent of progress at the descriptive level in the sciences is thought to be correlated, and at least partly explained, by a similar transformation at the conceptual level. Often unwittingly, processes of selectivity have operated tending to highlight modern elements in the thought of Newton's generation, while discreetly allowing anything of a contrary nature to fall into the background. On the other hand, with respect to the generation of Paracelsus, there is a tendency to concentrate on credulity or vain respect for the authority of antiquity, while overlooking the wide evidence of critical analysis and independent judgement. By this means we have come to accept an almost perfect correlation between the rise of science and the decline of magic. Indeed the growth of the scientific movement is regarded as one of the primary manifestations of the demystification of the worldview occurring in the course of the seventeenth century. The above construction has its heroes and casualties. Newton is the premier hero, and Paracelsus is arguably the major casualty.
It is not the intention of the present essays to question the idea of the progress of science at the technical or descriptive level. According to separate, acceptable, and clearly defined criteria each of the natural sciences can be shown to have advanced, often in a spectacular manner, over the period between Paracelsus and Newton. It is also not my intention to suggest that there was nothing new in the new philosophies. But it is clear that there were remarkable elements of continuity sufficient to indicate an important degree of contiguity between the worldviews of the early sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries.
Paracelsus and Newton were not subsisting in intellectual worlds completely alien from one another. Both Paracelsus and Newton regarded assurance of personal salvation as their absolute priority. The working-out of the nature of humanity's relationship with the creator constituted their primary intellectual mission. Paracelsus contributed to the stream of reformation theology in which Newton was immersed. Among their contemporaries Neoplatonism was as much a vital force in the late seventeenth as in the early sixteenth century. Newton's acculturation occurred in the context of the ascendancy of the Cambridge Platonists. The situation at Cambridge represented a remarkable late echo of the Florentine Platonism of the renaissance, both schools being characterized by an intensity of fidelity to the spirit of ancient theology and philosophy. The self-evident impact of Neoplatonism in England after 1660 should discourage any attempt to describe science at the time of the Royal Society in terms of the unquestioned dominance of the 'mechanical philosophy'.
The late revival of Neoplatonism in the seventeenth century and the eager absorption of this philosophy by the avant garde also brings into question the characterization of seventeenth century science in terms of the ascendancy of the 'moderns' over the 'ancients'. Paracelsus and the Neoplatonists were 'moderns' to the degree that they opposed the authority of scholasticism in theology and science, but 'ancients' in the manner of their adoption of a source of wisdom more venerable than scholasticism. The revolution towards which they worked was firmly rooted in the search for means of reviving the wisdom possessed by Moses, or Adam before the Fall.
Despite his celebrity as the conqueror of the ancients and founder of the propaganda platform of the new science, Francis Bacon also acknowledged a philosophical ancestry among the pre-Socratics and based his whole approach on the scriptural idea of return of man's dominion over nature, which was finally to counteract its sacrifice at the Fall. It is an interesting paradox that the very first manifesto in the ancients versus moderns controversy attacked the modern Galenic establishment and singled out Paracelsus as the reviver of ancient knowledge.
This mode of representing modern science was purposely designed to appeal to the mentality of an age accustomed to the rhetoric of reformation theology, with its stress on the return of the church to the primitive purity of the early church fathers and more distant appeals to the model of the children of Israel. The famous defence of the moderns in The History of the Royal Society (1667), in openly drawing comparisons between the new science and the reformed church in England, represented nothing more than the application of a trusted tool which had been resharpened after long use by Francis Bacon and which was originally ground and honed to a fine edge by Paracelsus.
An important distorting element has been introduced into accounts of the rise of modern science through underestimation of the degree to which authors like Paracelsus, or authors belonging to the tradition of Neoplatonism or hermeticism, remained an integral part of the intellectual resources of the educated elite into the late seventeenth century. The magnitude of evidence indicative of the tenacity of interest in philosophies running contrary to the mechanical philosophy is so great that the only way of accommodating this vast anomaly has been to separate the leaders of science–judged representative men of their age - from the unrepresentative and more gullible majority. It is unfortunate for any proponent of this line that figures of outstanding importance, including Newton himself, turn out to display a lively interest in the occult. The only means of saving the phenomenon in this case is to adopt the unconvincing device of postulating a split personality for the scientists convicted of lapsing from consistent practice of the enlightenment ideal.
It is more realistic to come to terms with the persistence of the influence of figures such as Paracelsus, and to recognize that ideas falling into the non-mechanist tradition were not necessarily regarded by the scientists of later generations as the relics of an outmoded and scientifically unproductive dark age. Only recently have historians of science, largely upon stimulus from the outside, begun to appreciate the disadvantages to their craft of writing such figures as Paracelsus out of history.
It is particularly useful to take the example of Paracelsus because he is one of the principals from the pre-Copernican period thought to have least in common with the scientists of the late seventeenth century. We have been too prone to take at face value the image of Paracelsus as a deranged drunkard which derives almost entirely from a single, prejudiced pen, that of Johannes Oporinus. The emotive violence directed against Paracelsus in the sixteenth century tends to be replaced in the modern literature by derision, even in the case of distinguished authorities as diverse as R. Lenoble and D.P. Walker. It should be remembered that Oporinus's attempt to discredit Paracelsus on behalf of the humanists was totally unsuccessful at the time, and his letter should not be allowed to blind us to the virtually unimpeded rise of the influence of the medical reformer.
The degree to which Paracelsus stirred up the passions of his opponents is a measure of his success in sabotaging efforts aimed at permanently establishing the authority of Galen in the field of medicine. Thus the first major confrontation of the Scientific Revolution was between Paracelsus and Galen, rather than between Copernicus and Ptolemy. The significance of this confrontation was evident to contemporaries. In planning the first general history of medicine Le Clerc unhesitatingly placed Paracelsus at the beginning of the movement aimed at breaking completely with antiquity and constructing a completely new form of medicine from first principles. The respected sixteenth-century chronicler, Daniel Specklin, regarded the year 1517 as one of particular importance in the cultural history of Europe, marked by the efforts of Luther, Paracelsus and Dürer. Paracelsus became known as the Luther of medicine, just as Kepler was to call himself the Luther of astrology. The comparison between Luther, Paracelsus and Dürer gains added weight from their combination of special interests and broader-ranging cultural concern.
Paracelsus was never regarded as a purely medical author. His speculations embraced every facet of the sciences and, like Newton, his biblical commentaries and religious works were both great in bulk and highly esteemed by their author, in comparison with his other writings. As far as Paracelsus was concerned, man and the cosmos were analogues which were inseparably linked. The study of man the microcosm was unthinkable without an appreciation of his place in the physical and spiritual macrocosm. What Paracelsus termed 'astronomy' always found a central place in his accounts of his medical system. This bias is reflected in the title of the major work of his maturity: Astronomia Magna oder die Ganze Philosophia Sagus der Grossen und Kleinen Welt (1537/8). Thus, although Paracelsus regarded his primary practical goal as the reform of medicine, his religious standpoint, repeated use of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, and recognition of the powerful effects of the celestial environment on man, constantly threw him back into the fields of cosmology and cosmogony.
In asserting that the foundations of medicine lay in philosophy, astronomy and alchemy, Paracelsus was in line with an entrenched position established by medieval Arabic and Jewish medical authorities, and reflected in the prevailing bias of the medical education of his day. Natural philosophy and mathematics were taught as an appendage of medical education; astrology was a standard component of medical studies; alchemy occupied a small niche in the study of pharmacology. At the time of Paracelsus astrological treatises poured in abundance from the medical schools of Europe. Leading astronomers and cosmologers of the renaissance were educated as physicians; the two avocations were compatible and partly interchangeable. Rheticus was a successful physician. Copernicus studied medicine at Padua; Copernicus and Tycho Brahe cherished their skill as amateur medical practitioners. Even Kepler needed to resist pressure to devote himself primarily to the practice of medicine.
Paracelsus shared the traditional priorities, but his conception of philosophy, astronomy and alchemy was sharply different from that practised by the Arabs or in the schools, and he set out to refute most of what was customarily taught as the foundation for medical theory. His approach was thin on the technicalities of astronomy, but to a greater degree than his fellow astronomers he sketched out all aspects of the system, thus explaining the basis of interaction between the human, terrestrial, and celestial spheres. This desire for consistency and comprehensiveness persisted as a background concern for future generations of scientists. It remained important to Newton that his gravitational theory should be consistent with evidence concerning the workings of the terrestrial and human microcosm, and ideas from these latter areas were allowed to influence his thinking on metaphysical issues in general. It was unacceptable to Newton, as it had been to Paracelsus, to adopt physical principles at variance with evidence deriving from chemistry or physiology.
In view of the wide-ranging nature of his speculations it is not surprising that the influence of Paracelsus was felt well beyond the confines of medicine. His attraction to reformers was undiminishing. The influence of Paracelsus is evident in the cases of John Dee and Thomas Mouffet, two of the more adventurous and cosmopolitan English natural philosophers in the generation before Bacon. Dee, even during the early, mathematical stage of his career, was collecting the works of Paracelsus with obsessive zeal. Mouffet interrupted his medical education at Cambridge to study among the Paracelsians at Basel, and declared Paracelsus to be the new Hippocrates. Mouffet managed to combine his aim of promoting Paracelsus with the more conventional task of completing Gesner's great Historia Animalium.
Gesner himself had regarded his fellow countryman Paracelsus with a mixture of admiration and fright, but the next generation, having access to the full body of posthumous works interlaced with beguiling spurious items, welcomed Paracelsus into the ranks of the philosophical reformers. The Paracelsians now became influential court physicians and philosophers. Three of this group, Petrus Severinus, Michael Sendivogius, and Oswald Croll, produced much-needed and accessible expositions of the ideas of Paracelsus, which greatly extended the philosophical life of their hero. Their primers remained actively consulted into the late seventeenth century. Severinus's Idea medicinae philosophicae (1571), Sendivogius's Novum lumen chymicum (1614), and Croll's Basilica chymica (1609) contained much of the rhetoric concerning the methodology and merits of experimental philosophy familiar to later generations through the writings of Francis Bacon. Croll's title page firmly established Paracelsus in the iconography of wisdom in science and medicine. Severinus was one of the few modern authors to wring an expression of sneaking regard from the author of the Novum Organum.
Mouffet's defence of Paracelsus was addressed to Severinus and Tycho Brahe. The latter was deeply interested in chemistry and medicine, and his indebtedness to the astronomy of Paracelsus will be mentioned below. Brahe attacked both Paracelsus's critic, Thomas Erastus, and Galenism, describing Paracelsus as 'Germanorum incomparabili Philosopho et Medico'. Kepler was less directly interested in Paracelsus but he singled out Copernicanism and Paracelsianism as the most noteworthy features in the rise of modern knowledge.
The ideas of Paracelsus were not rendered obsolete by the rise of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. Indeed evidence has mounted in a crucial area to suggest that the atomism of Gassendi owed much to a notorious circle of French chemists occupying an embattled position against the Galenist establishment in Paris. The practical courses conducted by this group attracted a wide following, and they gave currency to theories of matter deriving from Paracelsus and the ancient atomists in various combinations. The atomism of Bacon can be shown to derive from a similar 'semi-Paracelsian' source.
Paracelsianism was a phenomenon of the seventeenth as much as of the sixteenth century. French Paracelsianism was at its height between 1610 and 1650. English, Italian, and Scandinavian Paracelsianism are largely features of the period after 1650. By this stage the partisans of Paracelsus were receiving new impetus owing to the wide diffusion and popularity of the works of Joan Baptista van Helmont. Robert Boyle was initiated into chemistry through predominantly Paracelsian and Helmontian sources. Notwithstanding Paracelsus's possible personal deficiencies Boyle accepted the justice of regarding him 'both in his own and after times [as] a very considerable person'.
In Italy the merits of Paracelsus were urged by the physicians Pietro Castelli and Marc Aurelio Severino, in the case of the latter again in association with Democritean atomism and anatomy. In the next generation the Accademia degli Investiganti of Naples, one of the main centres for promoting the new philosophy in Italy, found no inconsistency in promoting the physics of Galileo and the medicine of Paracelsus and van Helmont. As in the case of their Parisian counterparts, the physicians who led the investigators found themselves locked in conflict with Galenists of the local College of Physicians. Their main manifesto bore the characteristically Paracelsian title Astronomiae microcosmicae systema novum.
In the later seventeenth century not only was Paracelsian chemical therapy practised on a wide scale by reputable practitioners, but the ideas of Paracelsus and van Helmont also exercised direct influence on theories of life and matter, as witness Glisson, Mayow, Willis, and others contributing to the golden age of English physiology.
Paracelsus was by no means universally popular. Henry More viewed all Platonists having enthusiastic leanings with the deepest suspicion. Paracelsus he regarded as a dangerous adversary 'whose unbridled imagination and bold and confident obtrusion of his uncouth and supine inventions upon the world has ... given occasion to the wildest Philosophical Enthusiasms that ever were broached by any either Christian or Heathen'. On the other hand, the retired enthusiast John Webster was unapologetic in citing Paracelsus as the primary source of inspiration of his solid and competent reviews, Metallographia (1671) and The Displaying of Witchcraft (1677). In his customary blunt way, Webster warned anyone who was offended by his 'too great Commendations to Paracelsus, Helmont, Basilius, and some other of the Adeptists, they may know that it is not without just cause, though they understand them not: for chewed meat must not always be put into men's mouths, let them study to find the depth of the meaning of those authors'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from From Paracelsus to Newton by Charles Webster. Copyright © 1982 Cambridge University Press. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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