This book explores the changing perspective of astrology from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. It introduces a framework for understanding both its former centrality and its later removal from legitimate knowledge and practice. The discussion reconstructs the changing roles of astrology in Western science, theology, and culture from 1250 to 1500.
The author considers both the how and the why. He analyzes and integrates a broad range of sources. This analysis shows that the history of astrology—in particular, the story of the protracted criticism and ultimate removal of astrology from the realm of legitimate knowledge and practice—is crucial for fully understanding the transition from premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy to modern Newtonian science.
This removal, the author argues, was neither obvious nor unproblematic. Astrology was not some sort of magical nebulous hodge-podge of beliefs. Rather, astrology emerged in the 13th century as a richlymathematical system that served to integrate astronomy and natural philosophy, precisely the aim of the “New Science” of the 17th century. As such, it becomes a fundamentally important historical question to determine why this promising astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different mathematical natural philosophy—and one with a very different causal structure than Aristotle’s.
Table of Content
Part 1: Conceptual Structure (1): Astrology and Natural Philosophy/Science: Reconstructing a 13th-Century Astrologizing Aristotelianism (1250-80). Introduction to Part 1: Astrology and Aristotelian Natural Philosophy. Chapter 1: Ligamentum naturalis philosophiae et metaphysicae: Astrology and Aristotelian Natural Philosophy.- Chapter 2: Mathematizing the Picture: Mathematics, Perspectiva and Astrology in Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus.- Chapter 3: Albertus Magnus on the Natural Philosophical Foundations for Revolutions Intermezzo.- Chaper 4: Defending Astrology: Roger Bacon and the Speculum astronomiae.- Part 2: Conceptual Structures (2): Astrology and Theology/Religion. Introduction to part 2: Astrology and Theology. Chapter 5: Astrology and Theology in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas: Fate, Divination and Providence.- Chapter 6: Astrology, Theology and Religion in Roger Bacon.- Part 3: Conceptual Structures (3): Astrology and Magic. Introduction to part 3: Astrology and Magic. Chapter 7: Imagines astronomicae (talismans) in the Speculum astronomiae, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.- Chapter 8: Opera et verba sapientiae: Astrology and Magic in Roger Bacon.- Part 4: Institutional, Scocio-Political and Cultural Structures: Universities, Cities and Courts (1300-1500). Introduction to part 4: Astrology, Mathematics and Humanism. Chapter 9: Disciplinary Configurations: Astrology and the Mathematical Disciplines.- Chapter 10: Institutional Foundations: The Universities.- Chapter 11: Astrology in Society, Politics and Culture.- Conclusion to I: The Annus Mirabilis of 1484: Towards Renaissance Astrology and Magic.
About the author
A historian of science with a focus on the role of astrology in premodern Western science and culture ca. 1250-1800, H Darrel Rutkin took his Ph D at Indiana University in 2002. After a series of splendid postdoctoral fellowships and visiting professorships, he is now Associate Professor (Ricercatore) at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia in the Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali (2018-2021). He has also contributed to the
Cambridge History of Science and the
Harvard Companion to the Classical Tradition.
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