A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our EraThorndike, Lynn
History
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Thorndike, Lynn
Magic -- History; Science -- History
There are some men who deny any efficacy to the motions of the stars,
but Daniel charges that they for the most part condemn the science
without knowing anything about it, “and hold astronomy in hatred from
its name alone.”[508] He replies that it is useful to foreknow the
future and defends astrology in much the usual manner. He details the
qualities of the seven planets[509] whom the Arabs call “lords of
nativities.”[510] Also he takes up the properties and attributes of the
signs of the zodiac and how the Arabs divide the parts of the human
body among them.[511]
[Sidenote: Astrology and other sciences.]
Daniel interprets the scope of astrology very broadly, asserting
that it has eight parts: the science of judgments, or what we should
call judicial astrology; medicine; nigromancy according to physics;
agriculture; illusions or magic (_de praestigiis_); alchemy, “which
is the science of the transmutation of metals into other species;
the science of images, which Thoz Grecus set forth in the great and
universal book of Venus; and the science of mirrors, which is of
broader scope and aim than the rest, as Aristotle shows in the treatise
on the burning glass.”[512] Except that magic illusions have replaced
navigation, this list of eight branches of learning is the same as
that which Gundissalinus repeated from Al-Farabi, but which they
called branches of natural science rather than of astrology. At any
rate we see again the close association of natural science and useful
arts with astrology and magic, and necromancy and alchemy, and with
pseudo-writings of Aristotle and Hermes Trismegistus. In other passages
Daniel cites genuine Aristotelian treatises[513] and speaks of “the
great Mercury” and of the other “Mercury Trismegistus, the nephew of
the aforesaid.”[514] Despite his subordination of alchemy to astrology
in the above passage, Daniel does not seem to have it in mind when he
remarks that there are “some who assign diverse colors of metals to the
planets,” as lead to Saturn, silver to Jupiter, white to Venus, and
black to Mercury.[515] He goes on to deny that the stars are really
colored any more than the sky is.
[Sidenote: Daniel and Greek: a misinterpretation.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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