Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Whereas some have asserted that the early Royal Society actively sought to discredit magical beliefs, others have seen ideas of this kind as integral to the Society's 'nature' in its early years. This paper argues that, whatever the magical commitments of individual Fellows, the Society's corporate policy simply sidelined such pursuits. Yet, insofar as the result was that magic was excluded by default from the proper realm of scientific enquiry, this attitude was to prove paradoxically influential (although its roots have been retrospectively misconstrued to an extent that is significant in itself).
Author: Michael Hunter
Institution: Birkbeck, University of London
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Royal Society
OpenAlex ID: W2089873852