Work

Repairing the Body, Restoring the Soul: Kabbalah, Magic, and Philosophy in Premodern Jewish Healthcare

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: One man's magic," notes Anthony Grafton, quoting Robert A. Heinlein, "is another person's engineering."1Heinlein's words testify to his literary genius, which enabled him to transcend the crude twentieth-century separation between magic and science and imagine future worlds.But a historian preoccupied with the past finds another dimension in Heinlein's turn of phrase.It typifies a way of thinking now lost to the West.As Grafton deftly observes, in premodern Europe, both science and magic rested on a common assumption that the lower and upper worlds shared certain correspondences that could be effectively manipulated through experimentation and observation.2

Source: Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy

DOI: 10.1163/1477285x-12341364

Authors: Andrea Gondos, Magdaléna Jánošíková

Institutions: University of Rochester, University of Amsterdam

Language: English

Topic: Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

Subfield: Archeology

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze