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Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
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The Decline of Magic - Britain in the Enlightenment (Paperback)
Loot Price: R461
Discovery Miles 4 610
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The Decline of Magic - Britain in the Enlightenment (Paperback)
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Loot Price R461
Discovery Miles 4 610
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
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A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science
displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain-named a Best Book of 2020
by the Financial Times In early modern Britain, belief in
prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace.
Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a
spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth
century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great
change is usually given to science - and in particular to the
scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael
Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not
scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the
reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew
on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion
and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even
if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation
and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly
change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing
of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in
which magic no longer had a place.
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