Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution

Abstract

r finds great significance in a figure of Mercury used in the first work (1558), supposes that it "closely resembled" a Pythagorean construct in the second (1564), and asserts that "it was again to be displayed on the first page" of the Praeface (p. 6).This is historiographical alchemy in itself.The Praeface title-page has at the foot of a wood-cut border a tiny figure of Mercury, but above it rise figures of Arithmetica, Geometrica, Musica and Astronomia, and above them Hipparchus, Aratus, Ptolomaeus and others performing observations with instruments under a globe of eanh surmounted by Time, the sun and the moon.This wood- cut occurs at least four times previously in diverse John Day editions as early as 1559; its relation to Dee's Euclid seems fortuitous.One brief paragraph names Astrology, a science to be distinguished from false and presumptuous notions of influence; influence like the moon's on the seas and the human body is to be studied by his "Mathematically furnished" method.Another paragraph names Arcbemastrie as the Experimentall Science which "pro- cedeth, with the heipe of the foresayd Artes, to the performance of complete Experiences, which of no particular Art, are hable (Formally) to be challenged" (sig. A. iii).This is the (old and new) call for testing conclusions by controlled experiment: is it alchemy?The editor, Allen Debus, Director of the Fishbein Centre for the History of Science (University of Chicago), has introduced this edition without indicating the value of the English Euclid itself for English scholars of the sixteenth century and after.He does not

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