A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2) During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era — Edition Insights

Diction as Evidence of Boundary-Making

Thorndike repeatedly demonstrates that a single word can reveal an author’s stance toward magic. In the excerpt on Augustine, he highlights the phrase “perverse science” from the Confessions, where Augustine censures “the vain and curious desire of investigation” that leads into “the confines of perverse science.” Thorndike does not simply quote; he notes that Augustine associates this dangerous curiosity with “searching through magic arts.” The adjective perverse does the work of condemning an entire mode of inquiry without needing to define magic separately. Similarly, Thorndike observes that Augustine calls ligatures and suspensions “by the milder name of natural remedies (physica),” signaling that terminology itself could be a rhetorical tool to sanitize or condemn a practice. By tracking such lexical choices, Thorndike builds a case that the history of magic is partly a history of how words were used to police intellectual boundaries.

The Rhetoric of Natural Marvels

Thorndike shows how ancient authors deployed marvels as rhetorical weapons. In the Augustine section, he notes that the bishop “rehearses a number of natural marvels” from Pliny and Solinus—the magnet, adamant that can be broken only by goat’s blood, mares impregnated by the wind, the salamander living in fire—to argue that pagans who accept such wonders should not balk at biblical miracles. Thorndike’s phrasing (“rehearses”) emphasizes the performative, argumentative function of these marvels. He does not treat them as naive beliefs but as strategic examples. The same marvels could serve different purposes: Pliny used them to illustrate nature’s variety; Augustine used them to expose pagan inconsistency. Thorndike’s method is to compare how the same wonder is framed across different authors, revealing how the boundary between natural and supernatural was constantly renegotiated.

Divination and Influence as Inseparable Arts

Thorndike draws attention to a structural argument in Augustine’s Confessions: the story of a soothsayer who offered not only to predict the future but to ensure success in a poetic contest. Thorndike comments that this incident “is a good illustration of the fact that prediction of the future and attempting to influence events go naturally together.” He then generalizes: “arts of divination cannot be separated either in theory or practice from magic arts.” This is not a claim about all cultures, but a specific observation about how Augustine’s text links prophecy and efficacy. Thorndike’s own prose mirrors his subject: he moves from a concrete anecdote to a broader inference, but always anchors the inference in the source’s wording. The reader sees how Thorndike builds his argument from the ground up, using the texture of the original texts rather than imposing modern categories.

The Ambiguous Status of Applied Knowledge

Thorndike devotes careful attention to borderline cases where a practice could be read as either natural remedy or demonic pact. He quotes Augustine’s distinction between saying “If you drink the juice of this herb, your stomach will not ache” and “If you suspend this herb from the neck, your stomach will not ache.” The first is a “healing application”; the second, a “superstitious signification.” Thorndike notes that Augustine concedes such suspensions might work naturally “by mere attachment,” but warns they may involve “some signal to demons.” The key word is may: Augustine leaves the door open, and Thorndike does not force it shut. Instead, he highlights the conditional language as evidence of genuine uncertainty. This passage exemplifies Thorndike’s broader approach: he treats ancient authors as thinkers wrestling with real ambiguities, not as purveyors of fixed doctrines.

Thorndike’s method rewards readers who attend to the precise wording of his sources. He rarely steps back to offer sweeping summaries; instead, he lets the texts speak, then points to the telling phrase or the revealing juxtaposition. This volume covers only the first thirteen centuries, but within that span it offers a dense, source-driven account of how magic and science were not yet separate enterprises. Readers should expect to encounter long quotations in Latin and Greek, and to follow arguments that move from a single word to a whole worldview. The payoff is a nuanced picture of intellectual history that resists easy dichotomies.

I keep thinking about how Thorndike's old book made me feel the ancient pull between wonder and questioning. It lingered like a quiet tide. That same sensation returned with this one, which looks at deep time through ice and human presence. Man and the Glacial Period — Themes and Context left me sitting still for a long while, just contemplating the slow layers beneath our ordinary days.