HIST 223 Magic, Science, and Religion
How do we define legitimate knowledge—and who gets to decide? This course explores the shifting boundaries between science, magic, and religion from antiquity to the early modern period, tracing how practices like astrology, alchemy, and divination once stood at the center of intellectual life. Rather than treating science as a triumphant break from superstition, we examine an entangled history in which natural, celestial, and spiritual phenomena were understood as interconnected—often through shared principles like the Hermetic dictum “as above, so below.”
Moving chronologically from the ancient Mediterranean to the dawn of the Enlightenment, we explore traditions of natural philosophy, the occult sciences, and religious belief across Latin Christendom and the Islamic world. Emphasizing points of transmission, translation, and shared cosmological inheritance, the course challenges Eurocentric narratives by foregrounding Greco-Arabic knowledge systems and the broader Afro-Eurasian intellectual continuum. Students will analyze how contested categories like “magic” and “science” were shaped by theological debates, philosophical commitments, and the institutional cultures of courts, monasteries, madrasas, and universities.
Core Requirements Met
- Pre-1800
- Global Connections