Western esotericism and the history of European science and medicine in the early modern period
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis January 16, 2019 Jole Shackelford
Esoteric belief systems, which prioritize inner knowledge gained through direct apprehension or internal illumination rather than public pedagogy, have historically been excluded from the academic study of science and medicine since the Enlightenment. These systems operate within worldviews that include their own physics and metaphysics, making them comparable to other cosmologies. Historians of science find particular value in examining points of confrontation and zones of commonality between occult and manifest sciences, as these are where the disciplinary boundaries of modern science are negotiated.