• astrologers believe everything is connected
• astronomers say show me the force that makes the connection
• today you need to be able to explain the steps, not just see a  vague connection
  

• astrology is your horoscope--prediction of future events based on the position of the stars
  
• astrology did not keep up with changing scientific knowledge
• scientists would say the idea the position of the planets affects human events is ridiculous
• because there is no causal connection
• long process of figuring out what had causal connections and what didn't
  

• every part of the creation has its place in a hierarchy with God at the top and matter at the bottom
• this gives humans an important place and suggests that we can climb the ladder, so was a contributor to humanism

• there are correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm--the same patterns can be found in both: "as above, so below" p. 23
• macrocosm: the stars and planets
• microcosm: the human body
  
• this means there are causal connections
  

Causal knowledge from Aristotle (difference between Plato and Aristotle)

• four kinds of causes: efficient, material, formal, final (p. 24)
• the final cause is the reason for something existing, its purpose
• implies that its creator has a plan
  
• notice that this means understanding something involves understanding its relationship to other things
  
• everything has a purpose and clear relationships to other objects

Note that all these key thinkers lived before Jesus, in a society that worshiped other (pagan) Gods, but their ideas were adopted by Christians

Crucial point in all of this: one of the goals of early modern science was to study how everything was connected, whether in a chain or by parallels or by influences

Notice that the goal of this book is not to find the origins of modern science but to understand how science was different during the scientific revolution

We might look back and say their ideas were a mixture of magic and science.  But we need to think carefully about what we mean by magic, and what they meant

• science is understanding how the world works in an organized, formal way
  
• equivalent to natural philosophy but science looks at narrower causes
  
• technology is modifying the environment by our actions
• magia naturalis is the equivalent of technology, based on correspondences
  

astronomy is to astrology as technology is to magic?
assumption here: science is theory, understanding, technology is practice, machines, being able to manipulate nature
the logic of correspondences (everything is actively connected to everything) gives us astrology, alchemy, and Magia Naturalis

Magia Naturalis (natural magic/mastery)

• as well as what we can detect with our senses there are hidden qualities and connections in nature
• can we learn and use those hidden connections?
• learn by close observation and collecting existing knowledge
• but also resemblances (signatures) may give clues: a walnut looks like a brain so might be medicine for the brain (is eating kidney beans beneficial to the kidney?)
  
• analogies are visible signs of hidden connections built into the creation (p. 30)
• connected things acted on each other by sympathy (sympathetic resonance)
• This was understood as vibrations in some medium, which might be air or might be the spiritus mundi, an invisible substance that is everywhere and can transmit influences

Practical applications

• astrology: the positions of the sun and planets affect our individual lives
• medical astrology: melancholy comes from too much black bile so should be counteracted by wearing yellow and eating food spiced with saffron at times when Jupiter (the planet corresponding to black bile) is in an influential position
  
• the system is rational and based on what were understood to be natural forces, not demons

Religious motivation

• early modern scientists were practicing Christians and saw no contradiction between science and faith
• Christianity was understood as a body of agreed-upon fact whose details might be worked out
• we understand God through both the Bible and the book of nature, God's creation
• studying nature brings us closer to God because we "learn much about the creator by studying the creation" (p. 37)