Descartes: A Biography

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Magic, Mathematics, and Mechanics 

ocean flooding their land, outrun each other to be first to be engulfed in

the swollen tide of its waves.’In the same year, Mersenne published his

commentary on the book of Genesis. In the process of discussing Brahe,

Campanella, musical harmony, and all the issues of the age that were

among his encyclopedic interests, he warned readers against the cabalistic

interpretations of the Bible proposed by the English natural philosopher

Robert Fludd.The Jesuit priest Franc ̧ois Garasse added his voice to the

universal condemnation inThe Curious Doctrine of the Acute Minds of this

age, or those who pretend to be such(), in which he analysed the dangers

of the apparently new sect in Germany, ‘the confraternity of the Cross of

Roses.’

Naude’s concerns, as Cardinal Marazin’s librarian, were probably more ́

political than religious, whereas Mersenne and Garasse were primarily

interested in defending Catholicism against ‘heretics’. They were worried

that if people were gullible enough to believe the stories of the Rose Cross

fraternity, they were also likely to question the credibility of mysteries

that were taught equally dogmatically by the Christian churches and were

accepted with similar credulity by their members. This sensitive issue –

about the extent to which unintelligible mysteries should be accepted

from any source on faith – would later reappear as a major question for

Descartes.What criteria should one apply as a safeguard against being

foolishly credulous, and what evidence is appropriate in making judgments

about issues that seem to transcend the limited abilities of the human

mind?

Naude’s general suspicion about alchemists and magicians was initially ́

cast so widely that it included nearly everyone in the past who had pro-

posed any kind of novelty. The scope of his initial condemnation prompted

him to return to the question two years later in an attempt to rescue, from

the imputation of magic, many of the most eminent philosophers and

mathematicians of the past. Thus inhe publishedAn Apology for all

the Great People who have been falsely suspected of Magic.Here Naude ́

distinguished four kinds of magic, each of which involves the human

exercise of natural powers, and he identified only one variety as unaccept-

able magic, in which human capacities are allegedly supplemented by the

assistance of a demon. He argued that the natural magic involved in using

one’s native powers to their limit is not objectionable, and by this strategy

Naude rehabilitated Aristotle, Pythagoras, Democritus, Cicero, and even ́

Paracelsus.