Natural Magic

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/magical-thinking-book-review-the-book-of-magic-brian-copenhaver?utm_content=buffer7f54e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

"Attempts to establish a “natural magic,” free of demonic assistance and compatible with God as omnipotent creator, can be found in the works of Albertus Magnus, the 13th-century German Dominican bishop, and later those of Nicole Oresme, a French bishop. But it wasn’t until the Renaissance that the idea was given firm philosophical and theological foundations. That was largely due to Marsilio Ficino, the dazzling Italian scholar, and his protégé Pico della Mirandola, who seized on the writings of the interpreters of Plato in late antiquity to create a Christianised Neoplatonism that affirmed natural magic as doctrinally sound and intellectually respectable. Magic, says della Mirandola, is “the practical part of natural science”—and so its “noblest part.”"

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It is always interesting to read history, the thoughts and deeds of days gone by. But we have come a long way since the 13th Century.It's good to know how things started; what people thought in those far off days,how things were discovered. But,really, what would Magnus have thought of the International Space Station?
Knowledge accumulates with time. Even as late as the 18th Century, doctors would tell you that it's the female that determines the sex of the child. It's not true,is it? But back in those days men would curse their wives for not producing a son!
Some men still do!