Mark Jones, Albion Magazine he author's lucid and detailed exposition introduces us to a cast of lesser known writers - such as Francis Hutchinson, Obadiah Oddy and Richard Mead - as he sketches the broader context in which the seismic shift in attitude occurred, while acknowledging the gulf between educated and popular opinion. Dr Jan Machielsen, Reviews in History Michael Hunter provides a route-map of sorts with which to negotiate this sometimes precarious cognitive terrain. Dimitri Levitin, Literary Review Hunter has taken us on a fascinating journey, providing us with some astute case studies and pointed observations along the way. Hunter's book has a similar-sounding title, but develops a different argument in suggesting that it was sceptical humanists and freethinkers, rather than scientists, who did most to discredit traditional magic -Tony Barber, Financial Times 'Best Books of 2020: History' In forcing us all to think more critically about the ways in which intellectual and cultural change happens, Hunter has again made a major contribution to the history of early modern Britain. Tony Barber, Financial Times Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic, one of the 20th century's seminal historical texts. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.Įvelops a different argument in suggesting that it was sceptical humanists and freethinkers, rather than scientists, who did most to discredit traditional magic. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about.

While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. Credit for this great change is usually given to science - and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain-named a Best Book of 2020 by the Financial Times

The decline of magic