Astrology and Human Variation in Early Modern England

Bibliographic Data

ID8957428
AuthorsMark S Dawson (0000-0003-0632-0243, Australian National University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume56
Issue1
Pages31-53
Publication date2013-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x12000374
OpenAlexW2130202975
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited30

Processes for the identification of criminal suspects tell us a great deal about wider cultural assumptions and social prejudices regarding somatic difference; its causes, relative degree, and consequence. If early modern Europeans had something approaching a forensic science, it was astrology, which has recently garnered renewed attention from historians of ideas. Rather than assume astrology's seventeenth-century decline in the face of revolutionary natural philosophy, what follows suggests that English astrology remained significant for mundane bodily discrimination, in the context of both a more deliberate, gradual reform and the tenacity of centuries-old humoral physiology. More importantly, scrutiny of astrological practice, and the logic underpinning its lasting currency, can reveal much about the significance of bodily contrasts and the meanings ascribed to them by Tudor-Stuart folk

Archaeology · Astrology · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept · Political science · Scrutiny · Social science · Sociology · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

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