STS 217
The Great Instauration: Monsters, Miracles, and Magic in the Scientific Revolution Spring 2026
Division II
Cross-listed REL 217

Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (The Great Instauration) (1620)–literally a “great renewal” or “restoration”–is often regarded as a crucial text in launching the Scientific Revolution by rejecting inherited scholastic traditions in favor of systematic empirical investigation. Yet, Bacon did not frame his project as a radical innovation but as a recovery of lost wisdom. Seeing himself as an alchemist with a prophetic mission, he sought to restore the knowledge of Adam in preparation for what he saw as an imminent apocalypse. Indeed, as this course will show, Bacon is less the exception than the rule, insofar as rather than fully banishing magic, wonder, and divine agency, early modern natural philosophers remained preoccupied with monsters, miracles, and the occult even as they sought to redefine the boundaries of legitimate knowledge. Along these lines, this course reexamines the so-called “Scientific Revolution” through the lenses of religion, magic, and the monstrous, challenging dominant narratives of disenchantment, secularization, and historical rupture in the historiography of science. Rather than viewing the period as a clean break between premodern superstition and modern rationality, we will explore how figures such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton navigated a world still teeming with divine intervention, occult forces, and epistemic uncertainty. We will consider how theological commitments shaped emerging scientific methodologies, how miracles and monstrosities functioned as epistemic anomalies, and how magical and alchemical traditions remained entangled with experimental science. Drawing on primary texts from the 16th to 18th centuries alongside critical works in the history and philosophy of science, this course invites students to rethink the boundaries of science, religion, and magic in early modern thought. Topics will include natural theology, mechanistic philosophy, astrology, alchemy, wonder, and the politics of scientific authority. In the final weeks, we will consider how the persistence of these themes troubles contemporary narratives of disenchantment and the secularization of knowledge.