1) The final exam will be based primarily on the material from after the midterm, with the caveat that judgments about change over time may require a general sense of the material we covered in the first half of the term.
2) You are responsible for everything we've talked about in class. Read through your class notes and make sure you understand them! If I've ever taken the trouble to put something on the board, you can be sure you must need to know it! If I've given you a handout/ map/timeline/diagram, etc. or placed same on the Lecture Supplements page of the CourseInfo site, you need to know that material (correspondance of humors to elements, source of inquisitorial authority, and so on).
3) You are responsible for knowing a reasonable amount of detail about all of the primary sources (for example, works by Marsilio Ficino, Honorius of Thebes, Stephen of Bourbon, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Newton, Voltaire, etc.). You should be familiar with the authors of those texts, the nature of the texts, and be able to use the material to discuss various themes related to class.
4) You are responsible for the secondary scholarship we've read. You should be familiar with Yates' thesis on hermeticism (Renaissance Magus and the Rosicrucian precursor of the Baconian scientist sound familiar?), Henry's position on Newton and the scientific revolution, etc., and you should be prepared to engage with their theories and perspectives.
I. There will be 6 identification questions worth 5 points each (30 points total). You will have some choice here (six out of eight). They will be taken from the following list:
Astral magic
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Aude Sapere!
Bensalem
Book of Nature (as understood, for example, by Galileo)
Cornelius Agrippa
Crystalline/Empyrean/Sidereal heavens
Cult of the Holy Greyhound
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of
the Celestial Orbs)
Enlightenment
Experiment
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
Great Instauration
Heliocentrism
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermeticism
Honorius of Thebes
Humors
Induction/Deduction
Inquisition
Johannes Kepler
Marsilio Ficino
Mechanical Philosophy (Mechanism)
Mosaic Adam/Hermetic Adam
Necromancy
Nicholas Copernicus
Philosophe
Pimander
Principia mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
René Descartes
Rosicrucian
Royal Society
Stephen of Bourbon
Teleology
Temple Anneke
Timaeus
Tycho Brahe
Voltaire
World Soul
II. There will be 5 fill in the blank questions worth 4 points each (20 points total). You will be given a bank of answers to choose from.
III. There will be two short essay questions (10 pts. each - 20 pts. total). These are meant to be one-paragraph responses. The questions will be broader in focus than the IDs but less comprehensive than the longer essay.
IV. There will be one longer essay question worth 30 pts. Make sure that you are comfortable enough with the material we've covered to be able to incorporate it into your answers. You should be as specific as you possibly can be in your answers, drawing examples from the readings or class discussion whenever possible. I am aware that this is a closed book exam and am less concerned with your ability to recall entire passages from the readings than I am with your ability to fit specific evidence and issues into a larger framework.
Examples of the sorts of essay question you might be asked:
• I have suggested that our modern notion of “science” (distinct
from both “magic” and “religion”) emerged only in the
eighteenth century with Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire. Compare the worldview
embraced by Isaac Newton as you have come to understand him through our course
readings with that of Voltaire (as evidenced in Zadig and in his Letter
on Newton) as a way of exploring that assertion.
• Describe Aristotelian, Neoplatonic and mechanistic views of nature. Briefly,
what were their respective roles in changing intellectual culture in the west
from the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries? How do new views of nature
change the definition of and relationship between categories of magic, science
and religion?
• Most of the scientific and cosmological innovations begun in the late
fifteenth century were put forward by learned advocates of the Christian faith
(Catholic or Protestant). Describe the relationship of Christianity and
the institutional Church to magical and scientific pursuits during the later
Middle Ages and early modern period (fourteenth through eighteenth centuries). How
would you describe the role of religious belief in the changes that led from
medieval sensibilities to modern ones?
• Discuss changing definitions of magic in medieval and early modern
Europe. What were some of the ways magic was understood (and perhaps utilized)
in learned and popular culture? What were some of the ways religious and secular
institutions attempted to control these practices (whether the practices were
real or imagined).