Lynn Thorndike’s vast, multi-volume “History of Magic and Experimental Science” stands as a gigantic monument to the huge amount of, well, stuff that is in the archives but which mainstream historians circa 1920 thought to be unworthy of discussion. Thankfully, things have now changed somewhat!
Kessinger Publishing has reprinted much of Thorndike’s work: but (unless I’ve misinterpreted things) their modern print-on-demand reprints seem to be about £25 for 200-ish page segments, whereas copies of the original eight volumes (published in pairs in 1923, 1934, 1941, and 1958, and each volume of which is 600-700 pages) go second hand for £30 or so.
Even something like Thorndike’s “History of Medieval Europe” can be picked up for £5 or less, while the Kessinger POD reprint is more than £20. Bizarre economics!
As with David Kahn, everyone namechecks Thorndike: but few have read all 6,000-odd pages of the HoMaES series. I’ll admit it: though to date I’ve only ever read sections as required, one day I’ll read the whole lot… I hope!
All in all, there really doesn’t (unless you know better?) seem to be a Thorndike 2.0, a decent modern alternative to HoMaES in (say) only 1,500 pages or less. So even 50 years on from Vols VII and VIII, the new Thorndike is still Thorndike!
I just finished the 8-volume set this morning (I started reading it April 18, 2023 and finished today August 6, 2024, picking at it gradually over time), total page count is 5784 without indices). I found your site while looking for a thumbnail of Lynn.
The History of Magic and Experimental Science is a safari that I’ll never forget. It’s to Thorndike’s credit he doesn’t do very much analysis in the book, just jabbing at superstition every 50 pages or so. Compare this to someone like Frazer, whose unabridged Golden Bough is full of analysis. That’s beautiful in its own right too, but different.
My favorite takeaways:
– everyone believing that corpses bleed in the presence of murderers (at the end of vol 8 Christian Friedrich Garmann hints that the reasoning for this comes from Abel’s blood “screaming out” after his death)
– sympathy and antipathy driving almost everything
– Rheticus blowing the lid off on Copernicus whom he claimed was trying to make better astrological charts
– Da Vinci being a hack
– Newton being cagey and secretive about all his alchemy
– the general trend of almost every scientist trying to prove astrology, necromancy, alchemy etc., but producing a lot of science as a sort of slag that gets picked up by later thinkers
You could definitely do a new Thorndike-style history of science from 1800-2025 and tackle these alien fanatics and whatnot.
Happy to share my notes with anyone (151,000 words of them) who’s interested too. Just shoot me an email.
Volumes 1 and 2 are available via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/54214