John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion

«Well, well, It is time for some to lay hold on wisdome, and to Iudge truly of thinges: and not so to expound the Holy word, all by Allegories: as to Neglect the wisdome, power and Goodness of God, in, and by his Creatures, and Creation to be seen and learned.» — primer epígrafe del volumen, tomado de la Mathematicall Praeface de Dee: Clulee lo pone al frente como programa del libro, y en él Dee reclama que no se explique toda la palabra santa por alegorías hasta descuidar la sabiduría de Dios visible en sus criaturas.

«The whole Frame of Gods Creatures, (which is the whole world,) is to vs, a bright glasse: from which, by reflexion, reboundeth to our knowledge and perceiuerance, Beames, and Radiations: representing the Image of his Infinite goodness, Omnipotency, and wisdome.» — continuación del epígrafe de Dee: la creación entera es un espejo brillante del que rebotan hacia el conocimiento humano rayos que representan la imagen de la bondad, la omnipotencia y la sabiduría infinitas; de esta figura del *bright glasse* saca Clulee el hilo de continuidad de toda la carrera de Dee.

«In the case of Dee, however, there is no readily accessible context to which his intellectual activities may be related.» — el problema de método con que Clulee abre: en el caso de Dee no hay contexto disponible al que referir sus actividades intelectuales.

«To be more exact, in the course of taking a fresh look at Dee’s intellectual career I have found it necessary to examine anew the interpretation of Renaissance occultism that has usually been taken as the context in which to situate Dee’s activities.» — declara que revisar a Dee lo obligó a reexaminar la interpretación del ocultismo renacentista que suele tomarse como su contexto.

«For quite some time now, scholars have been discovering and exploring the myriad ways astrology, magic, kabbalah, alchemy, and other ‘occult’ arts, sciences, and philosophies manifested themselves in the culture of Renaissance and early modern Europe.» — describe el estado del campo: hace tiempo que se exploran las mil maneras en que la astrología, la magia, la cábala, la alquimia y otras artes llamadas ocultas se manifestaron en la cultura del Renacimiento y de la Europa moderna temprana.

«Dee was in many ways a unique individual, who was not only in touch with many of the well-known strands of Renaissance thought but who also drew on intellectual traditions and texts whose importance in the sixteenth century have been little recognized.» — lo que le adjudica a Dee de singular: no solo estuvo en contacto con las corrientes conocidas del pensamiento renacentista, sino que se sirvió de tradiciones y textos cuya importancia en el siglo XVI se ha reconocido poco.

«Dee therefore allows us to see features of Renaissance thought that would otherwise be difficult to discern.» — de ahí el rendimiento que le atribuye al caso: Dee deja ver rasgos del pensamiento renacentista que de otro modo serían difíciles de discernir.

«John Dee has had the mixed fortune to have lived a notably interesting life. His fortune has been good largely because certain facets of his career contain much of popular and even sensational interest, assuring that his life exerted considerable fascination ever since his death in 1608.» — abre el libro con la paradoja biográfica: la vida de Dee tuvo interés popular y hasta sensacional, y eso le aseguró fascinación desde su muerte en 1608.

«His fortune has been ill because these very same features have presented great obstacles to any satisfactory understanding of his career.» — la otra cara de esa fortuna, según Clulee: esos mismos rasgos son el obstáculo mayor para entender su carrera.

«His contemporary reputation for arcane learning, his practice of astrology and alchemy, and most spectacularly his long association with Edward Kelley, as the spiritual medium for his conversations with spirits and their exploits in the domains of Emperor Rudolf II, have provided matter for moralizing and romance.» — enumera lo que dio pie a la moralina y al romance: la fama de saber arcano, la práctica de astrología y alquimia, y sobre todo la asociación con Edward Kelley como médium de las conversaciones con espíritus en los dominios del emperador Rodolfo II.

«Until the present century, much of the biographical literature on Dee has been concerned with him as a personality and with the drama of his life; it has devoted little attention to the study of his writings, and has been less than scholarly.» — juzga la literatura biográfica anterior al siglo XX: atendió a la personalidad y al drama, poco a los escritos, y con escaso rigor.

«Most literature which took notice of Dee recognized that he was not only a devotee of the occult but also accomplished in fields considered more legitimate by modern standards, particularly in mathematics, navigation, and astronomy.» — consigna el reconocimiento doble que la literatura le dio: devoto de lo oculto y a la vez competente en campos que la medida moderna tiene por legítimos.

«in any field, however, are slight, difficult to understand, and of little obvious long-range significance in mathematics, science, or philosophy.» — su tasación de la obra sustantiva de Dee, que empieza al pie de la plana anterior: en cualquier campo es escasa, difícil de entender y de poca significación evidente de largo alcance en matemáticas, ciencia o filosofía.

«Hermetism in its Renaissance guise was a product of the recovery and translation in the fifteenth century of the full body of Greek philosophical and religious texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.» — define el hermetismo renacentista como producto de la recuperación y traducción, en el siglo XV, del cuerpo griego de textos filosóficos y religiosos atribuidos a Hermes Trismegisto.

«These texts aroused considerable interest because they presented a particularly exalted conception of man as a semi-divine intermediary between the divine and the terrestrial and as capable of creating his own nature, the key to which was the practice of magic for both power over the created world and the attainment of spiritual communion.» — lo que según Clulee hacía atractivos esos textos: una concepción exaltada del hombre como intermediario semidivino capaz de crear su propia naturaleza, con la magia como llave del poder y de la comunión espiritual.

«Belief in magic was widespread in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but it was almost always condemned by ecclesiastical authorities, theologians, and philosophers as a practice inherently involving demonology and, therefore, a threat to the stability of the universal order and contrary to religion.» — contrapone el estatuto medieval de la magia: creencia extendida, pero casi siempre condenada por autoridades eclesiásticas, teólogos y filósofos como práctica demonológica y contraria a la religión.

«It was these texts, it is argued, with their mixture of magic, philosophy, and religion, that dignified and theologically legitimated magic as part of an ancient, divinely inspired, and proto-Christian religious wisdom.» — expone en voz ajena —«it is argued»— el paso que se le atribuye a los Hermetica: dignificar y legitimar teológicamente la magia como parte de una sabiduría antigua, divinamente inspirada y protocristiana.

«No longer a despised conjurer of devils, the magician was now seen as a pious religious philosopher with insights into the secrets of the divine and natural order.» — la figura que resulta de ese paso: el mago deja de ser conjurador despreciado y pasa por filósofo religioso piadoso con acceso a los secretos del orden divino y natural.

«Central to the new Renaissance idea of magic was the notion that the magus as operator could draw power from the divine and natural order.» — el núcleo de la idea renacentista de magia según la reconstruye: el magus como operador que extrae poder del orden divino y natural.

«Central to these previous studies of Dee is his natural philosophy, which will be the primary focus of this study. My aim is to delineate the main elements of his natural philosophy, the basic motives behind his study of nature, and his intentions in the works that he wrote, determining the sources of his ideas and how he used them, and the relation of his natural philosophy to other Renaissance intellectual currents.» — fija su propio objeto y su método: delinear los elementos de la filosofía natural de Dee, los motivos de su estudio de la naturaleza, sus intenciones en cada obra, las fuentes de sus ideas y el uso que les dio.

«I have chosen to pursue this study by closely examining selected texts that explicitly or implicitly represent significant statements of a theoretical nature regarding the natural world, its constitution and behaviour, and the epistemology and methodology of the study of nature.» — declara el recorte: examinar de cerca textos seleccionados que representen enunciados teóricos sobre el mundo natural, su constitución y su comportamiento, y sobre la epistemología y el método de estudiarlo.

«Although considerable manuscript material survives, it is frequently fragmentary and serves more to indicate the variety of Dee’s interests than to bridge the gaps in Dee’s intellectual career that separate one published work from the next.» — califica el material manuscrito conservado: fragmentario, más indicativo de la variedad de intereses de Dee que capaz de salvar los huecos entre una obra publicada y la siguiente.

«I have used these in so far as they pertain to issues raised by the major texts, but I have not attempted to treat each of Dee’s writings in its own right.» — la abstención que declara: usó los otros escritos solo en lo que tocan a los textos mayores, sin proponerse tratar cada obra de Dee por derecho propio.

«Until their correct dating in the seventeenth century showed them to be third-century products of gnostic Neoplatonism, these texts» — sobre la datación de los Hermetica: hasta que en el siglo XVII se los fechó bien y resultaron productos del siglo III del neoplatonismo gnóstico; la frase se corta al pie de plana.

«were thought to contain a pristine divine revelation» — sigue la frase en la plana siguiente y se corta en el límite de chunk del troceo: se tenía a esos textos por revelación divina prístina.

«of great antiquity because Hermes, as the Egyptian Thoth, was considered a near contemporary of Moses.» — cierre de la frase: de gran antigüedad, porque a Hermes, como el Thoth egipcio, se lo consideraba casi contemporáneo de Moisés.

«While not a work of natural philosophy in itself, these materials nonetheless do reveal features of Dee’s thinking about nature at an important point in his career and are also significant as one of the few records of a Renaissance intellectual involved in the actual practice of religious ceremonial magic.» — lo que le concede a los Libri mysteriorum: sin ser obra de filosofía natural, revelan rasgos del pensamiento de Dee sobre la naturaleza y son uno de los pocos registros de un intelectual renacentista metido en la práctica efectiva de magia ceremonial religiosa.

«Very early in his career he chose to work outside the institutional framework of the university, seeking to pursue a career as an independent scientific intellectual, and this meant the pursuit of aristocratic or royal patronage.» — la dimensión social que le adjudica a la carrera de Dee: eligió muy pronto trabajar fuera del marco universitario, como intelectual científico independiente, y eso significaba buscar mecenazgo aristocrático o real.

«My intent, however, has not been to do either biography or even intellectual biography. Although I believe that I have been able to clarify important aspects of Dee’s biography and to contribute significantly to understanding his intellectual career, this study pretends neither to cover the entire biographical record and present the person whole, nor to interpret all of Dee’s writings and activities in a biographical context.» — la abstención que declara sobre el género: no se propone hacer biografía ni siquiera biografía intelectual, ni presentar entera a la persona.

«Although Dee lived from 1527 until 1608 or possibly 1609, the chronological scope of this study begins with Dee’s university studies in 1542 and effectively ends with 1589 after his association with Kelley ended.» — fija el recorte cronológico del estudio: de los estudios universitarios de 1542 a 1589, cuando termina la asociación con Kelley.

«Prior to 1542 we have little evidence; for his years after 1589 there is substantial material of a biographical nature, but he produced nothing that would add materially to an understanding of his natural philosophy.» — motiva ese recorte por la evidencia: antes de 1542 hay poco, y después de 1589 hay material biográfico pero nada que añada a la filosofía natural.

«Materials related to Dee’s biography are not rich. His surviving correspondence is sparse and scattered.» — califica el archivo biográfico de Dee: la correspondencia conservada es escasa y dispersa.

«He did keep diaries in the form of notes in the margins of various ephemerides but only two of these survive.» — sobre los diarios: notas al margen de efemérides, de las que solo sobreviven dos.

«Dee records comings, goings, and visitors but only occasionally the purpose and results of his business. Other notes record weather observations, birth dates for nativities, and domestic affairs.» — describe el contenido de esas anotaciones: idas, venidas y visitas, rara vez el propósito o el resultado; y observaciones del tiempo, fechas de nacimiento para natividades y asuntos domésticos.

«Although limited to bare facts and not always as revealing as we might wish, this material is generally trustworthy, objective, and often quite intimate.» — su tasación de ese material: limitado a hechos escuetos, pero en general fiable, objetivo y a menudo bastante íntimo.

«Where this material can be checked with other sources, Dee reports factual detail with great care.» — lo que sostiene sobre la fiabilidad de Dee: donde el material puede cotejarse con otras fuentes, informa el detalle factual con gran cuidado.

«The autobiographical sources, however, all had a polemical purpose that variously colours his presentation of details. This is particularly true of his rendition of his contemporary reputation and of his relations with Elizabeth and the court.» — y el límite que le pone: las fuentes autobiográficas tienen propósito polémico, sobre todo cuando Dee habla de su reputación y de sus relaciones con Isabel y la corte.

«A considerable portion of this study is devoted to delineating with some care the sources that contributed to the formation and the expression of the ideas in the texts under discussion.» — declara el peso que da al rastreo de fuentes: buena parte del estudio va a delinear con cuidado las que contribuyeron a formar y expresar las ideas de los textos discutidos.

«The catalogue that Dee prepared of his library in 1583 is an incomparable resource for this purpose but it must be used with considerable caution.» — sobre el catálogo que Dee hizo de su biblioteca en 1583: recurso incomparable que debe usarse con cautela considerable.

«Dee’s library was clearly one of the most remarkable for his time, containing more than 2000 printed books and 198 manuscript codices.» — da la medida de la biblioteca de Dee: más de dos mil impresos y 198 códices manuscritos, una de las más notables de su tiempo.

«Nicholas H. Clulee is Professor of History at Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Maryland. He studied European history at Hobart College, New York state, and medieval, Renaissance and early modern European history at the University of Chicago.» — nota de autor de la solapa, no voz de la obra: sitúa a Clulee como profesor de historia en Frostburg State University, formado en Hobart College y en la Universidad de Chicago.

«This is the definitive study of John Dee, the fruit of Nicholas Clulee’s twenty-year quest to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of Dee’s intellectual career.» — texto de la contracubierta, escrito por la editorial y no por Clulee: presenta el libro como el estudio definitivo y fruto de veinte años de indagación.

«Clulee’s interpretation of John Dee is far more detailed than any that have gone before and will establish this book as the standard authority for many years to come.» — sigue la contracubierta, con el pronóstico editorial de que el libro quedará como autoridad estándar.

«Nicholas Clulee is the first writer thoroughly to examine Dee’s natural philosophy, and in so doing provides a new and balanced evaluation of his place, and the role of the occult, in sixteenth-century intellectual history.» — la contracubierta le adjudica a Clulee ser el primero en examinar a fondo la filosofía natural de Dee; la reclamación es del editor, no del autor.

«Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves.» — segundo epígrafe del volumen, tomado de la novela *The Name of the Rose* de Umberto Eco: los libros hablan de libros, como si conversaran entre sí; la página de derechos acredita la traducción inglesa de William Weaver.

«In a number of books, beginning in 1964 with Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Frances A. Yates attempted to draw these discoveries together into a synthetic interpretation of Renaissance occultism.» — sitúa a Frances A. Yates como quien reunió esos hallazgos, desde *Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition* de 1964, en una interpretación sintética del ocultismo renacentista.

«It has been against the background of this interpretation that she and others have attempted to interpret John Dee.» — consigna que es sobre ese fondo que Yates y otros han intentado interpretar a Dee.

«The results of this approach to Dee are no longer satisfactory for two reasons.» — anuncia su objeción en dos tiempos: los resultados de ese enfoque ya no le parecen satisfactorios.

«First, continuing scholarship, while building upon and extending Yates’s work, has increasingly dissolved her synthetic» — primera razón: la investigación posterior, apoyada en Yates y prolongándola, ha ido disolviendo su síntesis; el tramo se corta al pie de plana y la frase termina en la siguiente con la palabra *interpretation*.

«Although at times I take issue with the work of Frances A. Yates, my study of Dee is ultimately an outgrowth of my encounter with her presentations of the occult philosophies of the Renaissance.» — la deuda que declara con Yates aun al discutirle: su estudio de Dee es en último término un desprendimiento del encuentro con las presentaciones de Yates de las filosofías ocultas del Renacimiento.

«It was her book on Giordano Bruno which opened for me an entirely new dimension of Renaissance intellectual culture, and a long, pleasant, and rewarding conversation with her in the early stages of my work was both encouraging and helpful.» — añade que fue el libro de Yates sobre Bruno el que le abrió esa dimensión, y consigna una conversación con ella en los inicios del trabajo.

«E. G. R. Taylor took the lead in rehabilitating Dee’s reputation, emphasizing his work and his role as a teacher of practitioners in mathematics and navigation.» — nombra a E. G. R. Taylor como quien encabezó la rehabilitación de Dee, subrayando su papel de maestro de practicantes de matemáticas y navegación.

«Much of her account of the history of English navigation from 1547 to 1583 in Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 is actually told in the context of a biography of Dee that avoids his less ‘legitimate’ activities.» — objeta el precio de esa vía en Taylor: buena parte de su historia de la navegación inglesa entre 1547 y 1583 es en realidad una biografía de Dee que esquiva sus actividades menos legítimas.

«Likewise, Frances R. Johnson considered Dee largely in terms of his accomplishments as an astronomer, his attitude toward Copernicus, and his formulation of an idea of experimental scientific method.» — consigna que Frances R. Johnson —así lo imprime la capa de texto— lo consideró sobre todo como astrónomo, por su actitud ante Copérnico y su idea de método científico experimental.

«This approach, while not entirely claiming for Dee a position of the first rank, did serve to earn for him some right to consideration in sixteenth-century intellectual history, but at the expense of divorcing aspects of Dee’s activity from the rest of his work and biography.» — su balance de esa primera vía: ganó para Dee un derecho a ser considerado, pero a costa de divorciar unos aspectos de su actividad del resto de la obra y de la biografía.

«The view that has emerged may well be called the Warburg interpretation because each of these scholars has had either a direct or an indirect connection with the Warburg Institute, and their works reflect a certain characteristic and shared approach.» — bautiza como «Warburg interpretation» la lectura integradora posterior a 1950, porque cada uno de esos estudiosos tuvo conexión directa o indirecta con el Warburg Institute.

«I. R. F. Calder, whose dissertation ‘John Dee Studied as an English Neoplatonist’ is the earliest reflection of this view, was a student of Frances A. Yates at the Warburg.» — sitúa la tesis de I. R. F. Calder, *John Dee Studied as an English Neoplatonist*, como el primer reflejo de esa lectura, y a su autor como alumno de Yates.

«A recent dissertation by Graham Yewbrey also takes the framework developed by Yates and French as the starting point for interpreting Dee’s ideas.» — añade a Graham Yewbrey a la misma familia: parte del marco de Yates y French.

«Despite variations in specific interpretation, what is common to these works is that all approach Dee as a problem of finding the correct intellectual tradition into which he appears to fit, both as a way of making sense of his disparate and often difficult to understand works and activities and as a way of establishing his importance by associating him with an intellectual context of recognized importance for sixteenth-century and later intellectual developments.» — su objeción de fondo a esa familia entera: todos abordan a Dee como el problema de hallar la tradición intelectual correcta en la que encaje, y así lo vuelven prueba de una tradición ya dada.

«Paradoxically, despite the extent that Dee has been studied since Calder, he remains little studied in his own right and is more often considered only as an embodiment of some pre-existent intellectual tradition.» — la consecuencia que señala: pese a lo mucho que se ha estudiado a Dee desde Calder, sigue poco estudiado por sí mismo.

«Calder accomplishes this by relating all of Dee’s work and activities to a central philosophical position which he believes aligns Dee with the progressive movement of science in the sixteenth century.» — resume el procedimiento de Calder: referirlo todo a una posición filosófica central que lo alinea con el movimiento progresivo de la ciencia del siglo XVI.

«For Calder the central philosophical position that reveals the unity in Dee’s highly diversified endeavors is a scientifically oriented form of Renaissance Neoplatonism, which also laid the foundations for the methods of modern physical science because this Neoplatonism provided the atmosphere in which a mathematical approach to nature could develop.» — esa posición, en Calder, es un neoplatonismo renacentista de orientación científica que habría dado la atmósfera para un tratamiento matemático de la naturaleza.

«Calder examines Dee’s works in the light of Edwin Burtt’s thesis that the mathematical aspects of seventeenth-century science were an outgrowth of the conception of mathematics implicit in the Platonism that was revived and developed in the Renaissance.» — sitúa la deuda de Calder con la tesis de Edwin Burtt sobre el origen platónico de la matematización de la ciencia del siglo XVII.

«Dee’s advocacy of Renaissance Neoplatonism, according to Calder, puts him in line with Kepler and Galileo as a proponent of the extension of methods of quantitative analysis to natural questions in place of the qualitative approach of Aristotelian science.» — la consecuencia que Calder saca: Dee en línea con Kepler y Galileo como partidario del análisis cuantitativo frente al cualitativo de la ciencia aristotélica.

«Following Robert Lenoble, Calder sees in the emergence of a mechanistic view of the universe, in which all causality involved observable and calculable physical forces in place of the occult qualities of Aristotelian science, another essential change contributing to seventeenth-century science in addition to a new appreciation of mathematics.» — segundo préstamo de Calder, esta vez de Robert Lenoble: la causalidad mecánica como el otro cambio esencial hacia la ciencia del siglo XVII.

«To emphasize Dee’s modernity, Calder does all he can to associate Dee with the intellectual background of seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonism, which he considered favorable to the mechanistic science of the seventeenth century, and to disassociate Dee from Renaissance magical and naturalistic traditions.» — la operación que le adjudica a Calder: acercar a Dee al platonismo de Cambridge del siglo XVII y desligarlo de las tradiciones mágicas y naturalistas renacentistas.

«Alternately, Frances A. Yates has suggested that the apparently contradictory activities and ideas of Dee can more effectively be understood as all belonging within the outlook of a magus inspired by the revived Hermetism of the Renaissance, rather than merely through the philosophy of Renaissance Neoplatonism.» — la alternativa de Yates frente a Calder: las actividades contradictorias de Dee se entienden mejor dentro del horizonte de un magus inspirado por el hermetismo renacentista que por el neoplatonismo.

«Yates turned to Dee as much for what he offered in the way of support for her claims about the role of Hermetism in Renaissance culture as for what Hermetism contributed to understanding Dee;» — lee el interés de Yates por Dee como recíproco: le servía para sostener su tesis sobre el papel del hermetismo tanto como el hermetismo le servía para entender a Dee.

«Although Yates’s work builds upon a considerable amount of previous scholarship, she became one of the major exponents of this view. Much of her influence in this regard is the result of her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1967) in which she formulated an imposing historical synthesis of Renaissance intellectual history centered on the theme of magic as promoted by the Hermetica.» — sitúa el peso de Yates en *Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition*, que él data en 1967, donde formula una síntesis de la historia intelectual renacentista centrada en la magia de los Hermetica.

«Here the influence of the Hermetica in the Renaissance is not just one element within the culture but becomes a distinct and major intellectual tradition.» — marca el paso que le objeta a esa síntesis: la influencia de los Hermetica deja de ser un elemento de la cultura para volverse una tradición intelectual mayor y distinta.

«available book-length study of Dee, although not formally a student of Dame Yates or of the Warburg, drew the foundation of his interpretation from her works and acknowledges her guidance.» — sobre Peter J. French, cuyo *John Dee. The World of an Elizabethan Magus* llama el mejor estudio de conjunto disponible: sin haber sido alumno de Yates ni del Warburg, tomó de sus obras el fundamento de la interpretación y reconoce su guía; la frase empieza al pie de la plana anterior.

«Deriving from Ficino’s revival of Hermes Trismegistus and his blending of Hermetic magic with Neoplatonism and Orphism, this tradition evolved through Pico della Mirandola’s addition of kabbalah and kabbalistic magic and the Christianization of this magic and the magus through the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius, culminated in Agrippa’s synthesis of Renaissance magic and kabbalah,» — reconstruye el linaje que Yates traza: del Hermes de Ficino, mezclado con neoplatonismo y orfismo, a la cábala y la magia cabalística de Pico, cristianizadas por el influjo del Pseudo-Dionisio, hasta culminar en la síntesis de Agrippa.

«One element of this new approach to magic in the Renaissance that has generated considerable controversy has been the suggestion that ennoblement of magic and the occult sciences contributed to the development of important aspects of what became the new science of the seventeenth century.» — aísla el punto polémico de esa lectura: la sugerencia de que el ennoblecimiento de la magia y las ciencias ocultas contribuyó a la nueva ciencia del siglo XVII.

«Again, the idea of a connection between magic and science is not original to Yates, nor has it been the central concern in her works, in which symbolic, religious, political, and artistic issues are of equal if not greater importance than science.» — acota la deuda con Yates: la conexión magia-ciencia no es original suya ni es lo central en su obra, donde lo simbólico, lo religioso, lo político y lo artístico pesan tanto o más.

«She has, however, popularized and elaborated this idea in ways that have attracted the attention of historians of science to the extent that the entire recent historiography of Renaissance magic and Hermetism has been referred to as the ‘Yates thesis’.» — consigna cómo la historiografía reciente de la magia y el hermetismo renacentistas acabó llamándose *tesis de Yates*, por la difusión que ella le dio.

«Yates suggested two specific ways the valuation of operational power inherent in Hermetic magic was conducive to science.» — anuncia las dos vías por las que, según Yates, la valoración del poder operativo de la magia hermética favoreció a la ciencia.

«First, the adoption of Copernican cosmology by Hermetic magi such as Giordano Bruno as a magical symbol promoted the wider adoption of Copernican astronomy and also supplied a foundation for a heliocentric dynamics.» — primera vía en Yates: magos herméticos como Giordano Bruno adoptan la cosmología copernicana como símbolo mágico y con ello promueven la astronomía de Copérnico.

«Second, she suggested that it was the union of Hermetic magic with the Neoplatonic-Pythagorean view of number as the key to the secrets of nature that promoted an interest in the mathematical study of nature and the application of mathematics to the control of nature through the mechanical arts and physics.» — segunda vía en Yates: la unión de la magia hermética con la visión neoplatónico-pitagórica del número como llave de la naturaleza promueve su estudio matemático.

«It was as support for this element of her synthesis that Yates first turned to Dee, for which he was eminently suited. Unlike most of the writers who figure in her account of magic, Dee was not only a philosopher but a competent mathematician and astronomer who actually practised angel magic and many of the mechanical arts.» — explica por qué Dee le servía a Yates: a diferencia de casi todos los autores de su relato, era filósofo y a la vez matemático y astrónomo competente que practicaba magia angélica y artes mecánicas.

«Yates’s association of Dee with Hermetic magic preserves Calder’s theme that Neoplatonic mathematicism was preparatory to the development of early modern science. What is new is the role of magic.» — mide lo que Yates conserva de Calder y lo que añade: el matematicismo neoplatónico como preparación de la ciencia moderna sigue; lo nuevo es el papel de la magia.