Until the sixteenth century, people believed in magic as a way of explaining how the world worked. Indeed Queen Elizabeth I had a court magician, John Dee. However during the reign of the Stuart kings magic was killed and science took its place. This change came about because a group of men met in London and decided to set up a society to study the mechanisms of nature. Yet the men who founded this society in 1660 - including Robert Moray, Christopher Wren, Elias Ashmole and John Evelyn - were not only the first scientists but the last sorcerers, performing chemical experiments with powdered Unicorn horn...They had also fought on different sides in the Civil War. The story of how they came together comes as a revelation and will change your view of history and science forever.
Until the sixteenth century, people believed in magic as a way of explaining how the world worked. Indeed Queen Elizabeth I had a court magician, John Dee. However during the reign of the Stuart kings magic was killed and science took its place. This change came about because a group of men met in London and decided to set up a society to study the mechanisms of nature. Yet the men who founded this society in 1660 - including Robert Moray, Christopher Wren, Elias Ashmole and John Evelyn - were not only the first scientists but the last sorcerers, performing chemical experiments with powdered Unicorn horn...They had also fought on different sides in the Civil War. The story of how they came together comes as a revelation and will change your view of history and science forever.