Are there documented historical cases in which European conceptions of what 'magic' is, 'magical' rituals, or performances of 'magic' helped to drive scientific or political innovation in the Western World?

by [deleted]

I mean things like spellcasting, potions brewing, and the manufacture of magical technologies. I went to the Griffith Observatory in LA recently and saw a show where the person talked about how astrology, alchemy, and other kinds of magic in certain societies drove people to hypothesize, abstract, and perform experiments. Are there specific examples of this in European cultures, where 'magic' has driven 'science' in this way?

And if this is the case, how much of our scientific expertise stems from subaltern, Wiccan, pagan communities etc.?

[edit: syntax]

bemonk

Absolutely. Tons of examples! The History of Alchemy Podcast is full of them (my show).

Alchemy example: using a recipe with aspects of sympathetic magic, Hennig Brandt discovered phosphorous.

Astronomy example: In order to give the crown prince of Denmark the most accurate horoscope he could, Tycho Brahe first needed to fill 20 pages of the 70 page document with his calculations on the positions of the starts and planets---the most exact measurements of it's time before Copernicus and Kepler. For a horoscope.

Same with optics, even the printing press was used as much to spread supernatural texts as scientific ones.

None of our scientific expertise come from Wiccan or pagan communities in the sense that you mean. It's not like they held out against the Christians and survived. There was movements in the renaissance to classify magic and the occult and write it all down. See Bruno, Agrippa, Mirandola, or just listen to the podcast!