Mark A. Waddell's Magic, Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe, published in Cambridge's New Approaches to the History of Science and Medicine book series, offers a survey of the relations between magic, science and religion. It takes an unashamedly – and highly welcome – history-of-ideas approach to its subject matter, tracing the multiple interconnections between these three areas of human activity in the early modern period. Waddell also offers an account of the manner in which, and the reasons why, they diverged in the eighteenth century. During the course of his discussion, Waddell provides succinct and lucid accounts of key early modern ideas and the work of such important historians as Keith Thomas, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. It therefore offers an accessible, contextualized introduction to the thought of such individuals as René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi and Theophrastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus); the importance of their work; and insights into how these issues have been interpreted by scholars.

The first chapter opens with the story of Marsilio Ficino being distracted from translating the works of Plato by the seemingly more pressing task of rendering the work of Hermes Trismegistus into Latin. This nod to Frances Yates's classic Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) sets the tone for much of the book that follows. Although it discusses important themes, the choice of subject matter is often unsurprising and the approaches used to study them are well established. Subsequent chapters consider witchcraft and demonology; the relations between medicine, and magic featuring studies of Andreas Vesalius and Paracelsus; a survey of cosmology from Copernicus to Newton; an account of the mechanical philosophy that presents the ideas of Descartes and Gassendi; and a discussion of experimental culture of the seventeenth century. The final chapter, dealing with the Enlightenment, draws together many of the threads of the earlier chapters. For example, drawing on John Henry's account of the fragmentation of Renaissance magic (which was influenced by William Newman and Lawrence Principe's discussion of the ‘decline’ of alchemy), Waddell suggests that the practitioners of the new sciences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appropriated many magical practices whilst disparaging others. In this manner, older maps of knowledge were redrawn, and once respectable ideas and practices were placed outside the acceptable canons of elite intellectual culture.

Although Waddell's work offers a clear introduction to important themes and enduring historiographical debates, it is difficult to determine its intended audience. A researcher looking for an overview of new approaches or a novel synthesis is likely to be disappointed. The chapter on hermeticism and Kabbalah, which owes much to Yates, is clear and useful, but as the work of such scholars as Nicholas Weill-Parot, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Frank Klaassen, Claire Fanger and Sophie Page has shown, they were far from the only important traditions of learned magic during the medieval and early modern periods. The chapter on experiment is again clear, but it is deeply indebted to Shapin and Schaffer's pioneering work from the 1980s and Peter Dear's from the 1990s. The bibliographical essays, meanwhile, direct readers to classic works by Thomas Kuhn, Arthur Koestler, Walter Pagel and Pierre Duhem, but feature relatively few works from the last ten years. Since it offers a clear introduction to both early modern ideas and the arguments of influential historians, this book would no doubt be of use for students approaching these materials for the first time, but it also occludes some important historiographical debates. Throughout the text, Waddell uses terms such as the ‘Scientific Revolution’ and ‘witchcraft’, employing them unproblematically to define and analyse events in history, despite the fact that many historians have challenged their suitability. These debates are neither new nor obscure, and Waddell's decision not to acknowledge them is surprising and may limit his book's value in the classroom as an introduction to modern approaches to the study of science, magic and religion.