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6 See, inter alia, During (2002); Lotfalian (2004); Meyer and Pels (2003); Morus
(1998); Nadis (2005); Nye (1996); Serres (1999); Tambiah (1990); Taussig
(1997). Such discussions of modern science, religion, and magic are built on
a large literature devoted to the importance of mystical thought, millenarian
speculation, and ecclesiastical allegiance for the workings of power, patronage,
and gentlemanly civility that helped to construct scientific credibility, from the
European Renaissance to Victorian society to the contemporary period. This is
exemplified by studies of the religious sensibilities and ambitions of European
natural philosophers, doctors, inventors, and engineers (Boyle the Puritan,
Newton the alchemist, Edison the Theosophist, etc.), or the overlaps between an
expanding scientific culture of exhibition and display and the public spectacles
of religious ceremony. See, e.g., Funkenstein (1989), Merton (1957), Webster
(1982).