Science and Specters at Salem

<p>Most studies of the Salem witch trials focus on social history and the dynamics between accused and accusers. <i>Science and Specters at Salem</i> turns instead to the intellectual background of the judges to understand why they accepted controversial types of evidence.</p><p>The role of judges in a witch trial was central. Goldish argues that in Salem the judges' acceptance of questionable touch tests and spectral evidence was a result of their intellectual commitments. Several of the Salem judges were highly educated and some of them were adherents of a particular philosophical school in England led by Henry More and Joseph Glanvill which Goldish calls the anti-Sadducees. He demonstrates how the ideas of these leading thinkers friends of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton could have led to the deaths of twenty accused witches in Salem.</p><p>This book will interest students and scholars of witch trials American colonial history Atlantic history legal history and early modern Europe as well as lay readers wanting a better understanding of Salem.</p>