Dee, John (1527–1609)

DEE, JOHN (1527–1609)

DEE, JOHN (1527–1609), polymath English mathematician, natural philosopher, and consultant to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Dee was born in London, of Welsh descent. His father, Rowland, who had a minor position in Henry VIII's court, fostered Dee's education and laid the foundation for his later position in the Tudor court. Dee studied at St. John's College Cambridge for the B.A. (1546) and the M.A. (1548) degrees. Dee also studied at Paris and most importantly at Louvain with Gemma Frisius and others of Gemma's circle including Gerardus Mercator, Antonius Gogava and Gaspar à Mirica. Subsequently, he maintained contact and collaboration with scholars throughout Europe, including assisting with Federico Commandino's publication of De Superficierum Divisionibus Liber (On the division of surfaces).

Dee forged diverse roles as a scholar and public intellectual. At his house at Mortlake, outside London, he taught, consulted, and studied in one of the earliest experimental households. Here he built a personal library, reputed to be the largest of his day, rich in mathematics, sciences of all sorts, and philosophy, reflected both in the ancient texts prized in the Renaissance but also in unusually large numbers of medieval texts. He vigorously promoted the practical application of mathematics and the sciences through his service as consultant on navigation to the Muscovy Company and other voyages of navigation and through his contribution of the "Mathematicall Praeface" and extensive additions and annotations to the first English edition of Euclid's Elements of geometry (1570). In his private consultations he was one of the earliest to introduce Paracelsus in England. Dee enjoyed the patronage of Elizabeth and other Tudor courtiers and played an active role at court, advising on the reform of the calendar and other scientific issues and bolstering with his expertise the advocacy of British political and imperial expansion. In all these capacities Dee applied his scholarly skills to making available to Elizabeth and her counselors, navigators, explorers, and other writers and thinkers the information and wisdom of his personal library for the formation of policy and the solution of practical problems. Dee also pursued patronage at the courts of Wilhelm IV of Hessen-Kassel and Rudolf II at Prague, where he promoted his angelical, cabalistic, and alchemical vision of nature, religious reform, and political conciliation.

Like others in the Renaissance, he sought new insights into the natural world as a reflection of divinity and to achieve personal spiritual insight. His inspiration was primarily Roger Bacon (c. 1214/20–c. 1292), enhanced by ancient, medieval, and Renaissance magical texts. In the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (Introductory aphorisms, 1558 and 1568) Dee developed a mathematically based optical theory of astrological causation and astral magic founded on Bacon's concept of the multiplication of species. His Monas Hieroglyphica (Hieroglyphic monad, 1564) presents an unusual blend of alchemy, astrology, Cabala, and magic that is as much an allegory of spiritual ascent as a study of nature. Later, he became increasingly absorbed in "spiritual exercises" in a quest for direct spiritual insight from angels contacted through a crystal gazer.

See also Alchemy ; Astrology ; Cabala ; Calendar ; Elizabeth I (England) ; Exploration ; Mathematics ; Paracelsus ; Shipbuilding and Navigation .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clulee, Nicholas H. John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion. London, 1988.

Harkness, Deborah E. John Dee's Conversations with Angels. Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge, U.K., 1999.

Sherman, William H. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance. Amherst, Mass., 1995.

Nicholas H. Clulee