{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"EP 353: Western Esoteric Tradition and "Scientific Progress" with Dr. Tara Isabella Burton","description":"Tara Isabella Burton (DPhil, University of Oxford; Visiting Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Visiting Research Fellow, Institutional Flourishing Lab, Catholic University of America) is a theologian and culture critic, and the author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians (Public Affairs, 2022) and Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (Public Affairs, 2020). She is a regular contributor on religion and culture to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and has lectured and taught seminars at Yale University, Hobart and William Smith College, Radford University, and Covenant College. Her research has been supported by the Mercatus Center and the Robert Novak Foundation. Burton is currently at work on a book about the influence of the Western esoteric tradition, from alchemy to Freemasonry to 19th-century \u201coccult\u201d practices like Theosophy and spiritualism, in the development of what we think of today as \u201cscientific progress.\u201d She argues that the category of the \u201cmagical\u201d should be understood as part of a wider theological tradition of understanding what it means for human beings to have mastery over nature. Old Gods, to be published by Convergent (Penguin Random House) in 2026, will trace this influence to the resurgence of interest in \u201coccult\u201d practices in contemporary Silicon Valley culture.  Visit Sacred Writes: https:\/\/www.sacred-writes.org\/templeton-working-group Visit Tara Isabella Burton: http:\/\/www.taraisabellaburton.com   ","author_name":"The Classical Ideas Podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/classicalideaspodcast.libsyn.com\/website","html":"