The World Soul and the Fields of Nature | Clare College, Cambridge University

We’re often told that the scientific revolution banished souls from nature, leaving a universe of dead matter pushed around by blind forces. I don’t think that’s what happened. The soul of the world didn’t disappear in the seventeenth century; it changed its name. It’s now called a field. Gravity turns out to be an attraction, a pull toward a final unity, which is to say a purpose. The electromagnetic field turns out to be what William Gilbert in 1600 called the soul of the earth, and I’ll sh...