Joseph Glanvill

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Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) was an English writer, philosopher, and clergyman.

Educated at Oxford University (B.A. from Exeter College, M.A. from Lincoln College), Glanvill was made vicar of Frome in 1662, rector of the Abbey Church at Bath in 1666, and prebendary of Worcester in 1678.

His writings display a variety of beliefs that may appear deeply contradictory to contemporary people. On the one hand, he was the author of The Vanity of Dogmatizing, which attacked scholasticism and religious persecution and pled for religious toleration, the scientific method, and freedom of thought.

On the other hand, he also wrote Sadducismus Triumphatus, which decried scepticism about the existence and supernatural power of witchcraft and contained a valuable collection of seventeenth-century folklore about witches. It deeply influenced Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, written to justify the Salem witch trials.

Glanvill's thought generally adhered to the following principles. Firstly, the world cannot be deduced from reason alone. Even the supernatural cannot be solved from first principles and must be investigated empirically. As a result Glanvill attempted to investigate supposed supernatural incidents through interviews and examination of the scene of the events. Secondly, as his friend the philosopher Henry More believed, the existence of spirits was well documented in the Bible, and that the denial of spirits and demons was the first step towards atheism. Atheism led to rebellion and social chaos and therefore had to be overcome by science and the activities of the learned. The latter is the purpose he saw himself attempting to fulfill.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories "Ligeia" and "A Descent into the Maelström" contain epigraphs taken from Glanvill.^[1]