The construction of the “Yates’ Thesis”:

the constitution of a paradigm between the history of science and the intellectual history (1964-1974)

Abstract

This article seeks, through the restitution of the intellectual environment of production of the book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, by Frances A. Yates, to observe the dynamics that was established between the text and the paradigm attributed to it later – the so-called "Yates thesis". For this, we followed the reception of the text for a decade from the time of its publication, 1964, when the paradigm is founded by Robert Westman and James McGuire. In the first part of the work, besides the resumption of constitutive aspects of the text and the history of its reception, were analyzed reviews published in academic journals that directly touched on the work of Yates. Next, we evaluate the reactions from the history of science in the light of the so-called "Yates thesis" and, therefore, the views that fell on the essays of Westman and McGuire.