Fludd, Robert (1574–1637)

Fludd is a marginal figure in the mainstream development of philosophy in seventeenth-century England, but of some importance in the development of an esoteric and mystical philosophy which took the form of an ‘underground’ movement, Rosicrucianism. Rejecting the various types of scholastic philosophy that were still dominant in his day, Fludd drew on Neoplatonist and Renaissance sources in an effort to redirect learning in what he took to be a Christian direction. His writings centre around a search for hidden connections between a purely intelligible realm and the realm of sensation.