George Sinclair

author

George Sinclair

d. 1696

A 17th-century Scottish mathematician and engineer, he also wrote one of the era’s best-known books on witchcraft and ghost stories. His work moves between practical science and the supernatural, which makes him an unusually memorable figure today.

1 Audiobook

Satan's Invisible World Discovered or a choice collection of modern relations, proving evidently, against the atheists of this present age, that there are devils, spirits, witches, and apparitions, from authentic records, and attestations of witnesses of undoubted veracity. To which is now added, that marvellous history of Major Weir and his sister, the witches of Bargarran, Pittenweem, Calder, &c.

Satan's Invisible World Discovered or a choice collection of modern relations, proving evidently, against the atheists of this present age, that there are devils, spirits, witches, and apparitions, from authentic records, and attestations of witnesses of undoubted veracity. To which is now added, that marvellous history of Major Weir and his sister, the witches of Bargarran, Pittenweem, Calder, &c.

by George Sinclair

About the author

Born around 1630, he was a Scottish mathematician, engineer, and natural philosopher who became the first Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow. He also taught philosophy there and wrote on practical scientific subjects, especially hydrostatics and mining.

He is now especially remembered for Satan's Invisible World Discovered from the 1680s, a collection of accounts about apparitions, witchcraft, and other supernatural events. That mix of scientific writing and demonology makes his career stand out even among learned writers of his time.

Sources differ on some details of his early life, but he is generally linked with the Lothians and is thought to have died in 1696. His surviving reputation rests on both sides of his work: careful interest in mathematics and engineering, and a lasting fascination with the unseen world.