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Well, per TFA, the author is actually Helen De Cruz [0], who is the Danforth Chair in the Humanities and professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University.
Long ago people believed the Sun revolved around the Earth.
If someone today writes a history of those times, you are supposed to understand that the author doesn't actually believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, but that they are writing a history of that time period.
> They conceived of magic as the ability to work wonders, and as such it merited close philosophical attention.
> In Wonderstruck, I treat magic (like science and religion) as a cognitive technology that harnesses our sense of wonder.
Using "however" the way the author did will trip up a reader expecting correct English -- once you have "Not many philosophers discuss magic, however" you expect the sentence to end, but it doesn't and you have to go back and reinterpret.
"Not many academic philosophers discuss magic; however, five centuries ago . . ."
In any case, I think the author really meant "although."
""Not many academic philosophers discuss magic, however, five centuries ago, prominent Renaissance philosophers, such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), and Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), wrote extensive treatises on the topic""
I think you'll find a lot of people would breeze past this and not debate commas and semicolons.
You are correct, by the letter of the law, according to the semicolon police this should be a semicolon.
But that is like arresting people for jay walking. Yes, it's wrong, but come on.
But this is super low bar mistake. I would bet 90%+ of general population would not know this was an error at all.
But, what is prevalent today, is to pile scorn on to educational bodies. So to take a really minor grammar error, in a rather small and niche paper, and extrapolate to a condemnation of the entire institute, is really obviously politically motivated.