John Dee has often figured significantly in discussions of the interconnections of occultism and science in the Renaissance. While his interest in the occult, ranging from astrology and alchemy to ceremonial magic, remained strong, his abilities and interests in mathematics, navigation, and computational astronomy are also undeniable. Yet disagreement prevails on the exact interrelationship of the occult to the scientific aspects of Dee's efforts, as it does on the nature and interrelationship of occultism and science generally in the Renaissance. A central text in these discussions has been Dee's “Mathematicall Praeface” to the 1570 English translation of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. Early discussions by Johnson, Taylor, and Calder focus on the “Praeface” as a manifesto of modern science by emphasizing Dee's understanding of experimental method combined with quantitative and mathematical theory. Recent scholars have been more cautious regarding Dee's use of the term “scientia experimentalis” in the section of the “Praeface” on “Archemastrie,” pointing out that it often meant no more than experience, not the controlled testing of hypotheses as in its modern connotation, and could easily be applied to occult experiences. Nonetheless, Marie Boas thinks that Dee's “Archemastrie” meant “genuine observation of nature” to the extent that “magic was near to becoming experimental science.”

On the other hand, Frances A. Yates and Peter French have argued that Dee's movement toward science did not come at the expense of magic and the occult, but was fostered by his adherence to an occult philosophy, based on Renaissance cabala and hermetic sources, which emphasized an operative magic as the key to understanding nature.