The Reformation of Common Learning

Post-Ramist Method and the Reception of the New Philosophy, 1618 - 1670

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23787366
AutoresHoward Hotson (autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Fecha de publicación2020-12-24
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaReformation of Common Learning (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780199553389.001.0001
OpenAlexW3122328770
ISBN9780199553389
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

Howard Hotson’s previous contribution to this series, Commonplace Learning , explored how a fragmented political and confessional landscape turned the northwestern corner of the Holy Roman Empire into the pedagogical laboratory of post-Reformation Protestant Europe. This sequel traces the further evolution of that tradition after that region’s leading educational institutions were destroyed by the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) and their students and teachers scattered in all directions. Transplanted to the Dutch Republic, the post-Ramist tradition provided ideas, values, and methods which helped to formulate the mechanical philosophy of Descartes and institutionalize it within a network of thriving universities. Within the international diaspora of Protestant intellectuals documented in the archive of Samuel Hartlib, post-Ramist encyclopaedism provided much of the framework for the pansophic programme of Comenius, which assisted the initial spread of Baconianism and related aspirations both in England and abroad. In post-war central Europe, another branch of the tradition helped inspire Leibniz’s life-long vision of a revised combinatorial encyclopaedia as the centrepiece of a wide-ranging reform programme. But as the underlying political, confessional, educational, and intellectual context shifted after 1648, the ancient conception of the encyclopaedia as a cycle of disciplines to be mastered by every scholar exploded into a potentially infinite number of discrete topics organized alphabetically within a mere work of reference. This book weaves together many new lines of inquiry against a huge geographical and thematic canvas to contribute fresh perspectives on the fraught middle years of the seventeenth century in particular and the shape of modern knowledge more generally.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Confessional · Context (archaeology) · Empire · Encyclopedia · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Social science · Sociology · Thriving · Classics · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Law