Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe

401 Pages·2016·4.643 MB·English

by  Alberto Cevolini (ed.)

Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe
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Library of the Written Word
VOLUME 53
The Handpress World
Editor-in-Chief
Andrew Pettegree (University of St Andrews)
Editorial Board
Ann Blair (Harvard University)
Falk Eisermann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preuβischer Kulturbesitz)
Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford)
Angela Nuovo (University of Udine)
Helen Smith (University of York)
Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool)
Malcolm Walsby (University of Rennes ii)
VOLUME 40
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lww
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Forgetting Machines: Knowledge
Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe
Edited by
Alberto Cevolini
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: Thomas Harrison’s Ark of Studies, emended and improved by Vincent Placcius, De arte
excerpendi. Vom gelehrten Buchhalten liber singularis (Holmiae et Hamburgi: Apud Gottfried Liebezeit,
1689), p. 152.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016035038
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1874-4834
isbn 978-90-04-27846-2 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-32525-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe: An
Introduction 1
Alberto Cevolini
part 1
Scholarly Practices and the Transformation of Cognitive Habits
in the Early Modern Age
1 Notebooks and Collections of Excerpts: Moments of ars excerpendi in
the Greco-Roman World 37
Tiziano Dorandi
2 From domus sapientiae to artes excerpendi: Lambert Schenkel’s De
memoria (1593) and the Transformation of the Art of Memory 58
Koji Kuwakino
3 Christoph Just Udenius and the German ars excerpendi around 1700: On
the Flourishing and Disappearance of a Pedagogical Genre 79
Helmut Zedelmaier
4 The Art of Excerpting in the Eighteenth Century Literature: Subversion
and Continuity of an Old Scholarly Practice 105
Élisabeth Décultot
5 Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern
English Ideas and Practices 128
Richard Yeo
6 Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories 155
Alberto Cevolini
7 Johann Amos Comenius: Early Modern Metaphysics of Knowledge and
ars excerpendi 188
Iveta Nakládalová
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vi Contents
8 The ‘White Book’ of Miguel de Salinas: Design, Matter, and Destiny of
a codex excerptorius 209
José Aragüés Aldaz
9 Albrecht von Haller as an ‘Enlightened’ Reader-Observer 224
Fabian Krämer
10 Medical Note-Taking in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries 243
Michael Stolberg
11 Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and
Note-Taking 265
Ann Blair
part 2
Appendix: Current Issues in Note-Taking and Card-Indexing
Systems
12 Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine 289
Johannes F.K. Schmidt
13 Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting 312
Markus Krajewski
14 Tools to Remember an Ever-Changing Past 335
Elena Esposito
Bibliography 345
Index 381
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Acknowledgements
I wish to express my warm gratitude to the authors who gave a contribution
to this volume for their hard work and patience along the way. I thank the
Department of Communication and Economy of the University of Reggio
Emilia for having hosted the international workshop Forgetting Machines.
Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe in July 2015. The
speakers who attended this workshop had the opportunity of discussing an
advanced draft of their own essay and improving it through collaborative
ideas and suggestions. My warm gratitude also to the anonymous reviewer of
this volume for his or her valuable commentaries and stylistic emendations.
I would like to thank Andrew Pettegree for having accepted this volume in the
Series Library of the Written Word. The Handpress World, and the team at Brill,
especially Giulia Moriconi and Francis Knikker, for assistance in developing
the book.
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List of Figures
2.1 Heavenly Jerusalem as loca communia amplissima. Cosma Rosselli, Thesaurus
artificiosae memoriae, concionatoribus, philosophis, medicis, iuristis, oratoribus,
procuratoribus, caeterisque; bonnarum litterarum amatoribus (Venetia: Antonio
Padovano, 1579), p. 51r 62
2.2 Five mnemonic places in a wall 66
2.3 Twenty mnemonic places in a wall 67
2.4 Domus grammaticae 69
2.5 Branching diagram in Cornelius Valerius, Rhetorica Cornelii Valerii Ultraiectini,
Lovanii in collegio trilingui professoria celeberrimi; universam benedicendi
rationem perspicua brevitate optimoque ordine absolute complectens … per
L ambertum Schenckelium (Antuerpiae: Ex Officina Plantiniana & Ioannem
Moretum, 1593), s.n. 73
4.1 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Collectanea zu meinem Leben, Rubiconia
Accademia dei Filopatridi, Savignano sul Rubicone (Italy), estate of Giovanni
Cristofano Amaduzzi (classis vi) 116
5.1 Locke’s two-page index in his ‘New Method’. Horizontal lines within each
letter/vowel set are ruled in red, and sets are separated by black lines 145
12.1 Niklas Luhmann’s excerpt of Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde (1799) 294
12.2 Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten I, index card no. 17,11e 302
12.3 Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten i, index card no. 17 303
12.4 Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten I, index card no. 17,1b9 304
12.5 Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten I, index card no. 17,1b9,2 304
12.6 Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten II, Keyword index card Rh–Ri 307
13.1 Early storage media: Thomas Harrison’s Ark of Studies, emended and improved
by Vincent Placcius, De arte excerpendi. Vom gelehrten Buchhalten liber
s ingularis (Holmiae et Hamburgi: Apud Gottfried Liebezeit, 1689), p. 152 314
13.2 Notes in relation: from timber to canes 329
13.3 Various visualizations in Synapsen: time arrows and structure trees 333
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Notes on Contributors
José Aragüés Aldaz
is Assistant Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Zaragoza, with
a special interest in rhetorical and exemplary literature from the Middle Ages
to the eighteenth century. His publications on these topics include several
articles and the book “Deus concionator”. Mundo predicado y retórica del “exem-
plum” en los Siglos de Oro (1999).
Ann Blair
is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University. Her work
centers on book history and the cultural history of early modern Europe, in-
cluding the relations between science and religion. She is the author of Too
much to know. Managing scholarly information before the modern age (2010)
and is currently working on the role of amanuenses in early modern author-
ship and scholarship.
Alberto Cevolini
is Assistant Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, with a
special interest in early modern intellectual history and theory of social mem-
ory. His publications include several articles and essays in four languages, and
the book De arte excerpendi. Imparare a dimenticare nella modernità (2006). He
is currently writing a monograph on indexing systems.
Élisabeth Décultot
is Humboldt Professor at the Martin-Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.
Her research focuses on the history of the methods of reading and writing
in the modern scholarship as well as on the history of art historiography and
aesthetics in Germany (eighteenth-twentieth centuries). Much of her work is
dedicated to the study of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, especially to his volu-
minous excerpts about which she wrote a book, Johann Joachim Winckelmann.
Enquête sur la genèse de l’histoire de l’art (2000), and several articles.
Tiziano Dorandi
is Director of Research in French National Center of Scientific Research
(cnrs). His interests include papyrology, textual criticism and ancient philos-
ophy. Selected publications: Antigone de Caryste. Fragments (1999); Nell’officina
dei classici (2007); Laertiana. Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia
del testo delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio (2009); Diogenes Laertius’ Lives
of Eminent Philosophers (2013).
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x Notes on Contributors
Elena Esposito
teaches Sociology of Communication at the University of Modena and Reg-
gio Emilia. She published many works on the theory of social systems, media
theory, memory theory, fashion and sociology of financial markets. Among
them The future of futures. The time of money in financing and society (2011); Die
Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität (2007); Die Verbindlichkeit des Vorüberge-
henden. Paradoxien der Mode (2004); Soziales Vergessen. Formen und Medien
des Gedächtnisses der Gesellschaft (2002).
Markus Krajewski
is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the
author of Paper machines. About cards & catalogs, 1548–1929 (2011); Der Diener.
Mediengeschichte einer Figur zwischen König und Klient (2010); Bauformen des
Gewissens. Über Fassaden deutscher Nachkriegsarchitektur (2015). His current
research projects include the problem of planned obsolescence, media and
architecture, epistemology of the peripheral, and the history of exactitude in
scholarly and scientific contexts.
Fabian Krämer
is an Assistant Professor of History of Science at Ludwig-Maximilians-Univer-
sität Munich. He has published a monograph (Ein Zentaur in London. Lektüre
und Beobachtung in der frühneuzeitlichen Naturforschung, 2014), and several
articles on the scholarly practices of reading that were in use across the porous
disciplinary boundaries of the ‘Republic of Letters’ and their relation to scien-
tific observation. More recently, he has turned his attention to the prehistory of
the split between the ‘two cultures’ of the sciences and the humanities.
Koji Kuwakino
is Assistant Professor at the Osaka University, with a special interest in the
history of early modern art and architecture. His publications include many
articles and essays on the art of memory, and the book L’architetto sapiente.
Giardino, teatro, città come schemi mnemonici tra il xvi e il xvii secolo (2011). He
is currently studying the representation of encyclopaedic knowledge in mne-
monically structured architecture in early modern Italy.
Iveta Nakládalová
is Research Fellow at Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Her lines of research focus on
early modern comparative literature, with special emphasis on intellectual
and cultural history. She is the author of La lectura docta en la Primera Edad
Moderna (1450–1650) (2013). She is currently working on early modern artes ex-
cerpendi and the organization of knowledge.
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