The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

233 Pages·1991·12.808 MB·English

by  Donald R. Kelley (auth.), Donald R. Kelley, Richard H. Popkin (eds.)

THE SHAPES OF KNOWLEDGE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
124
THE SHAPES OF KNOWLEDGE
FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT
EDITED BY
DONALD R. KELLEY AND RICHARD H. POPKIN
Directors: P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis)
Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (Belfast);
T. Gregory (Rome); S. Hutton (Hatfield Polytechnic); J.D. North (Groningen);
M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington)
Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. de la Fontaine Verwey
(Amsterdam); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido
University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. KristeIIer (Columbia University); Elisabeth
Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); E. de Olaso (C.I.F.
Buenos Aires); J. Orcibal (Paris); Wolfgang ROd (Munchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles);
H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (Zurich); J. Tans (Groningen)
THE SHAPES OF
KNOWLEDGE FROM
THE RENAISSANCE TO
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Edited by
DONALD R. KELLEY
and
RICHARD H. POPKIN
..
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Shapes of knowledge from the RenaIssance to enllghtenment ! edlted
by Oonald R. Kelley and Rlchard H. PopkIn.
p. cm. -- (ArchIves lnternatlonales d'hlstolre des ldees =
InternatIonal archIves of the hIstory of ldeas ; v.1241
Includes Index.
ISBN 978-94-010-5427-0 ISBN 978-94-011-3238-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3238-1
1. Classlflcatlon of sCiences--Hlstory. 2. Knowledge, Theory of
-History. I. Kelley, Oonald R. 11. Papkln, Rlchard Henry, 1923-
III. Serles ArchIves internatlonales d' lstolre des ldees ; 124.
B0241.S49 1991
001' .09--dc20 91-14604
ISBN 978-94-010-5427-0
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1991 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1991
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
inc\uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
l. Introduction
Donald R. Kelley 1
I. CLASSIFICATION OF LEARNING
2. History and the Encyclopedia
Donald R. Kelley 7
3. The Classification of the Visual Arts in the Renaissance
Claire J. Farago 23
4. The Sixteenth-Century Transformation of the Aristotelian
Division of the Speculative Sciences
Charles H. Lohr 49
II. MOVERS AND SHAPERS
5. Galen and Francis Bacon: Faculties of the Soul and the
Classification of Knowledge
Grazia Tonelli Olivieri 61
6. Forgotten Ways of Knowing: The Kabbalah, Language,
and Science in the Seventeenth Century
Allison P. Coudert 83
7. Demonstration, Dialectic, and Rhetoric in Galileo's Dialogue
Nicholas Jardine 101
vi Table of Contents
8. Interpreting Nature: Gassendi versus Diderot on the Unity of
Knowledge
Lynn S. Joy 123
III. INSTITUTIONS
9. The Curriculum of Italian Elementary and Grammar Schools,
1350-1500
Robert Black 137
10. The Forms of Queen Christina's Academies
Susanna Akerman 165
11. The Early Society and the Shape of Knowledge
Michael Hunter 189
12. Periodical Publication and the Nature of Knowledge in
Eighteenth-Century Europe
Jeremy D. Popkin 203
13. Epilogue
Richard H. Popkin 215
Contributors 221
Index 225
DONALD R. KELLEY
1. INTRODUCTION
The original idea for a conference on the "shapes of knowledge" dates
back over ten years to conversations with the late Charles Schmitt of the
Warburg Institute. What happened to the classifications of the sciences
between the time of the medieval Studium and that of the French
Encyclopedie is a complex and highly abstract question; but posing it is an
effective way of mapping and evaluating long term intellectual changes,
especially those arising from the impact of humanist scholarship, the new
science of the seventeenth century, and attempts to evaluate, to apply, to
reconcile, and to institutionalize these rival and interacting traditions.
Yet such patterns and transformations cannot be well understood from
the heights of the general history of ideas. Within the ~eneral framework
of the organization of knowledge the map must be filled in by particular
explorations and soundings, and our project called for a conference that
would combine some encyclopedic (as well as interdisciplinary and inter
national) breadth with scholarly and technical depth.
There was, it seemed to us, a certain symmetry in our plan. Trained in
philosophy, Charles had devoted himself to the history of natural science,
while I, as a historian, had inclined to the human sciences. His concern
was with Nature, as we thought of this division of labor, mine with Second
Nature. Yet both of us, as former students of Paul Oskar Kristeller, had
taken as our point of departure the intersection between humanism and
philosophy, so characteristic of Renaissance thought; and it was this
"encyclopedic" perspective that suggested the framework of our plan for
a collective examination of the "shapes of knowledge" in early modern
Europe. Unfortunately, Charles Schmitt's premature death in 1985 cut
short these plans. The conference that did finally eventuate was formed
not under his leadership but rather in his memory; and it proved perhaps
less coherent that we had hoped-although this may well be the result
of our underestimating the shapelessness of knowledge in this period,
especially when viewed from various disciplinary angles.
1
D. R. Kelley and R. H. Popkin (eds) , The Shapes of Knowledge from the
Renaissance to the Enlightenment, 1-4.
© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 Donald R. Kelley
Yet there is some "shape" to our enterprise. Charles and I were both
inclined to emphasize the central position of history in the range of
questions we wanted to consider. He in particular had studied the
formation (and deformation and reformation) of the modern philosophi
cal tradition under the influence of skepticism and Aristotelianism (whose
unfortunate and long-standing undervaluation he was in the process of
correcting); and his future investigations would surely have contributed to
an improved understanding of the inertial force of ideas in a century more
conspicuously devoted to innovation. Galileo and Descartes notwith
standing, the seventeenth century was an age of erudition-indeed of
overwhelming erudition-and a major problem of intellectuals, scientific
as well as humanistic, was how to cope with the huge weight of intellec
tual tradition produced by Renaissance scholarship. Even skepticism,
though it could lead (ostensibly) to a radical Cartesian rejection of
the intellectual heritage, could also lead to a "critical" immersion in
it, as with Pierre Bayle. In any case the fundamental question facing
seventeenth-century philosophers and scholars was how to deal with
the doctrinal past; and this entailed (even for Descartes) reviewing it
critically - and historically.
The humanist movement, its extension into the "new science" of
philology (as Vico called it), and its alliance with the new technology of
the printed book were the underlying conditions for the growing mass
of knowledge (scientia) demanding reduction to meaningful wisdom
(sapientia); and it was in this context that the modern shaping, and
reshaping, of knowledge occurred. Humanism represented a challenge to
the aims and values of the old "scholastic" curriculum, shifting the
emphasis especially from logic to the humanities (the studia humanitatis).
Reason was respected but not raised - unreasonably - above the other
human faculties of memory and imagination, which underlay the tra
ditions of historical scholarship and literary (and artistic) creation; and
indeed works of "philosophy" were still regarded as the product not only
of human ratiocination but also of cultural history and "literature" in the
original sense of that term-that is, whatever was written in "letters" and
was an expression of the human "spirit" or genius.
In the context of Renaissance eruditio a number of disciplines for
merly relegated to the lowly liberal arts were elevated to the status of
"science" - among them grammar (which was the root of modern "phil
ology" and "criticism"), rhetoric (which was at least potentially a manifes
tation of "civil science"), and the art (from the sixteenth century also the
"science") of history. Conversely, the old "sciences" of law and medicine
Introduction 3
were in a number of ways "humanized" -that is, reduced to, or allowed
to associate with, the humanities. At the same time "philosophy"
preserved and even extended its relations with the other arts and
sciences, and it was in this connection that the history of philosophy
emerged-and became itself a "science"-in the seventeenth century.
Except by skeptics like Descartes philosophy was inseparable from the
Renaissance "encyclopedia," in the context of which, indeed, it had been
"restored" by classical scholars. It is against this general background that
the "shapes of knowledge" must be perceived and understood.
Most of these papers began as contributions to the colloquium on "The
Shape of Knowledge from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment" held at
the Warburg Institute 16 and 17 June 1989 and organized by a committee
consisting of Professors J. B. Trapp, Richard H. Popkin, Tullio Gregory,
and Donald R. Kelley and supported in essential ways by Ms. Constance
Blackwell. Nine of the original papers are gathered here, and to them
have been added the two essays by Nicholas Jardine and Michael Hunter.
Our hope is that the final product offers, if not coverage, at least some
breadth as well as depth - articles both on questions of disciplinary
classification and intellectual change and on the roles of individuals and
particular institutions in the career of the "encyclopedia" between the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
My paper considers the significance of the study of history as it was
transformed from an "art" into a "science" and as it became not only a
mode of unders,t anding but also a way of organizing the other arts and
sciences. Claire Farago reviews the question (taken up in a classic article
by P. O. Kristeller published some forty years ago) of the disciplinary
status of art, more particularly the visual arts. On the basis of his
extensive knowledge of the Latin tradition of Aristotelianism Charles
Lohr examines the transformation of the classification of the sciences in
the sixteenth century.
Grazia Tonelli considers the influence of ancient Galenic physiology
and modern Baconian psychology on the organization of knowledge.
Allison Coudert investigates the contributions of Francis Mercury von
Helmont and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the occultist attempt to
reconstruct knowledge. Nicholas Jardine discusses the "literary and per
suasive" aspects not only of Galileo's Dialogues concerning the Two Chief
World Systems but of the new science and its epistemology in general.
Lynn Joy contrasts Diderot's atheistic and materialistic conception of know
ledge with the more vital, providential, and historical view of Gassendi.
4 Donald R. Kelley
Robert Black, with the help of manuscript sources, inquires into the
classical and curricular base of education on the lowest levels of the
humanist encyclopedia. Susanna Akerman, turning to the question of
royal patyronage, studies the organization and the subjects taken up in
the academies of Queen Christina of Sweden. From his work on the
Royal Society Michael Hunter offers conclusions about its impact on the
organization of knowledge and "the ideology of the new science." Jeremy
Popkin confronts broader questions of the dissemination of knowledge in
the periodical press and its significance for the "encyclopedia" as con
ceived in the Enlightenment.
There is no end to the making of books, to the search for and
organization of knowledge, to the dissemination of the products of
reason, history, and imagination. In certain marginal ways this collection
tries to broaden our perspective and deepen our appreciation for some of
the contours of these aspects of intellectual and cultural history. The
shaping and reshaping of knowledge still goes on, and so, we hope, will
critical discussions of the process.