The reformation of common learning : post-Ramist method and the reception of the new philosophy, 1618-c.1670 /

"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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hotson, Howard (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2020.
Edition:First edition.
Series:Oxford-Warburg studies.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Description
Summary:"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"--Publisher's description.
Physical Description:1 online resource (464 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps (black and white)
Audience:Specialized.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9780191898440 (ebook)
0191898449 (ebook)
9780192552969
0192552961