Source at https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1146. In recent years it has become common to speak ab... more Source at https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1146. In recent years it has become common to speak about the republic of letters as a network. But this was not always the case. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of conditions: the confluence of readily available digitized documents, computational power to analyse that data, and a ready acceptance of the ‘network perspective’ in the popular consciousness. In our increasingly interconnected world we encounter networks at every turn. The Internet, public transport networks, and power grids make our everyday lives possible; our careers are dependent on networking; and social networking sites provide an online account of our professional and personal capital. Networks have become a metaphor for connectedness, but also a concrete framework for visualizing and measuring complex systems of knowledge in the era of big data. Although scholars working in the humanities might not realize it, the network turn is due to the emergence of ‘network science’ as a field of interdisciplinary study. In a series of key publications in the late 1990s and early 2000s, scholars such as Albert-László Barabási, Reka Albert, Duncan J. Watts, and Steven Strogatz showed that a huge variety of real-world networks – such as, for example, neural networks, transport networks, biological regulatory networks, and social networks – share an underlying order, follow simple laws, and therefore can be analysed using the same mathematical tools and models.1 These publications build on work from various different disciplines, such as sociology, mathematics, and physics, which stretches back some decades; but the emergence of network science as a field in its own right was the product of certain conditions that did not exist before. Barabási and Albert explicitly cite the computerization of data acquisition as essential to their research. In other words, what they needed was numerous examples of big network data, which they could compare, and the computational power to analyse that data. In this field, thousands of publications every year describe the development of new quantitative network analysis methods, and the analysis of new types of network data. The advent of large-scale digitization efforts in the humanities has given scholars unprecedented access to their research materials. Perhaps more importantly, however, it has also put quantitative analysis methods within the reach of this community. This is particularly true of large collections of metadata, as these represent structured information that is easier to abstract and quantify. Correspondence metadata, such as the data collected by the constituent members of the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters, lends itself particularly well to quantitative analysis, as it is exactly the kind of data that network analysis was designed to study – a set of well-defined relationships, namely letters sent and received, between well-defined entities, namely individuals. As discussed in chapter II.4, some work may be necessary to establish the identities of the individuals, but correspondence is a social relationship that is particularly clearly defined, due to its physical manifestation in the form of the manuscript letter. The value of the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters additionally relies on a ‘network effect’ – a term employed in the context of modern technology companies, which means that the value of a software product rises with the number of people using it, as such products typically facilitate interactions between users in some way. By combining the metadata of a wide range of historical correspondence projects, and by making them compatible with each other, their combined value to the scholarly community is greatly increased. Consistent metadata allows for much more wide-ranging searches across correspondence collections, and the power of quantitative network analysis grows rapidly with the size and scope of the network under study
Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern …, 2001
... bibliography of anti trinitarian literature compiled by the Socinian Christoph Sand and edite... more ... bibliography of anti trinitarian literature compiled by the Socinian Christoph Sand and edited by Benedict Wissowatius in 1684 at one elbow and modern critical literature at the other - one very quickly reaches the conclusion that these latter day Arian millenarians were in fact ...
Howard Hotson’s previous contribution to this series, Commonplace Learning, explored how a fragme... more 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 aspiration...
Since this book is a sequel to Commonplace Learning, it begins with a synopsis of the previous vo... more Since this book is a sequel to Commonplace Learning, it begins with a synopsis of the previous volume. Ramism before 1620 was most deeply rooted in the fragmented political and confessional geography of the northwestern corner of the Holy Roman Empire. Its function was to provide small polities with the means to transmit the maximum amount of useful learning with a minimum of time, effort, and expense. The appeal of this pedagogy to magistrates, rulers, parents, and students generated a motive force capable of spreading Ramism horizontally from one gymnasium to another and then vertically through gymnasia illustria to full universities, even in the face of opposition by humanists and theologians. Student demand then forced the universities to adapt begin expounding traditional Aristotelian philosophical substance in quasi-Ramist pedagogical form. Once Bartholomäus Keckermann (c. 1572–1608) had emancipated philosophical instruction from the text of Aristotle in this way, bolder men l...
Decades ago, Walter Ong intuited a powerful link between the advent of printing with moveable typ... more Decades ago, Walter Ong intuited a powerful link between the advent of printing with moveable type, the subsequent spatialization of discourse most strikingly evident in Ramism, and the corpuscular, mechanistic physics of Descartes (section 3.i). More recently, Klaas van Berkel has identified the precise location of this link in Snellius’ student, Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), who, working at the interface of artisanal knowledge and Ramist pedagogy, developed the basic principles of a physico-mathematical philosophy of nature which he passed on to Descartes in 1618–19 and to Gassendi and Mersenne a decade later (section 3.ii). Another figure of the same generation, Henricus Reneri (1593–1639), was inspired by a very similar set of interests and aspirations to become Descartes’ first devoted follower and perhaps closest friend (section 3.iii).
Figures. Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part One: Speculum mundi, sive harmoni... more Figures. Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part One: Speculum mundi, sive harmonia trium voluminum: the hermetic pre-history of Alsted's millenarianism, 1610-24. 2. Volumen historicum seu experimentalis: encyclopedic chronology. 3. Volumen coelestis sive astrologicum: astrological history. 4. Volumen biblicus seu propheticus: prophetic numerology. Part Two: Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis: the origins of Alsted's millenarianism, 1619-27. 5. The Thirty Years War and Alsted's eschatological crisis, 1619-25. 6. The sources of the Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis. 7. Conclusions. Appendix: Two sources of the Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis. Select Bibliography. Index.
The following two chapters show how crucial elements of the educational reforms developed above a... more The following two chapters show how crucial elements of the educational reforms developed above all by Comenius and propagated by Hartlib and his associates emerged out of common roots in the post-Ramist pedagogical traditions of central Europe. The goal of pansophia—expressed by Comenius as ‘Omnes, Omnia, Omnino’, that is, to teach all things to all human beings thoroughly and completely, by all available means—is the ultimate logical extension of the basic aim of Ramus and the tradition deriving from him: to provide a broader education to a wider segment of the population as quickly, easily, and inexpensively as possible (section 7.i). The means proposed to achieve these goals were also very similar: namely, to produce readily digestible compendia governed by Ramus’ three laws of method (section 7.ii). No less important for Comenius’ pedagogical programme were the praecognita, systemata, and gymnasia which structured Keckermann’s textbooks, together with the lexica added by Alsted...
Source at https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1146. In recent years it has become common to speak ab... more Source at https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1146. In recent years it has become common to speak about the republic of letters as a network. But this was not always the case. Rather, it is the product of a specific set of conditions: the confluence of readily available digitized documents, computational power to analyse that data, and a ready acceptance of the ‘network perspective’ in the popular consciousness. In our increasingly interconnected world we encounter networks at every turn. The Internet, public transport networks, and power grids make our everyday lives possible; our careers are dependent on networking; and social networking sites provide an online account of our professional and personal capital. Networks have become a metaphor for connectedness, but also a concrete framework for visualizing and measuring complex systems of knowledge in the era of big data. Although scholars working in the humanities might not realize it, the network turn is due to the emergence of ‘network science’ as a field of interdisciplinary study. In a series of key publications in the late 1990s and early 2000s, scholars such as Albert-László Barabási, Reka Albert, Duncan J. Watts, and Steven Strogatz showed that a huge variety of real-world networks – such as, for example, neural networks, transport networks, biological regulatory networks, and social networks – share an underlying order, follow simple laws, and therefore can be analysed using the same mathematical tools and models.1 These publications build on work from various different disciplines, such as sociology, mathematics, and physics, which stretches back some decades; but the emergence of network science as a field in its own right was the product of certain conditions that did not exist before. Barabási and Albert explicitly cite the computerization of data acquisition as essential to their research. In other words, what they needed was numerous examples of big network data, which they could compare, and the computational power to analyse that data. In this field, thousands of publications every year describe the development of new quantitative network analysis methods, and the analysis of new types of network data. The advent of large-scale digitization efforts in the humanities has given scholars unprecedented access to their research materials. Perhaps more importantly, however, it has also put quantitative analysis methods within the reach of this community. This is particularly true of large collections of metadata, as these represent structured information that is easier to abstract and quantify. Correspondence metadata, such as the data collected by the constituent members of the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters, lends itself particularly well to quantitative analysis, as it is exactly the kind of data that network analysis was designed to study – a set of well-defined relationships, namely letters sent and received, between well-defined entities, namely individuals. As discussed in chapter II.4, some work may be necessary to establish the identities of the individuals, but correspondence is a social relationship that is particularly clearly defined, due to its physical manifestation in the form of the manuscript letter. The value of the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters additionally relies on a ‘network effect’ – a term employed in the context of modern technology companies, which means that the value of a software product rises with the number of people using it, as such products typically facilitate interactions between users in some way. By combining the metadata of a wide range of historical correspondence projects, and by making them compatible with each other, their combined value to the scholarly community is greatly increased. Consistent metadata allows for much more wide-ranging searches across correspondence collections, and the power of quantitative network analysis grows rapidly with the size and scope of the network under study
Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern …, 2001
... bibliography of anti trinitarian literature compiled by the Socinian Christoph Sand and edite... more ... bibliography of anti trinitarian literature compiled by the Socinian Christoph Sand and edited by Benedict Wissowatius in 1684 at one elbow and modern critical literature at the other - one very quickly reaches the conclusion that these latter day Arian millenarians were in fact ...
Howard Hotson’s previous contribution to this series, Commonplace Learning, explored how a fragme... more 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 aspiration...
Since this book is a sequel to Commonplace Learning, it begins with a synopsis of the previous vo... more Since this book is a sequel to Commonplace Learning, it begins with a synopsis of the previous volume. Ramism before 1620 was most deeply rooted in the fragmented political and confessional geography of the northwestern corner of the Holy Roman Empire. Its function was to provide small polities with the means to transmit the maximum amount of useful learning with a minimum of time, effort, and expense. The appeal of this pedagogy to magistrates, rulers, parents, and students generated a motive force capable of spreading Ramism horizontally from one gymnasium to another and then vertically through gymnasia illustria to full universities, even in the face of opposition by humanists and theologians. Student demand then forced the universities to adapt begin expounding traditional Aristotelian philosophical substance in quasi-Ramist pedagogical form. Once Bartholomäus Keckermann (c. 1572–1608) had emancipated philosophical instruction from the text of Aristotle in this way, bolder men l...
Decades ago, Walter Ong intuited a powerful link between the advent of printing with moveable typ... more Decades ago, Walter Ong intuited a powerful link between the advent of printing with moveable type, the subsequent spatialization of discourse most strikingly evident in Ramism, and the corpuscular, mechanistic physics of Descartes (section 3.i). More recently, Klaas van Berkel has identified the precise location of this link in Snellius’ student, Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637), who, working at the interface of artisanal knowledge and Ramist pedagogy, developed the basic principles of a physico-mathematical philosophy of nature which he passed on to Descartes in 1618–19 and to Gassendi and Mersenne a decade later (section 3.ii). Another figure of the same generation, Henricus Reneri (1593–1639), was inspired by a very similar set of interests and aspirations to become Descartes’ first devoted follower and perhaps closest friend (section 3.iii).
Figures. Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part One: Speculum mundi, sive harmoni... more Figures. Abbreviations. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction. Part One: Speculum mundi, sive harmonia trium voluminum: the hermetic pre-history of Alsted's millenarianism, 1610-24. 2. Volumen historicum seu experimentalis: encyclopedic chronology. 3. Volumen coelestis sive astrologicum: astrological history. 4. Volumen biblicus seu propheticus: prophetic numerology. Part Two: Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis: the origins of Alsted's millenarianism, 1619-27. 5. The Thirty Years War and Alsted's eschatological crisis, 1619-25. 6. The sources of the Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis. 7. Conclusions. Appendix: Two sources of the Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis. Select Bibliography. Index.
The following two chapters show how crucial elements of the educational reforms developed above a... more The following two chapters show how crucial elements of the educational reforms developed above all by Comenius and propagated by Hartlib and his associates emerged out of common roots in the post-Ramist pedagogical traditions of central Europe. The goal of pansophia—expressed by Comenius as ‘Omnes, Omnia, Omnino’, that is, to teach all things to all human beings thoroughly and completely, by all available means—is the ultimate logical extension of the basic aim of Ramus and the tradition deriving from him: to provide a broader education to a wider segment of the population as quickly, easily, and inexpensively as possible (section 7.i). The means proposed to achieve these goals were also very similar: namely, to produce readily digestible compendia governed by Ramus’ three laws of method (section 7.ii). No less important for Comenius’ pedagogical programme were the praecognita, systemata, and gymnasia which structured Keckermann’s textbooks, together with the lexica added by Alsted...
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