Knowledge, Discovery and Imagination in Early Modern Europe

The Rise of Aesthetic Rationalism
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-0-521-58795-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 15, 260 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 434 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

Recent explanations of changes in early modern European thought speak much of a move from orality and emphasis on language to print culture and a 'spatial' way of thinking. Timothy J. Reiss offers a more complex explanation for the massive changes that occurred. He describes how by the late fifteenth century the language arts of the trivium had come to seem useful only for communication, teaching and public debate, and how humanists turned to the mathematical arts of the quadrivium - including music - to enable new means and methods of discovery. Reiss goes on to argue that the new 'mathematical' ideal formed the basis of wide sociocultural renewal; he analyses Northern vernacular grammars, examines the work of French and Italian mathematicians, musicians and philosophers including Descartes, and censures such modern commonplaces as the supposed impact of print and 'spatial' thinking. He ends by exploring the broad impact of this 'mathematization' of the Western imagination.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reiss, Timothy J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; Part I. Problematizing the Language Arts: 1. Grammarians' dreams; 2. Grammarians' nightmares; Part II. Passages: 3. Rhetoric and politics; 4. Method and knowledge; Part III. Mathematics, Music, and Rational Aesthetics: 5. Quadrivial pursuits; 6. Bridging effects; 7. Musical elaborations; 8. Well-tempered imagining; Bibliography; Index.