Saturday, October 9, 2021

946: The Humanists....

 I try to imagine how it must have been in those days, the period 500 to 1300 AD. What knowledge was important? 

   

I think it was theology and law, the rights and laws if god and the rights and laws among common people.

   

There was a close relation between church and state. The educational system was mainly created by the church and its cloisters. 

  

The few universities were under control of  Rome and its bishops and you could study theology, scholastics and law and maybe some medicines there.

   

Where does the scientific methodology, which is so generally accepted today, come from. Where appeared the first blossoms, in what Petrarca described as the "Dark Ages"?


It all began in Italy and one of the first to mention is Francesco Petrarca (1304 -1374). He was a poet and scholar, but also an important philologist.

  

Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources.

   

It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with especially strong ties to etymology, the history of words 

  

Philology is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, 

  

the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning.

   

And exactly this science, philology, became the main focus of scholars in Italy. The Italian scholars already had knowledge of Roman law since about AD 400.

   

But around 1350 Italian scholars began to discover old manuscripts of ancient Romans like Cicero and Seneca, Ovidius, Livius.

  

On their shoulders they stood, must those scholars have thought. It had a decisive influence on education.

   

Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) passed the torch of Petrarch to the wave of fifteenth-century humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini and Angelo Poliziano. 

  

Salutati introduced an alternative education curriculum in 1369 which he referred to as "studia humanitatis". This curriculum focused on humanitas, a term that Salutati had adopted from his great example Cicero (106 - 43 BC). 

  

According to Cicero, language distinguishes man from animals, and therefore the study of language had to be the center of education and upbringing. 

  

Salutati's "studia humanitatis" consisted of grammar, rhetoric, poetics, history and moral philosophy, without theology. 

  

In this curriculum, the "artes liberales" (free arts) were freed from their straitjacket that had served as preparatory training for theology for centuries. 

  

The "studia humanitatis" found acceptance in a number of fifteenth-century Italian universities,

   

and their proponents were called "umunisti" in student jargon, whence the word "humanist" and the later nineteenth-century term "humanism". 

  

Petrarch started it by scouring monastic libraries in search of ancient manuscripts. Others followed in his footsteps.  

  

The essence at stake here is the process of the interaction between empiricism and theory. 

   

With theories about language, language characteristics and the like, the philologists tried to reconstruct the ancient texts and thus recreate the original text. 

  

Intensive and complex scientific research. It was the first break on the road to the scientific method.

  

Thank you for your attention again....

   



MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1995
 http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.htm
Rens Bod: "Een Wereld vol Patronen".  2019



The Discussion


[13:20] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you Herman

[13:20] herman Bergson: This is the beginning of the Renaissance....

[13:22] herman Bergson: Another thing.....Cicero said that LANGUAGE defined man....that became the starting point of the curriculum.....Religious belief wasn't anymore the primary starting point for those Italians

[13:22] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): what was the respons of the church those days? did they approve this development?

[13:23] Darks Adria is online.

[13:23] herman Bergson: Well....

[13:24] herman Bergson: They church seemed to have accepted the philology....the reconstruction of Ancient Roman and Greek literature....

[13:24] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ok

[13:25] herman Bergson: There were some conflicts tho..especially when the scientific method of the philologists was introduced in astronomy.....empirical dat first...then the theory....

[13:25] oola Neruda is offline.

[13:25] herman Bergson: And there you have Copernicus and Galilei in conflict with the church

[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aaa yes

[13:26] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): Gallilei surly was not popular there with his ideas

[[13:27] herman Bergson: No...

[13:27] herman Bergson: There has been a continuous battle between science and church from the Renaissance on till today

[13:28] herman Bergson: church = religion in general I mean

[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): (Thinks of movie angels and demons as LHC is about to start soon)

[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako):

[13:28] herman Bergson: LHC?

[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): Large Hadron Collider, featured in the film

[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): science vs church

[13:29] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): in the shape of an antimatter bomb

[13:29] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): made at LHC

[13:29] herman Bergson: interesting :-)

[13:29] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): targeting Vatican state

[13:29] herman Bergson: Ahhh the movie based on the book of David Brown....if I am right

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): the sequence with LHC was really badly made though even it was at site they got the sequence all wrong

[13:30] herman Bergson: At the end that camerlengo takes the bomb up into the sky in the helicopter

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): but can live with it

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): yes

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): that one

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and the place almost blows out anyways but they make it

[13:30] herman Bergson: I have seen that movie :-)

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ok

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako):

[13:31] herman Bergson: of course....Dan Brown....?

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): yep

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): made Davinci Code also

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): they are related stories

[13:31] herman Bergson: But that wasn't church against science

[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): well it at least relates to that'

[13:32] herman Bergson: I forgot the details :-)

[13:33] herman Bergson: At least in Europe we see tyhis intellectual development....the discovery of the emirical cycle

[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): forever since i saw it, just wished they made the LHC run sequence more accurate since they had afer all spoken with scientists there how it worked and even filmed at the site. Like how they accelerate the beam before it is injected ect

[13:34] herman Bergson: empirical

[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): and also READY TO INJECT when they mean collide

[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): i just eeee what

[13:34] herman Bergson: It would be interesting to see if such a development also took place in other cultures independent of Europe

[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): but also have seen the real sun sequence many times so know how it works in detail

[13:34] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): run sequence

[13:35] herman Bergson: But wee'll keep that for coming lectures ^_^

[13:35] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): i have the feeling that religion and science is water and fire

[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): at least we have a basic start view

[13:35] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): agreed Beertje

[13:35] herman Bergson: Otherwise it would become too much and PLUPP your brains :-)

[13:36] herman Bergson: Through history it has been indeed Beertje, but nowadays, I don't think so

[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): well lets fire up the LPC (Large_Plupp Collider) and smash some pluppy stuff!

[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): :)'

[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): we MIGHT find out something more

[13:36] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): hehe

[13:37] herman Bergson: We see all kinds of religious opposition against all kinds of developments

[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): yep

[13:37] herman Bergson: like with anti-vaxers these days

[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): someone states a thing and church goes OOOOOO NOOOO STOP THAT!

[13:38] herman Bergson: But religion can no longer block or forbid scientific developments.....

[13:38] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): luckily

[13:38] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): no such poewe today

[13:38] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): at least not here

[13:39] herman Bergson: Nowadays critical matters are discussed in ethical debates and dealt with as moral problems

[13:39] Wisdomseeker (lissena) is offline.

[13:39] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ah

[13:39] herman Bergson: religion may participate in the debate....sure...but it doesn't have the final say

[13:40] herman Bergson: universities have ethics committees for instance

[13:40] herman Bergson: there they discuss the marality of research proposals

[13:41] herman Bergson: morality

[13:41] herman Bergson: I'd say today science and religion are water and a candle flame :-)

[13:42] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): it just says PSSS

[13:42] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako):

[13:42] herman Bergson: ^_^

[13:42] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont):

[13:42] herman Bergson: ok then....on to the next lecture....

[13:42] herman Bergson: Thank you all agian :-)

[13:42] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako):

[13:42] herman Bergson: Class dismissed ....

[13:42] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you:))

[13:42] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): aaa good again

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