HiPSS 191: Humanism and Science, 1450-1600
Winter Quarter 1994
Instructor: Brian W. Ogilvie
Mailbox: Social Sciences 207
Phone: 684-0446, 8 AM to 10 PM
E-mail: b-ogilvie@uchicago.edu or
ogil@midway.uchicago.edu [no longer valid as of June 1997]. Students are
encouraged to use e-mail to contact the instructor.
Office hours: Monday, 1 PM to 3 PM, and Thursday, 9 AM to 11 AM, in the
Fishbein Center (SS 207), and by appointment. There will be no office hours
on Monday, January 10.
Navigating this document:
This tutorial focuses on the relation between humanism and
the sciences
between 1450 and 1600. The first part of the course addresses the character of
Renaissance humanism, humanism's impact on education, and humanist philology.
The second part of the course focuses on humanism in particular aspects of
early modern science. The final meeting will concentrate on anti-humanism in
the sciences during and after the sixteenth century; we will also attempt to
draw some conclusions about the importance of humanism to science.
1. Because the tutorial is focused on discussion, attendance at all meetings
and close examination of the required readings is expected of all students.
Participation in class discussion will account for 25% of the final course
grade.
For each class session, each student is required to write two discussion
questions, along with one or two sentences stating why they are worth
discussing, and submit them to the instructor by 4 PM on the Monday preceding
the class meeting. These questions will not be graded, but failure to submit
them will be penalized in the discussion grade. Students are encouraged to meet
and discuss these questions among themselves, but each student must hand in two
different questions. The purpose of this assignment is to ensure that the
discussion addresses issues which you find interesting and to identify any
readings which are particularly difficult and need special attention.
2. In addition to class discussion, there will be two short (4-5 pp.) papers
and one long (10-12 pp.) paper required. The two short papers will be on topics
to be assigned; the final paper is to be on a topic chosen by the student after
consultation with the instructor. The short papers will each account for 20% of
the final course grade; the long paper will account for the remaining 35%.
The first paper will be assigned on January 19 (3rd week) and will be due at
1:30 PM on January 26 (4th week). The second paper will be assigned on
February 9 (6th week) and will be due at 1:30 PM on February 16 (7th week).
Both papers will be returned the week after they are due. Late papers will
not be accepted unless approved by the instructor by the preceding
Friday. The final paper will be due at 1:00 PM on March 16 (the Wednesday
of Exam Week).
There are two books on order at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore: Anthony
Grafton,
New worlds, ancient texts: The power of tradition and the shock of
discovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), and Elizabeth
Eisenstein, The printing revolution in early modern Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983). We will be using these books for background
reading throughout the course. All other readings will be distributed in class
or on reserve at the Regenstein Library.
There will be approximately 100-120 pages of reading each week, plus
occasional background and suggested readings. Because many of the writings we
will be discussing have not been translated into English or any other modern
language, I will be preparing and distributing translated extracts. A detailed
list of assigned readings is found in the course schedule below. In addition,
there are several books which you may want to use for reference and for further
reading on particular subjects, which are listed at the end of the syllabus.
- Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), "A disapproval of an unreasonable use of
the
discipline of dialectic"; "An Averroist visits Petrarch"; "Petrarch's aversion
to Arab science"; and "A request to take up the fight against Averroes"; all in
Ernst Cassirer et al., ed., The Renaissance philosophy of man: Selections in
translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).
- Lorenzo Valla, "The glory of the Latin language," in The portable
Renaissance reader, ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1977; other eds.), pp. 131-135.
- Angelo Poliziano, "Praelectio to Aristotle's Prior Analytics, entitled
`Lamia.'"
- Pier Paolo Vergerio, "De ingenuis moribus," in W. H. Woodward,
Vittorino da
Feltre and other humanist educators (New York: Bureau of Publications,
Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963).
- Battista Guarini, "De ordine docendi et studendi," in Woodward, Vittorino
da
Feltre.
- Desiderius Erasmus, "De ratione studii," Literary and educational
writings, vol. 2, Collected works of Erasmus, 24 (Toronto, Buffalo, and
London: University of Toronto Press, 1978).
- Johannes Sturm, "De ratione studiorum gymnasii Hieronymitani Leodii
iudicium."
- Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From humanism to the humanities:
Education
and the liberal arts in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), ch. 1.
- Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and learning,
1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), ch. 5.
- Background: Grafton, New worlds, ancient texts, chapter 1: "A bound
world: The scholar's cosmos" (pp. 11-58).
[Next time include some material regarding privileges and other protections for
writers and publishers.]
First paper assignment will be passed out.
- Aldo Manuzio, "The life of a scholar-printer," in The portable
Renaissance
reader, pp. 396-401.
- Johannes Müller (Regiomontanus), printing prospectus.
- Hieronymus Hornschuh, Hornschuh's Orthotypographia, 1608, ed. Philip
Gaskell and Patricia Bradford (Cambridge: The University Library, 1972).
- Martin Movemius, letter to Johannes Amerbach, in
Amerbachkorrespondenz,
ed. Alfred Hartmann, vol. 1 (Basel: Verlag der Universitätsbibliothek,
1942).
- Conrad Leontorius, letter to Johannes Amerbach, in
Amerbachkorrespondenz, vol. 1.
- Erasmus, letter 732, to Beatus Rhenanus, in Collected works of
Erasmus,
vol. 5, Letters 594 to 841, 1517 to 1518.
- John Monfasani, "The first call for press censorship: Niccolò Perotti,
Giovanni Andrea Bussi, Antonio Moreto, and the editing of Pliny's Natural
history," Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 1-31.
- Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, "The permanent Renaissance," in The printing
revolution in early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), pp. 109-144.
- Karen Reeds, "Publishing scholarly books in the sixteenth century,"
Scholarly Publishing 14 (1983): 259-74.
First paper assignment due at 1:30 PM.
- Petrarca, letters to Marcus Varro and Quintilian, in Rerum familiarum
libri, trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, vol. 3 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1985).
- Poggio Bracciolini, Correspondence (selection).
- Beatus Rhenanus, preface to editio princeps of Velleius Paterculus.
- Thomas Gechauf, preface to editio princeps of Archimedes.
- R. H. Rouse, "The transmission of the texts," in The legacy of Rome: A new
appraisal, ed. Richard Jenkyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
- Paul Lawrence Rose, The Italian Renaissance of mathematics: Studies on
humanists and mathematicians from Petrarch to Galileo (Genève: Droz,
1975), ch. 2.
- Background: Grafton, New worlds, ancient texts, chapter 3: "All
coherence gone" (pp. 95-157).
- Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione
(selection).
- Angelo Poliziano, Miscellaneorum centuria secunda (selection).
- Erasmus, letters 325 and 396, in Collected works of Erasmus, vol. 3,
Letters 298 to 445, 1514 to 1516.
- Anthony Grafton, "The scholarship of Poliziano and its context," in
Defenders of the text (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
- John F. D'Amico, Theory and practice in Renaissance textual criticism
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1988), pp.
8-38, 71-101.
Second paper assignment will be passed out.
- Vitruvius, De architectura, book 1 (selection).
- Columella, De re rustica, book 1 (selection).
- Georg Agricola, De re metallica (selection).
- Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria (selection).
- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, ed. and transl. Jean Paul Richter (New
York: Dover Publications, 1970), vol. 1, [[section]][[section]]9-22.
- Giannozzo Manetti, De dignitate et excellentia hominis (selection).
- David Summers, The judgment of sense: Renaissance naturalism and the rise
of
aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 235-51,
259-65.
- Erwin Panofsky, "Artist, scientist, genius: Notes on the
`Renaissance-Dämmerung'," in The Renaissance: Six essays (New York:
Harper Torchbooks, 1962).
Second paper assignment due at 1:30 PM.
- Conrad Gessner, prefatory material to Historia animalium.
- Excerpts from Aristotle, Pliny, a medieval bestiary, and Gessner on the
natural
history of animals.
- Excerpts from Hortus sanitatis, Dioscorides, Mattioli's commentary on
Dioscorides, Carolus Clusius, and John Gerard on the natural history of
plants.
- F. David Hoeniger, "How plants and animals were studied in the mid-sixteenth
century," in Science and the arts in the Renaissance, ed. John W.
Shirley and F. David Hoeniger (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library; London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1985).
- Charles G. Nauert Jr, "Humanists, scientists, and Pliny: Changing approaches
to
a classical author," American Historical Review 84 (1979): 72-85.
- Karen M. Reeds, "Renaissance Humanism and botany," Annals of Science
33
(1976): 519-42.
- Background: Grafton, New worlds, ancient texts, chapter 4: "Drugs and
diseases: New World biology and Old World learning" (pp. 159-193).
- Regiomontanus, "Oration" on the dignity of mathematics, trans. Noel
Swerdlow.
- Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(selection).
- Noel M. Swerdlow, "Science and humanism in the Renaissance."
- Robert S. Westman, "Proof, poetics, and patronage: Copernicus's preface to
De revolutionibus," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution,
ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990).
- Anthony Grafton, "Humanism and science in Rudolphine Prague: Kepler in
context," in Defenders of the text (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1991), pp. 178-203.
- Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, "Resetting the stage for the Copernican revolution,"
in The printing revolution in early modern Europe, pp. 204-225.
- Suggested: Noel M. Swerdlow, "The recovery of the exact sciences of
antiquity:
Mathematics, astronomy, geography," in Rome reborn: The Vatican Library and
Renaissance culture, ed. Anthony Grafton (Washington, DC, New Haven, and
the Vatican City: Library of Congress, Yale University Press, and the
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1993).
- Erasmus, "Encomium medicinae," Literary and educational writings, vol.
7, Collected works of Erasmus, 29 (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of
Toronto Press, 1989).
- Andreas Vesalius, "The preface to De fabrica corporis humani
[sic] 1543," trans. B. Farrington, Proceedings of the Royal Society
of Medicine 25 (1932): 1357-1366.
- Girolamo Mercuriale, De modo studendi, trans. Richard J. Durling, in
"Girolamo Mercuriale's De modo studendi," Osiris 2nd. ser. 6
(1990): 181-195.
- R. Palmer, "Medical botany in northern Italy in the Renaissance," Journal
of
the Royal Society of Medicine 78 (1985): 149-59.
- Nancy G. Siraisi, "Giovanni Argenterio and sixteenth-century medical
innovation," Osiris 2nd. ser. 6 (1990): 161-180.
- Vivian Nutton, "`Prisci dissectionum professores': Greek texts and
Renaissance
anatomists," in The uses of Greek and Latin: Historical essays, ed. A.C.
Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye (London: Warburg Institute,
1988).
- Suggested: Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and early Renaissance medicine: An
introduction to knowledge and practice (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1990), or Siraisi, "Life sciences and medicine in the Renaissance
world," in Rome reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance culture, ed.
Anthony Grafton (Washington, DC, New Haven, and the Vatican City: Library of
Congress, Yale University Press, and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
1993).
- René Descartes, Discourse on the method (selections).
- Francis Bacon, The advancement of learning (selections).
- Pamela O. Long, "Humanism and science," in Renaissance Humanism:
Foundations, forms, and legacy, ed. Albert Rabil Jr., Vol. 3 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
- Grafton, New worlds, ancient texts, chapter 5: "A New World of
learning," and Epilogue (pp. 195-256).
- David C. Lindberg, The beginnings of Western science: The European
scientific tradition in philosophical, religious, and institutional context,
600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). The
most recent survey. Quite good, and sets out the state of the sciences before
they were affected by the humanist movement. On reserve.
- A. C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1961). A classic, opinionated survey. On reserve.
- Allen G. Debus, Man and nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press, 1978). Good overview of the Renaissance sciences, though not
very detailed on any subject.
- Marie Boas Hall, The scientific Renaissance, 1450-1630 (New York:
Harper
& Row, 1962). Out of date, but still useful. On reserve.
- Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleonore Stump, ed., The
Cambridge history of later medieval philosophy: From the rediscovery of
Aristotle to the disintegration of scholasticism, 1100-1600 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
- Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye, ed.,
The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988). The Renaissance volume contains a number of useful
articles on broad subjects. The medieval volume is more narrowly focused on
Aristotelianism.
- George Sarton, Appreciation of ancient and medieval science during the
Renaissance, 1450-1600 (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1955). This work
is dated and incomplete but still offers a wealth of information on Renaissance
editions of classical writers on natural philosophy. On reserve.
- Albert Rabil Jr., ed., Renaissance humanism: Foundations, forms, and
legacy, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
Contains short articles on humanism in Italy and the North and humanism and the
scholarly disciplines. On reserve.
- Anthony Grafton, "The Renaissance," in The legacy of Rome: A new
appraisal, ed. Richard Jenkyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). A
good, brief introduction to the Renaissance attitude toward antiquity. On
reserve.
- Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance
culture (Washington, DC, New Haven, and the Vatican City: Library of
Congress, Yale University Press, and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1993).
Essays by a number of well-known scholars on various aspects of Renaissance
learning as seen in the collections of the Vatican Library. On reserve.
- The Oxford classical dictionary and The Oxford companion to
classical
literature. Renaissance humanists made frequent references to classical
authors and events. These two references have brief articles on aspects of
classical history and literature. They must be used with caution, however,
since modern scholars have had access to texts and centuries of scholarly
tradition unavailable to humanists, whose understanding of things classical was
often quite different from ours.
- Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher, ed., Contemporaries of
Erasmus:
A biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985-87).
- Dictionary of scientific biography. Both of these works contain useful
biographies of major and minor figures. The entries in the DSB are
generally more detailed than those in Contemporaries of Erasmus; the
latter, however, while limited to people mentioned in Erasmus's correspondence,
contains entries for many scholars who are not in the DSB.
- Those who read French will find the Biographie universelle edited by
Michaud to be an invaluable reference work. The national biographical
dictionaries, such as the Dictionary of national biography (British),
the Dizionnario biografici degli Italiani (incomplete), and the
Allgemeine deutsche Biographie are also useful.
If you would like to read in more detail about any of the subjects discussed
in class, please see me for suggestions.
[Please send comments to ogilvie@history.umass.edu.]