Spinoza is in a potentially untenable position. On the one hand, he argues that those who claim to see harmony in the universe are badly mistaken; they are falsely imagining rather than properly reasoning. On the other hand, harmony is positively discussed in his ethical writings and even serves as the basis for his vision of society. How can both be maintained? In this chapter l argue that this prima facie conflict between the two treatments of harmony is resolvable, but (...) that in resolving it, a new set of questions for Spinoza is raised. In doing so, I explore how harmony was used in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, which will help us better situate Spinoza. In doing so, we can recognize new possibilities and new connections between Spinoza and philosophers who are not often discussed in connection with him. (shrink)

This paper points out the potential of using sport for the analysis of society. Cultivated human movement is a specific social and cultural subsystem, yet it becomes a part of wider social discourses by extending some of its characteristics into various other spheres. This process, theorised as sportification, provides as useful concept to examine the permeation of certain phenomena from the area of sport into the social reality outside of sport. In this paper, we investigate the phenomena of sportification which (...) we parallel with visual culture and spectatorship practices in the Renaissance era. The emphasis in our investigation is on theatricality and performativity; particularly, the superficial spectator engagement with modern sport and sporting spectacles. Unlike the significance afforded to visualisation and deeper symbolic interpretation in Renaissance art, contemporary cultural shifts have changed and challenged the ways in which the active a.. (shrink)

ArgumentBy the year 1720, one could visit at least three large-scale wooden models of Solomon's Temple in the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Halle. For short periods of time, the Amsterdam and Hamburg Temple models were exhibited in London, where they attracted a great deal of attention. The Halle model, on the other hand, never moved from its original location: a complex of schools known today as the Francke Foundations (die Franckesche Stiftungen). This article explores the reasons for the Halle (...) model's striking immobility by considering its position at the center of a long-distance network, also referred to as the Danish-Halle mission. In this article I argue that the Halle Temple model functioned as an effigy and memory theater that helped proponents of this mission make a case for the Temple's status as the world's first information technology. Young people moved around the wooden model; they took virtual pilgrimages with it and internalized its infrastructure by memorizing its various components. The model's position at the center of the complex's striking ethnographical collection and curricula exposes relations between the Danish-Halle mission, Christian philosophy, and an irenical turn as public policy in early eighteenth-century Brandenburg-Prussia. (shrink)

Au xve et au xvie siècle, le mouvement humaniste dans l'enseignement transforma le cursus des artes en une forme plus adaptée aux exigences des nouveaux étudiants, c'est-à-dire des futurs fonctionnaires et dirigeants de l'État. Qu'en a-t-il été vraiment? En particulier, à quoi servaient effectivement les mathématiques dans la nouvelle encyclopédie? Ramus nous donne la réponse la plus explicite: l'ontologie aristotélicienne faisant désormais défaut, on ne pouvait plus compter sur la vieille distinction entre théorie et pratique, entre spéculation et action, mais (...) il fallait introduire un nouvel ordre fondé cette fois sur la connaissance humaine la plus fondamentale, la mathesis. C'est là, la première et irremplaçable utilité des mathématiques. Les arts mécaniques appartenant traditionnellement aux mathématiques sont réformés à l'intérieur de cette nouvelle encyclopédie, et l'humaniste est censé en connaître les principes et l'utilité pour l'action. (shrink)

The hitherto neglected Pandechion epistemonicon, Ulisse Aldrovandi’s extant manuscript encyclopaedia, indicates that Renaissance naturalists did not necessarily apply the humanist jack-of-all-trades, the commonplace book, in their own field without considerably altering its form. Over many years the Italian natural historian tested and recombined different techniques to arrive at the form of paper technology that he considered to be the most fit for his purposes. Not all of these techniques were taught at school or university. Rather, Aldrovandi drew on administrative practices (...) as well as on the bookkeeping practices of early modern merchants that he knew first-hand. Reconstructing the formation and use of the Pandechion this article contributes to the historiography of learned reading and information management in Renaissance Europe. (shrink)

Narratives about the peaceful and fruitful relationship of religion and science in early-modern times have long since replaced the nineteenth-century vision of the ‘warfare of science with theology...