This dissertation explores how antiquity and some of its early modern admirers understand the notion of certainty, especially as it is theorized in Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, a first-century educational manual for the aspiring orator that defines certainty in terms of consensus. As part of a larger discussion of argumentative strategies, Quintilian turns to the “nature of all arguments,” which he defines as “reasoning which lends credence to what is doubtful by means of what is certain” (ratio per ea quae certa (...) sunt fidem dubiis adferens: quae natura est omnium argumentorum, V.10.8). These certainties, he later specifies, include not matters of scientific demonstration or objective fact, but the agreements of various communities: the laws of cities, local customs, and other forms of consensus. As the foundation of persuasive rhetoric, these consensus-based certainties situate argumentation as the practice of crafting agreements rather than demonstrating necessary conclusions. Taking as its point of departure Quintilian's novel understanding of certainty, this study looks to some of Quintilian's intellectual forebears as well as his later readers to show how his work is both a nexus of earlier intellectual developments as well as an important inspiration for later accounts of certainty, even into the early modern period. After illustrating in the first chapters of this dissertation how Quintilian's manual incorporates elements from Aristotelian notions of dialectic and rhetoric as well as from Ciceronian skeptical approaches to epistemology, I show how Quintilian's curriculum for the orator shapes the thought of Italian humanists, especially that of Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457), a reformer of scholastic logic and dialectic, and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), an influential Neapolitan jurist. Adopting Quintilian's rendering of certainty as a matter of agreements and conventions, these later authors elaborate their own novel approaches to various fields—including law, language, and logic—through this ancient understanding of certum. Contrary to modern notions of certainty as objective or scientific fact, Quintilian's humanist readers continue to root this concept in consensus, both within the courtroom and without. (shrink)

I believe that the purpose of history in a medical school can be related to two simple goals: first, to make students a bit skeptical about everything else they are to be taught in the other lectures—skepticism fosters humility and life-long learning; second, to make them aware that medical history is a research discipline as compelling as any of the basic and clinical sciences they are traditionally taught. In the fall of 1988, I was given an opportunity to build a (...) “course” in history for medical students—a course with no fixed time slot, no fixed syllabus, and no fixed content. I wanted to teach history of anatomy during anatomy sessions, history of pathology during pathology, history of obstetrics during obstetrics, and so on. I hoped to end each session with a disciplinary controversy that extended into present pratice. The ultimate manifestation of infiltration would be to have one question on every exam that the students would write during their medical school experience. This is the story of how my medical history teaching moved from nothing to a program integrated throughout four years of medical studies, complete with goals and objectives and two questions of every exam. The content, advantages, and problems of the approach in the Queen's University experience will be presented. (shrink)