Starting from the current trend to digitise the university, this thesis aims to clarify the specific relation between university thinking and its use of media. This thesis is an investigation concerning the sensorial and medial conditions which enable the event of thinking to emerge at the university, i.e. conditions which do not make thinking necessary, but possible. Thinking is approached as an event which can happen while studying at the university, not as an outcome, nor a disposition or skill. The (...) ambition of this thesis is theory development and of making a contribution in the field of philosophy of education. The theoretical framework discussed in chapters one and two will allow first, an analysis of the university sensorium inspired by the work of Ivan Illich who, through a history of the senses, pioneered this kind of research applied to medieval reading practices. Secondly, the work of media philosopher Vilém Flusser is used to operationalize the analysis of media at the university; this thesis will use the Flusserian concepts of code, modes of consciousness, transcoding, gestures, intellectual field, dialogue and apparatus. The methodology consists of a novel approach inspired by Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures: in order to find traces of thinking, this investigation looks for gestures (with media) occurring in university practices, gestures which seem to imply some form of coding or transcoding. The first chapter critically discusses Ivan Illich’s historical hypothesis of the mediatic specificity of the university thinking. Illich works with a particular conception of the history of the senses through which he shows how the invention of the optical text and its way of reading gave rise to a new way of thinking which was later fostered by the university. The text emerges as an instrumental way of using the book for studying and thinking, a profanation and suspension of the book. This move is taken to be the signature move of the university which enables a particular way of thinking: abstract and non-visual thinking, which is made present through the event of reading. The second chapter introduces the media-theoretical framework of Flusser by discussing his particular take on codes and the modes of consciousness enabled by the dominant codes. Provisionally, transcoding is taken to be an indication of the event of thinking. The threshold introduces the approach of a phenomenology of gestures which will be used in the following two chapters. The third chapter examines the practice of university lecturing from a sensorial and gestural perspective by using several direct observations of lectures and historical reports of lectures. It was found that the lecture does not promote any particular sense, hence no particular mode of consciousness, and that the media in the lecture suffers a continuous transcoding. Thinking in the lecture was described as a thinking which suddenly makes itself present for all those attending the lecture. The fourth chapter examines MOOCs which are taken to be the digital counterpart of the university course. The specific media usage enabled by MOOCs is described starting from two case studies: an xMOOC and the bMOOC (designed by KU Leuven and LUCA researchers). Using interviews and an autoethnographic account, this chapter finds indications of what could be digital gestures in the MOOC and concludes that thinking in the MOOC occurs as a collective construction of a techno-image. The fifth and final chapter outlines the theoretical contributions of this thesis. The kind of thinking made possible by university practices is described as a form of collective thinking, non-productive and anti-apparatus. The ways in which this thinking is made possible are theorised by introducing the notion of mediatic displacement, a specific event in which the particular logic of media is suspended in such a way as to make room for a thinking which is not determined by any mediality. The notion of intellectual askesis is proposed for the collective enactment of attention, as the sensorial condition which makes possible the mediatic displacement. In light of these findings, the thesis proposes to understand the promise of the digital university as still a utopian project to come, because it cannot yet enable the sensorial and collective attention techniques which the classical university managed to enact through its study practices. (shrink)

In the Pancosmia, the fourth book of his Nova de universis philosophia (first published in 1591 in Ferrara; second edition in 1593 in Venice),1 Francesco Patrizi devoted six chapters to the questio...

The causes of tidal motions were widely debated from antiquity up to the eighteenth century. These discussions got a second wind in the early modern period, in the wake of a growing number of cosmological alternatives that challenged the dominant Aristotelian-Ptolemaic stance. The 1687 publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica was a defining moment in the discussions and consequently made universal gravitation the most credible and generally accepted explanation. This paper investigates the aftermath of Newton’s discovery and demonstrates how his (...) understanding of tidal motion crowded out competing theories within a broader European context. My main point of reference is Roger Boscovich’s De aestu maris (1747). In his work, the leading Jesuit scholar of the time contrasted Newton’s interpretation to those of other major authorities, namely Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and René Descartes, and went on to claim the superiority of the British scientist’s achievements over anything written prior to the Principia. As this essay argues, alongside a significant body of literature produced under the umbrella of the Jesuit order, Boscovich’s De aestu maris subsequently contributed to the formation of the popular image of Newton as a “scientific hero.”. (shrink)

The history of the continuous inclusion of mathematics in liberal education in the West, from ancient times through the modern period, is sketched in the first two sections of this chapter. Next, the heart of this essay (Sects. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) delineates the central role mathematics has played throughout the history of Western civilization: not just a tool for science and technology, mathematics continually illuminates, interacts with, and sometimes challenges fields like art, music, literature, and philosophy – (...) subjects now universally considered to be liberal arts. Section 8 adds an international perspective to the contemporary liberal arts story by describing some instructive mathematical achievements from many cultures and societies. Finally, Sect. 9 addresses how contemporary mathematics teaching can use the history of mathematics viewed as a liberal art to enhance the appreciation and understanding of mathematics for all students. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the Twelfth Century spiritually -oriented texts present an important, but often neglected instance of natural theology. My analysis will show that in the texts of Hugh of St. Victor and his student Richard of St. Victor we find a Christian Neo-Platonist variant of natural theology. The elements of natural theology form a central part of their larger spiritual programmes, which in turn are meant to guide the human being in her ascent into divine (...) realities and thereby offer immediate experience of the presence of God. I will give special attention to Hugh’s treatise _De Tribus Diebus_, as it explores both the manifestations of the Trinity in the created world as well as the beauty of all created objects. Hugh’s account will be supplemented by an exposition of Richard’s idea of experience as a vital means for all knowing. (shrink)

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) stands among the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, especially in the field of economics; in his long and varied impact on the profession, he is second only to Maynard Keynes. He was a pragmatist in his economic philosophy, an “objective scientific investigator with no particular axe to grind” (Newman, et al., 746). His encyclopedic History of Economic Analysis, edited after his death by his wife and published in 1954, is a monument to his gigantic and (...) versatile achievements; and it remains the locus classicus of almost all works in this area. (shrink)

The papal monarchy is the subject of Thomas Hobbes's Historical Narration concerning Heresy, much of Behemoth, and his long Latin poem, the Historia Ecclesiastica. Hobbes's was not the only account in his day of the papal monarchy as a history of iniquity, or even as “the ghost of the Roman Empire.” The papal creation of a parallel system of offices in the late Roman and Holy Roman Empires is of immense institutional importance. Hobbes's analysis of the second papal strategy, the (...) co‐optation of Roman Law as canon law, is complicated. Hobbes's account of both the institutional and philosophical consequences of the papal monarchy is surprisingly congruent with some of the most authoritative modern accounts. The fourteenth‐century hierocratic publicists belonged as much to the reception of Averroist Aristotelianism as their contemporary antagonists. None of the parties to the struggle between pope and emperor appears to have been immune to the Aristotelianism of the Arabic commentators. (shrink)