The history of Western science testifies to the dramatic growth in the body of knowledge that was passed down in the Late Middle Ages and early modern era. On account of this growth, the unity, completeness and organisation of knowledge became an increasingly important objective. In order to manage this task, canons of knowledge had to be broken down into fragments and, once isolated from their traditional contexts, these knowledge patterns or topoi had to then be reorganised.The sciences dedicated to compiling collections of topoi are chiefly concerned with presenting a complete set of topoi for each discipline in a homogenous and ordered manner. However, the material topoi do not always fit this formal organisation system - often their internal logic bursts the boundaries of the available disciplines, making combinations with other fields or new constellations necessary. This process is in itself an integral part of creating tradition, although, at the same time, it is largely a process of transformation. In the field of Topics and the history of knowledge, this transformation of the organisation system has not yet been fully researched/analysed, still it provides us with a methodical, scientific and historical instrument that facilitates a more precise analysis of the restructuring processes of medieval and early modern knowledge than ever before.The essays collected in this volume exemplify these processes with themes from the history of art, emblematics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, philology and philosophy.>
