
Humanism in an Age of Science
The Amsterdam Athenaeum in the Golden Age, 1632-1704
Dirk Van Miert(Author)
Brill (Publisher)
Published on 31. July 2009
Book
Hardback
448 pages
978-90-04-17685-0 (ISBN)
Description
In 1632, the Amsterdam regents founded an Athenaeum or 'Illustrious School'. This kind of institution provided academic teaching, although it could not grant degrees and had no compulsory four-faculty system. Athenaeums proliferated in the first century after the Dutch Revolt, but few of them survived long. They have been interpreted as the manifestation of an evolving vision of the role of a higher education; this book, by contrast, argues that education at the Amsterdam Athenaeum was staunchly traditional both in methods and in substance. While religious, philosophical and scientific disputes rocked contemporary Dutch learned society, this analysis of letters, orations and disputations reveals that a traditional and Aristotelian humanism thrived at the Athenaeum until well into the seventeenth century.
Reviews / Votes
"Through careful analysis of this corpus of texts embracing a broad range of disciplines, Van Miert exhibits not only mastery of the Neo-Latin language of academic teaching with its disciplinary varieties, but above all 'that' he is able to reconstruct the intellectual background and the doctrinal scope of teaching at the Amsterdam Atheneaeum during the seventeenth century."Willem Frijhoff, History of Universities Volume XXV, No. 2 (2011) pp. 173-179.
''Clear, graceful and thorough, this is a distinguished and rewarding contribution to the history of higher education.''
Joseph M. McCarthy (Suffolk University) in Seventeenth-Century News, 2010:68, 3-4.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
11 s/w Abbildungen
11 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
844 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-17685-0 (9789004176850)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Dirk van Miert, Ph.D. (2004) in Latin, University of Amsterdam, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Warburg Institute, London. He has published on many aspects of early modern intellectual history and is co-editor of the correspondence of Joseph Scaliger.
Content
Acknowledgements
PART I: A HISTORY
Introduction
1. Higher Education in the Low Countries
2. An Amsterdam Cortege
PART 2: TEACHING PRACTICES
3. Private teaching
4. Public teaching
5. Semi-public teaching
6. Holidays, timetables and absences
PART 3: THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING
7. The arts I: the rhetorical subjects
8. The arts II: the philosophical subjects
9. The teaching of law
10. The teaching of medicine
11. The teaching of theology
PART 4: CONCLUSION AND APPENDICES
12. Conclusion
Appendix 1: Timeline of professors
Appendix 2: Geographical origins of students defending disputations, 1650-1670
Appendix 3: Easter and Pentecost holidays at the Athenaeum
Sources
Index
PART I: A HISTORY
Introduction
1. Higher Education in the Low Countries
2. An Amsterdam Cortege
PART 2: TEACHING PRACTICES
3. Private teaching
4. Public teaching
5. Semi-public teaching
6. Holidays, timetables and absences
PART 3: THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING
7. The arts I: the rhetorical subjects
8. The arts II: the philosophical subjects
9. The teaching of law
10. The teaching of medicine
11. The teaching of theology
PART 4: CONCLUSION AND APPENDICES
12. Conclusion
Appendix 1: Timeline of professors
Appendix 2: Geographical origins of students defending disputations, 1650-1670
Appendix 3: Easter and Pentecost holidays at the Athenaeum
Sources
Index