101 Lecture 12 March 7

Question 0

12th century renaissance was a time of new thinking

New WAYS of thinking

Led to a flowering of intellectual and artistic life

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Question 1

Spring break travel narrative

Extra credit, not required. Just hand in by last day of classes.

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Question 2

Unlike Carolingian renaissance, it was a popular, not court-centered, phenomenon

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Question 3

Knowledge of law, learning, art, science, technology, and music flourished

Spread among tens of thousands of people, by 1250 hundreds of thousands, of people

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Question 4

Slide

Above all, this movement was dedicated to the idea of Reason

Cosmos a rationally ordered place

God has given mankind the capacity to think it all out, to comprehend the mysteries of the universe

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Question 5

Not everyone excited about this new thinking

Many felt that the intellectual achievements of the age were a sham

A passion for novelty instead of dedication to truth

EG St. Bernard of Clairvaux

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Question 6

Slide

Renaissance began with passionate interest in the thinking and literature of classical times

Logic, the science of constructing arguments, compiling data according into rules into theories, at the heart of the matter

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Question 7

Aristotle

Most important philosopher of the 12th c.

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Question 8

Only reached Europe in full in 12th c.

Via Middle East.

New direct knowledge of Greek

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Question 9

Aristotle exciting for his empiricism and his logical method

His effort to harmonize knowlege: All truths part of a single Truth; universe ordered and orderly, things happen for a reason

Happiest state of humankind can reach is to put itself in accord with the natural laws that govern existence

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Question 10

Slide

Major philosophical development: Universals

Universals those ideal qualities that all members of a particular class/group share and that define their essence.

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Question 11

EG. 2 Chairs. Chairness.

But does chairness exist? this universal quality?

Or is it just an abstraction? an idea with intellectual utility but no practical meaning?

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Question 12

Slide

Quite relevant for debates over the nature of the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

Does the fact that something looks like, feels like, smells like, and tastes like bread necessarily mean that it is bread?

If those characteristics do not signify bread, then what good are our sense-data?

And if all our knowledge derives from our senses, how can we possibly know anything?

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Question 13

Slide

Two schools of thought emerge

Realists and Nominalists

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Question 14

Realists

Universals really did exist as sensible and meaningful constructs, even if only in the mind of God

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Question 15

Nominalists

Universals the mere names or categorizing tools used by men to try to impose order on the world, but are in themselves essentially meaningless

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Question 16

Both positions problematic.

Realists: vulnerable to charges of pantheism, since if individual people real only to the extent that they formed part of the universal mankind in God’s mind, then no distinguishing between God and His creation

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Question 17

Nominalists: position of having to deny the Trinity, the Real Presence, and the divinity of Christ

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Question 18

Slide

Recovery of Science

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Question 19

Knowledge of the sciences never very sophisticated or widespread in early Middle Ages

Romans more engineers and applied technology

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Question 20

Roots of scientific recovery in Baghdad

Abbasids dedicated their court to the assimilation of Greek and Persian learning

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Question 21

Gathered scholars, manuscripts, translators.

Library of Wisdom in the new capital

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Question 22

Many of these scholars in Baghdad were eastern Christians who had already assimilated Greek and Persian knowledge to Christian worldview

Spiritual vocabulary had developed.

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Question 23

Knowledge of math, astronomy, alchemy, botanical works

these works circulate throughout the Abbasid empire

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Question 24

Patronage of science a hallmark of Muslim nobility

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Question 25

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Jewish element very strong as well in this spread

Jewish scholars among the leaders in Greek-to-Arabic and Arabic-to-Latin translations

Original works of their own

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Question 26

Jewish preeminence in medicine

Jewish physicians highly prized at Islamic and Christian courts

Many Muslim and Christian students flocked to study with Jewish physicians

Slide
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Question 27

Latin scientific revival begins with medicine in late 11th c. Italy at Salerno.

Southern city with close ties to Islamic Sicily. Muslim medicine.

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Question 28

I won’t go through all the various advances in science and math, but let me demonstrate just one

Slide

Fibonacci sequence

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Question 29

Leonardo Fibonacci 1170-1230

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987…

each number sum of the two that precede

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Question 30

Slide

Significance (for our purposes)

Describes a surprising number of natural phenomenoa

Spiral arrangement of petals on flowers

Curve of snail shells

Twisting branches around tree trunk

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Question 31

Did mcuh to affirm medieval certainty that they lived ina rationally ordered world

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Question 32

Slide

How did this knowledge circulate?

Cathedral schools into universities

But first, wandering scholars

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Question 33

Origins are somewhat obscure

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Question 34

Monastic vocation deemed a noble one, but that’s a problem: sanctified country clubs

Monastic education limited in scope: aimed at making student a better monk

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Question 35

New type of school needed to bring together all the various ideas being debated and expressed by the wandering scholars

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Question 36

Slide

Bishops taket he lead

Attach schools to their cathedrals

1. bishops in position to attract and observe the most talented for entry into priesthood
2. important source of revenue
3. raised their social profile by being providers of social advancement
4. control over new learning

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Question 37

Differences of cathedral schools from monastic schools:

Standardized curricula
Taught by organized, incorporated bodies of professors
Bestowed formal degress on the students who completed the curricula

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Question 38

Education now became an empirical, legal fact, not merely a state of mind

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Question 39

Slide

But how does a school establish uniform standards?

Creation of formal university

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Question 40

Universitas was a legal incorporation that established its own standards, regulated intself, enjoyed certain legal privileges

Criteria for what was expected of the students, rewarded those who satisfied the criteria

Like a guild

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Question 41

Universities were self-governing institutions

Stood outside the jurisdiction of the cities that gave them a home

Town-Gown conflict

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Question 42

Universities attracted students from all over Europe

Became microcosms of political tensions of Europe

Paris to Oxford to Cambridge

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Question 43

Accreditation

Holy See bestowed the title of studium generale (“general school”) upon schools that met its standards of mastery within each subject studied

Emperor insisted on ability to do the same

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Question 44

Receiving one’s degree from a studium generale gave one the right to teach one’s subject anywhere

Degrees from lesser institutions less portable

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Question 45

Slide

Learning methods

Learning by Gloss

Memorization

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Question 46

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Education theoretically open to everyone (male)

But expensive

Monopoloy of middle class and lower nobility

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Question 47

Schools engines of social mobility, esp if degree in law, medicine, theology

Many towns began to offer scholarships to urban youths

Wealthy individuals endowed scholarships or hostels for housing students of a particular nationality or course of study

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Question 48

Slide

In-class writing

Two ways Bacon trying to reconcile reason and faith/ science and god

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