1992/10/01 by Ann Blair · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Classical Philosophy and Thought #Renaissance and Early Modern Studies #Historical Philosophy and Science
paper · doi:10.2307/2709935
As new evidence for the interaction between humanism and science in the Renaissance I will trace the use among natural philosophical authors of a quintessentially humanist method of reading and storing information-through the book. In this method of reading (which I will call the method of commonplaces) one selects passages of interest for the rhetorical turns of phrase, the dialectical arguments, or the factual information they contain; one then copies them out in a notebook, the book, kept handy for the purpose, grouping them under appropriate headings to facilitate later retrieval and use, notably in composing prose of one's own. Strictly defined the book is a humanist innovation, but like most Renaissance practices it adapted a concept with a glorious ancient pedigree to suit contemporary, in this case pedagogical, needs. Ancient rhetoric, from Aristotle's Topics to Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, had developed a list of the places or loci of use to the orator: including seats of arguments (from effects, from circumstances, from greater or lesser, for example) and rhetorical embellishments (amplification, captatio benevolentiae, and so on). In the Middle Ages florilegia and sermon manuals supplemented those theoretical guides to good arguing with substantive material which could be copied directly: moral sentences or in the case of medical handbooks, commonplace medical recipes, compiled for easy access.' In the Renaissance the notion of place continued to expand, as pupils throughout Europe were taught to keep their own books while in school and afterwards through a lifetime of reading. Guarino da Verona, Erasmus, and Vives among other pedagogues wrote specific instructions for keeping such notebooks. Alongside memorable rhetorical idioms the book was to record, often in a separate