charles van doren history of knowledge follow up

No single element of a global history of knowledge is to be excluded or, vice versa, there is no conceivable knowledge history that can be restricted in principle ( such as, for instance, a ‘national’ knowledge history ). It obviously isn’t wrong to understand knowledge history necessarily as part of global history. What then is knowledge in history? Again, Wikipedia has an article on the ‘History of Knowledge’: “The history of knowledge is the field of covering the accumulated and known human knowledge created or discovered during the history of the world and its historic forms”. Not only in this respect does Francis Bacon represent a new beginning of science and a period of transformation from late medieval scholastic knowledge. The article on ‘Knowledge’ quotes one of the most famous literary remarks concerning knowledge by Francis Bacon ( 1561–1626 ): “knowledge is power”, which does not focus on knowledge as an instrument of political power, but on understanding nature and verifying assertions by experiments.

Wikipedia did ( and does even now ), in fact, not ignore history. Although taken from contemporary contexts, this definition of knowledge can be helpful in guiding us towards historical contexts by focusing not exclusively on “inquiry and practice”. Perhaps unexpectedly from a premodern point of view, the article was informative in connecting knowledge with information, experience and education. The loss of “information” and “experience” in the updated version is, in fact, regrettable. Some years ago, in 2018, the Wikipedia article included “information” and “description” besides “facts and skills”, understanding knowledge “acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning”. Obviously, even contemporary definitions of knowledge are on the move. By most accounts, knowledge can be acquired in many different ways and from many sources, including but not limited to perception, reason, memory, testimony, scientific inquiry, education and practice”.

It might help as a first step to consult the most popular encyclopedia of today: “Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, skills, or objects.

We can hardly find any suitable article in dictionaries usually consulted. Is it impossible to give a clear definition of what knowledge is? So that is no real help or at least it provides too little information. He tells us under the lemma scire that “a lot of words describe the meaning of ‘to know’ but there is no single work to quote” ( Multorum nomina Scirem nominare, sed opus non est ea singula describere ). There is one ideal way to get information on an unknown topic about the Middle Ages, for example knowledge: look it up in the ‘Glossarium mediae latinitatis’, first published by Charles du Cange ( 1610–1688 ) in 1678.

Charles van doren history of knowledge follow up