MAKING THE “ROUND OF KNOWLEDGE” IN BACON’S WAKE: NAUDÉ, COMENIUS, AND BROWNE This paper examines how three of Francis
Bacon’s readers, Gabriel Naudé, Jan Amos Comenius, and Thomas
Browne, rethink the humanist library, the genre of the silva, and Bacon’s call
for a new kind of encyclopedism. Naudé adumbrates the organization and
contents of the ideal library so that judicious readers may integrate the old
and new learning. In calling for a single pansophist book, Comenius heralds
Bacon’s inductive method and yet would restore metaphysics to the
encyclopedia. And after his own efforts in Baconian encyclopedism in the
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Thomas Browne writes a catalogue of books and
artifacts that is at once an elegy to the republic of letters and a ludic plea to
include admiratio in “the round of knowledge.” This diverse reception
history emblemizes the rich, often contradictory potential of Bacon’s
encyclopedic vision.
MAKING THE “ROUND OF KNOWLEDGE” IN BACON’S WAKE: NAUDÉ, COMENIUS, AND BROWNE.

SOCIETATE ŞI POLITICĂ

Volum 5 | Număr 10 | Publicat la 15/11/2011 | ISSN  1843-1348 | eISSN  2067-7812

Autori:
Christopher D. JOHNSON [1]
[1] Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Rezumat
This paper examines how three of Francis
Bacon’s readers, Gabriel Naudé, Jan Amos Comenius, and Thomas
Browne, rethink the humanist library, the genre of the silva, and Bacon’s call
for a new kind of encyclopedism. Naudé adumbrates the organization and
contents of the ideal library so that judicious readers may integrate the old
and new learning. In calling for a single pansophist book, Comenius heralds
Bacon’s inductive method and yet would restore metaphysics to the
encyclopedia. And after his own efforts in Baconian encyclopedism in the
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Thomas Browne writes a catalogue of books and
artifacts that is at once an elegy to the republic of letters and a ludic plea to
include admiratio in “the round of knowledge.” This diverse reception
history emblemizes the rich, often contradictory potential of Bacon’s
encyclopedic vision.
Cuvinte cheie:
Francis Bacon, Gabriel Naudé, John Evelyn, Jan Amos Comenius, Thomas Browne, library, encyclopedia



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