‘Simon Stevin’s Age of the Sages. In search of an Alternative Renaissance: Exploring Scientific Methods Based on Pre-Classical Authorities, Emperical Data and Pure Languages.’

TY - CHAP

T1 - ‘Simon Stevin’s Age of the Sages. In search of an Alternative Renaissance: Exploring Scientific Methods Based on Pre-Classical Authorities, Emperical Data and Pure Languages.’

AU - van den Heuvel, C.M.J.M.

PY - 2020/10/20

Y1 - 2020/10/20

N2 - Here, the claim will be put forward, that the publication of the Age of the Sages is not only important for Stevin’s views on the Dutch language, but is illustrative as well for the impact of the educational turn in his career when he started to teach the Stadholder, later Prince Maurits. Furthermore, we put the hypothesis forward that the development of Stevin’s ideas on the Age of the Sages might explain the discontinuity in the history of his most important polymathematical publication the Wisconstighe ghedachtenissen (Mathematical Memoirs) and some of the contents of his unpublished works on architecture, music and military affairs. To this end we will demonstrate that the Age of the Sages that Dijksterhuis dismissed as “outside the sphere of his [Stevin’s] competence” is in fact crucial for understanding developments in Stevin’s scientific methodologies, i.e. the shift from theory toward the use of empirical data and the extension of his views on the purity of the Dutch language to other (mathematical, musical, architectural) languages. Finally, the Age of the Sages sheds light on Stevin’s views on natural order and his creation of an alternative Renaissance that challenged the reception of classical authorities and that reveals a more instrumental use of the legacy of pre-classical sources compared to the studies of his contemporaries that approached ancient wisdom before the Greek and Roman civilisations purely in a philological way

AB - Here, the claim will be put forward, that the publication of the Age of the Sages is not only important for Stevin’s views on the Dutch language, but is illustrative as well for the impact of the educational turn in his career when he started to teach the Stadholder, later Prince Maurits. Furthermore, we put the hypothesis forward that the development of Stevin’s ideas on the Age of the Sages might explain the discontinuity in the history of his most important polymathematical publication the Wisconstighe ghedachtenissen (Mathematical Memoirs) and some of the contents of his unpublished works on architecture, music and military affairs. To this end we will demonstrate that the Age of the Sages that Dijksterhuis dismissed as “outside the sphere of his [Stevin’s] competence” is in fact crucial for understanding developments in Stevin’s scientific methodologies, i.e. the shift from theory toward the use of empirical data and the extension of his views on the purity of the Dutch language to other (mathematical, musical, architectural) languages. Finally, the Age of the Sages sheds light on Stevin’s views on natural order and his creation of an alternative Renaissance that challenged the reception of classical authorities and that reveals a more instrumental use of the legacy of pre-classical sources compared to the studies of his contemporaries that approached ancient wisdom before the Greek and Roman civilisations purely in a philological way

KW - Simon Stevin

KW - Wijsentijt

KW - Wisonstighe Ghedachtenissen

KW - pre-classical authority

KW - pure languages

KW - History of Science

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-90-04-43290-1

T3 - Nuncius Series

SP - 206

EP - 233

BT - Rethinking Stevin, Stevin Rethinking. Constructions of a Dutch Polymath

A2 - Davids, C.A

A2 - Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan

A2 - Stamhuis, Ida H.

A2 - Vermij, Rienk H.

PB - Brill, Leiden Boston

CY - Leiden Boston

ER -