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Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
- Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
-
Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
arca_libraria > 27-08-2019, 06:34 PM
I belong to a mailing list for medievalists who work in history of science and history of medicine and one of the members today shared a manuscript that I had never seen before and which made me think of a certain other manuscript that we all know and love.
The manuscript apparently dates from 1497* and contains two texts known as De corpore et anima, and De complexionum cognitione. The first part of the MS shares material with the anatomy section of the Compendium of Johannes Peyligk, a medical text printed in Leipzig in 1499, but the second part, with the diagram that I am interested in doesn't seem to be in that book in the same format based on my very quick skim of an online copy of that book.
This is the diagram
You can browse the whole You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (link takes you to the John Rylands Library MS viewer) and the diagram is on f. 20v.
I haven't read the diagram or the rest of the MS in any detail, and it's later than stuff I usually work on, but I was struck by the blue flower-star thing, the wavy lines and the particular way that the information had been arranged.
* The date is on f. 11v of the actual manuscript and says "1497", which fits in with the palaeography. For reasons that aren't clear to me, one of the list members expressed a concern that that date seemed unlikely. -
RE: Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
Linda > 27-08-2019, 09:37 PM
Interesting. The topic seems to be how water contains things for plants to grow? I think that is in line with quire 13 being about water and sediment from the rocks and mountains and especially volcanoes, which i found out are so good for growing wine grapes because of all the organic matter trapped in the ash... -
RE: Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
VViews > 28-08-2019, 01:03 AM
Thanks for sharing this image, arca_libraria !
Although there is much here that I can't make out, based on what I can understand of the label text the diagram appears to be related to the aristotelian understanding of senses via species, theorized in the middle ages by Francis Bacon and Walter Burley, among others.
I found a match for the wording of this
diagram's distinction between Specula materialia i organica and Specula immaterialia i inorganica, which is also apparently present in an anonymous diagram in BSB theol lat fol
247, ff 247-248, according to this record: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
As I understand it, the thing being sensed (an image, a smell, a taste, etc) has a species or likeness (see the bottom left part of the diagram you posted: gustus, olefactus, tactus, auditus... ) , which is transmitted to the receiving organ-sense. This is processed further by memory (the middle-right circle) and intellect ((the upper circles) .
But there are alternate pathways, for different species, there are common sense species an species of the intellect, etc.
Different authors propose different theories as the way the senses worked was still a matter of debate in the late 15thC. It should be possible to find which theory the diagram fits best with.
I am typing this from my phone so l apologize in advance for any typos/ layout/ punctuation/etc issues. -
RE: Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
-JKP- > 28-08-2019, 03:58 AM
(27-08-2019, 06:34 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
* The date is on f. 11v of the actual manuscript and says "1497", which fits in with the palaeography. For reasons that aren't clear to me, one of the list members expressed a concern that that date seemed unlikely.
The date looks reasonable to me. I looked up this style of writing in my palaeography database and I found 19 samples with similar handwriting and all of them date from between 1459 and 1525 (the one from 1525 might be earlier, but the repository knows very little about its origins, another might be from later in the 1500s but little is known about it).
Twelve of them were from Germany/Alsace. The other seven were from Flanders, Scandinavia, Bohemia, and the Veneto. -
RE: Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
arca_libraria > 29-08-2019, 07:49 PM
@JKP I agree, I have no problem with that date based on palaeographical grounds - it looks like late 15th/early 16th century handwriting to me too. A post added to the mailing list after I had shared the item here indicated that the concerns relate to the texts this MS shares with some early printed material, but a few different people indicated that they had looked at it and had material due for publication about precisely that question.
I wanted to share the MS here not because of the weird date controversy, but because I think it's a useful example of how people in the 15th C were arranging information in non-standard ways in MSs that seem to be for personal use and with relatively informal production standards and methods.
@VViews I completely agree with your assessment of the diagram. I just want to add for anyone else who isn't familiar with this sort of medieval thinking that the concepts explored in the diagram above are part of a long tradition that exploded from the availability of Latin translations of Aristotle and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in Europe in the late 12th century. -
RE: Interesting diagram of the senses and sense information
-JKP- > 30-08-2019, 05:26 AM
(29-08-2019, 07:49 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I wanted to share the MS here not because of the weird date controversy, but because I think it's a useful example of how people in the 15th C were arranging information in non-standard ways in MSs that seem to be for personal use and with relatively informal production standards and methods.
...
I understood that was your focus, and I agree it is provocative, but I am always going to respond to paleography-related statements because I have put many years into researching the numerous handwritings in the VMS—the column text, the 116v notes, the quire numbers, the folio numbers, and the main text. Just so ya know.