The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism, and Pietism in the Early Enlightenment

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Synopsis
Founded around 1700 by a group of German Lutherans known as Pietists, the Halle Orphanage became the institutional headquarters of a universal seminar that still stands largely intact today. It was the base of an educational, charitable, and scientific community and consisted of an elite school for the sons of noblemen; schools for the sons of artisans, soldiers, and preachers; a hospital; an apothecary; a bookshop; a botanical garden; and a cabinet of curiosity containing architectural models, "naturalia," and scientific instruments. Yet, its reputation as a Pietist enclave inhabited largely by young people has prevented the organization from being taken seriously as a kind of scientific academy even though, Kelly Joan Whitmer shows, this is precisely what it was. "The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community" calls into question a long-standing tendency to view German Pietists as anti-science and anti-Enlightenment, arguing that these tendencies have drawn attention away from what was actually going on inside the orphanage. Whitmer shows how the orphanage s identity as a scientific community hinged on its promotion of philosophical eclecticism as a tool for assimilating perspectives and observations and working to perfect one s abilities to observe methodically. Because of the link between eclecticism and observation, Whitmer reveals, those teaching and training in Halle s Orphanage contributed to the transformation of scientific observation and its related activities in this period. "
Copyright:
2015

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780226243801
Publisher:
The University of Chicago Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
The University of Chicago Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Science, Religion and Spirituality, Education, Philosophy
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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