Concept

History of knowledge

Overview

aspect of history

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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1. THE TWO COURSES.—When we endeavour to examine the mirror in itself we discover in the end that we can detect nothing there but the things which it reflects. If we wish to grasp the things reflected we touch nothing in the end but the mirror.—This is the general history of knowledge. DELIGHT IN REALITY.—Our present inclination to take delight in reality—for almost every one of us possesses it—can only be explained by…

   Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day

   States what History of knowledge is; names History of knowledge.

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2. One of the points which gave much offense in the essays was the reference to genetic method--to a natural history of knowledge. I hope what has now been said makes clearer the nature of that reference. I was to blame for not making the point more explicit; but I cannot altogether blame myself for my naïveté in supposing that others understood by a natural history of knowledge what I understood by it. It had not…

   John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic

   States what History of knowledge is; names History of knowledge twice.

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3. Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society. The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge. If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly…

   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

   States what History of knowledge is; names History of knowledge.

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Related ideas

• Belief
• Pierre Bourdieu
• George Sarton
• Germany
• Auguste Comte
• Philosophy
• History of science
• Academy
• Latin
• Postcolonialism
• Sociology
• Mathematics
• Culture
• University
• Observation
• Intellectual
• Psychology
• Knowledge
• Science
• Social science
• Society
• Value (ethics)
• Human history
• Logic

Opposing perspectives

• Peter Burke (historian)

Place in the tradition

Part of Knowledge.

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