Divergence

Abstract

Since the function and form of Comenian pansophia derived from the previous post-Ramist tradition, its sources and basic working methods naturally betrayed the same family resemblance. Far from proceeding on strictly empirical principles, Comenius adopted from Alsted the idea that pansophia must derive from the ‘three books of God’: sense, reason, and revelation (section 8.i). Like Alsted, Comenius also collected and processed this huge variety of material within a system of commonplaces; while Hartlib and Dury, for their part, proposed using Alsted’s Encyclopaedia as the structure of a collaborative information processing centre known as the Office of Address for Communications. However bookish these methods may seem, they were not as far removed from Bacon’s actual practice as is commonly supposed (section 8.ii). The fatal disjuncture underlying the universal reform programme was not between empiricism and commonplacing but between philosophical and pedagogical goals. The fundamental objective was to expound a reformed system of universal knowledge in the systematic manner in which it could be propagated universally. But the reformation of knowledge in the patient, incremental manner advocated by Bacon required resistance to premature systematization. The Baconian pansophists were therefore forced to choose between pursuing the best means of transmitting received knowledge and the best means of transforming it. Since there was no point in communicating knowledge which remained fundamentally flawed, the universal reform agenda collapsed amongst Hartlib’s successors into the more coherent and manageable task of reforming natural philosophy alone (section 8.iii).