Das Handbuch bietet insgesamt etwa 23 exemplarische Abhandlungen zu Diskursen und Themenkomplexen der Gelehrten- und Wissenschaftskultur der Fruhen Neuzeit, die in dieser Epoche zwischen Mittelalter und Moderne massgeblich und orientierend gewesen sind.Jeder Beitrag zeichnet den jeweiligen Diskurs in seinen Varianten, Protagonisten und seinem geschichtlichen Verlauf nach. Insgesamt wurden sechs Rubriken berucksichtigt: 1. Philologie / Rhetorik / Literatur, 2. Kulturen, 3. Theologie / Konfessionen, 4. Philosophie, 5. Recht / Politik, 6. Naturforschung / Medizin.".

Far from being part only of Early Modern learning, Polyhistory as a way of gathering and shaping knowledge can be traced through the Middle Ages back to Grammar and Rhetoric of Roman Antiquity. Practical use and wise limitation have always been the regulations to polyhistorical libido sciendi. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Polyhistory assumed the very high standard of Universitatis rerum historia , before it was losing its value by the rise of the new Cartesian paradigm of subject-centered epistemology. (...) It is indispensable to survey the whole of its tradition, however incompletely and tentatively, in order to come to due distance to a term with polemical connotations dating from early Enlightenment when Polyhistory lost its credit. (shrink)