“Nationale filologieën” en het historisch onderzoek naar disciplinevorming in de geesteswetenschappen. Een verkenning (2011)
Johannes, Gert-Jan (Author)
Studium: Tijdschrift voor Wetenschaps- en Universiteitgeschiedenis
Volume: 4, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 31-46
The `National Philologies' and the History of Discipline Formation in the Humanities The start of discipline formation in the 'national philologies' (such as 'English Language and Literature', 'Germanistik', etc.) is often considered to have taken place around the middle of the nineteenth century. At that time, the German philological school of scholars such as Jacob Grimm gained influence at universities all over Europe. Meticulous analysis of the oldest (medieval) texts, as well as rigorous application of the methods of historical-comparative linguistics in editing these texts, became the norm and the nec plus ultra of philology. Other forms of academic and scholarly attention to national literature -- e.g. the study of the history of literature in post-medieval and modern times -- were from then on looked down upon as mere hobbies, made obsolete by the 'modern', 'truly scientific' methods of the German school. The case of the 'national philologies' thus seems to corroborate the common idea that discipline formation in science consists mainly of a process of specialization and differentiation. However, an overview of the history of 'Neerlandistiek' (the academic study of Dutch Language and Literature) over the course of the nineteenth century suggests that the success of German School's methods was in fact but a temporary episode. In the history of 'national philologies' such as the 'Neerlandistiek', episodes of specialization seem to alternate with episodes in which the main emphasis is not on special ization but on extension of the scope, on integration of elements from other disciplines, and on reinforcement of the ties with social institutions such as the education system. Interdisciplinarity is not a new phenomenon but can already be found in the days of the discipline's origin in Holland. Back then, the first professors of 'Dutch Rhetorics' around 1800 rapidly expanded their specialist studies into the study of 'Dutch language and literature' in the broadest possible sense. Phenomena such as these seem to apply more generally to the process of discipline formation in the humanities. The fact that disciplines such as the 'national philologies' still exist, suggests that specialization, differentiation and 'boundary wars' are not the only road to scientific legitimacy. Extension of the scope, (re)unification with other disciplines and intense communication with social systems inside and outside university are at least as important.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Thesis
Luke Anthony McMullan;
(2021)
The Rise of Philology in Britain: Explaining the Progress of Knowledge, 1750–1859
(/isis/citation/CBB120032710/)
Article
Marwick, Arthur;
(2002)
Knowledge and Language: History, the Humanities, the Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000330544/)
Book
Cook, Harold John;
Dupré, Sven;
(2012)
Translating Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries
(/isis/citation/CBB001420402/)
Thesis
Jacqueline L. Cowan;
(2015)
No "Idle Fancy:" The Imagination's Work in Poetry and Natural Philosophy from Sidney to Sprat
(/isis/citation/CBB947007104/)
Book
Giulia Virgilio;
(2023)
Parole al microscopio: i composti neoclassici nell'italiano delle scienze tra Settecento e primo Ottocento
(/isis/citation/CBB267827261/)
Book
Giuseppe Patota;
(2023)
Parole di Galileo
(/isis/citation/CBB522118146/)
Thesis
Nese Devenot;
(2015)
Altered States/Other Worlds: Romanticism, Nitrous Oxide, and the Literary Prehistory of Psychedelia
(/isis/citation/CBB236966671/)
Thesis
Lisa Lynn Chen Obrist;
(2015)
Time and How to Calculate It: A Study and Edition with Translation of Book 10 of Hrabanus Maurus’ "De rerum naturis"
(/isis/citation/CBB862549669/)
Book
Nataša Raschi;
(2020)
La langue des mathématiques chez Diderot
(/isis/citation/CBB984952533/)
Thesis
B. Josh Doty;
(2016)
The Anatomy of Conscience: Science, Ethics, and Religion in Nineteenth-century American Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB174403585/)
Thesis
Jessica Rezunyk;
(2015)
Science and Nature in the Medieval Ecological Imagination
(/isis/citation/CBB491107306/)
Article
David Clifford;
(2017)
A Long Anthropological Perspective on the Humanities
(/isis/citation/CBB847748637/)
Article
Anton Kirchhofer;
Anna Auguscik;
(2017)
Triangulating the Two Cultures Entanglement: The Sciences and the Humanities in the Public Sphere
(/isis/citation/CBB813629209/)
Thesis
Pourciau, Sarah M.;
(2007)
Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822--1941
(/isis/citation/CBB001560819/)
Article
Bouterse, Jeroen;
Karstens, Bart;
(2015)
A Diversity of Divisions: Tracing the History of the Demarcation between the Sciences and the Humanities
(/isis/citation/CBB001551432/)
Article
Bod, Rens;
(2015)
A Comparative Framework for Studying the Histories of the Humanities and Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001551436/)
Book
Turner, James;
(2014)
Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities
(/isis/citation/CBB001552088/)
Article
Gerhard Schaden;
Cédric Patin;
(2017)
Semiotic Systems with Duality of Patterning and the Issue of Cultural Replicators
(/isis/citation/CBB925765228/)
Book
Isabelle Boehm;
Nathalie Perrier-Rousseau;
(2014)
L'expressivité du lexique médical en Grèce et à rome: hommages à Françoise Skoda
(/isis/citation/CBB426441012/)
Book
Jeffrey M. Binder;
(2022)
Language and the Rise of the Algorithm
(/isis/citation/CBB179423817/)
Be the first to comment!