Abstract
Despite the recent and continuing controversy concerning the proper role of the universities, it is still widely agreed that among their functions, if not their principal function, is the transmission of a cultural heritage. It is also now a commonplace, however, that the universities have often been slow to recognize when the abridged heritage they cared for needed to be altered to make room for new intellectual pursuits cultivated outside their walls. Long an outstanding case in point has been the tardiness of the universities in embracing the new natural science developed during the course of the seventeenth century. Frequently, indeed, the universities proved bastions of conservative resistance, and, generally, they remained apathetic at best for another two centuries, compelling the devotees of the new science to create their own new institutions of higher learning.1
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Reference
See Martha Ornstein, The Rôle of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century (3rd. ed.; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1938).
For a list of universities founded in medieval and early modern Europe, see the appendix of Arturo Castiglioni’s A History of Medicine (trans. E. B. Krumbhaar; New York: A. Knopf, 1941), pp. 962–3.
In 1562, Philip himself had already founded a new university in the Lowlands, the University of Douai, with the hope, precisely, of striking a blow against the influence of the Calvinist Academy at Geneva. Léon Van der Essen, Une institution d’enseignement supérieur sous l’ancien régime: L’Université de Louvain (Bruxelles et Paris: Vromant et Co., 1921), p. 30.
See Pieter Geyl, The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555–1609 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1958), pp. 136–8.
Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis der Leidsche Universiteit, ed. P. C. Molhuysen (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1913–24), Vol. I, p. 101*.
A. C. J. de Vrankrijker, Vier Eeuwen Nederlandsch Studentenleven (Voorburg: Uitgeverij Boot N.V., [1939]), p. 44.
Matthijs Siegenbeek, Geschiedenis der Leidsche Hoogeschool, van hare Oprigting in den Jare 1575, tot het Jaar 1825 (Leiden: S. en J. Luchtmans, 1829–32), Vol. I, p. 62.
Ibid., p. 153. Charles Edward Mallet, History of the University of Oxford (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1924–7), Vol. II, p. 243.
James Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge (Cambridge: The University Press, 1873–1911), Vol. II, pp. 214
James Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge (Cambridge: The University Press, 1873–1911), Vol. II, pp. 214
James Bass Mullinger, The University of Cambridge (Cambridge: The University Press, 1873–1911), Vol. II, pp. 574.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 42.
Aristide Douarche, L’Université de Paris et les Jésuites (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), p. 311.
George Clark, The Seventeenth Century (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 288.
de Vrankrijker, Vier Eeuwen, p. 44. Siegenbeek, Geschiedenis der Leidsche Hoogeschool, Vol. I, pp. 200, 287 and 288. De Vrankrijker stresses that enrollment figures cannot be used to determine the precise size of the student body, for the figures give no idea of how long students remained at Leiden and often include non-students seeking to profit from the university privileges (p. 42). A Silesian student entering the university in 1665 asserted that the student population at the time was as high as three thousand (G. D. J. Schotel, De Académie te Leiden in
Cf. Schotel, op. cit., pp. 264–84, and de Vrankrijker, op. cit., p. 46 ff.
Bronnen, Vol. I, p. 32*.
Ibid., pp. 56*–57*.
Ibid., p. 315*.
Ibid., 183*. The faculty at Leiden would prove, with time, inaccessible to Catholic scholars (L. J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in Noord-Nederland in de 16 e en de 17 e Eeuw [Amsterdam, 1946], Vol. II, p. 718), and Burchardus de Volder, a Mennonite, would find it necessary to convert to the Reformed Church before assuming his post in the faculty of philosophy in the late seventeenth century (see below, p. 74).
Rogier, Ibid., pp. 32 and 60. Nicholas Hans, “Holland in the Eighteenth Century — Verlichting,” Paedagogica Historica, Vol. V (1965), p. 23.
Schotel, De Academie te Leiden, pp. 242–3.
Bronnen, Vol. I, p. xii.
Schotel, De Academie te Leiden, p. 210.
Bronnen, Vol. I, p. 29*.
Quoted by Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, p. 141.
Just Emile Kroon, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis van het geneeskundig Onderwijs aan de Leidsche Universiteit 1575–1625 (Leiden: S. C. van Doesburgh, 1911), p. 69.
William Thomas Steam, “The Influence of Ley den on Botany in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Early Leyden Botany (Universitaire Pers Leiden; Assen: Van Gorcum en Comp. N.V., 1961), p. 21.
Willem de Sitter, Short History of the Observatory of the University at Leiden, 1633–1933 (Haarlem: Joh. Enschede en zonen, [1933]), pp. 8–10. Bronnen, Vol. Ill, pp. 227–30 and 243. Martha Ornstein, though aware of the earlier chemical laboratory at Leiden, nonetheless describes that built at the University of Altdorf in 1682 as “the first chemical university laboratory of the world” (The Rôle of the Scientific Societies, pp. 231 and 252).
See below, p. 96 ff.
Theodor Puschmann, A History of Medical Education, ed. and trans. Evan H. Hare (London: H. K. Lewis, 1891), pp. 410–1.
Schotel, De Academie te Leiden, pp. 146–7.
See A. H. Israëls, “De Verdiensten der Nederlanders in het Verspreiden en Uitbreiden der Harveyaansche Ontdekking,” Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (tevens orgaan der Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Geneeskunst), Vol. IV (1860), pp. 361–73.
Ibid., p. 364.
W. P. Jorissen, Het chemisch (thans anorganisch chemisch) Laboratorium der Universiteit te Leiden van 1859–1909 en de chemische Laboratoria dier Universiteit vóór dat Tijdvak en hen, die er in doceerden (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff’s Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1909), p. 9.
Stephen d’Irsay, Histoire des universités françaises et étrangères des origines à nos jours (Paris: Éditions Auguste Picard, 1933–5), Vol. II, p. 81.
Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, ed. P. C. Molhuysen and P. J. Blok (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff’s Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1911–37), Vol. VI, 127–41.
d’Irsay, Histoire des universités, Vol. II, p. 85. For recent attempts to assess Boerhaave’s significance, see Boerhaave and His Time, ed. G. A. Lindeboom (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970).
Mrs. H. M. Vernon, Italy from 1494 to 1790 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1909), p. 287. Ornstein, The Rôle of the Scientific Societies, pp. 217–9. Castiglioni, A History of Medicine, pp. 487 and 568.
See Richard L. Kagan, “Universities in Castile, 1500–1700,” Past and Present, no. 49 (Nov. 1970), pp. 44–71.
Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay (New York, etc.: John Wiley and Sons, c. 1968), pp. 8
and 21. Charles Jourdain, Histoire de l’Université de Paris au XVII e et au XVIII e siècle (Paris: L. Hachette et Cie, 1862–6), p. 32.
Jourdain, op. cit., passim.
Mullinger, The University of Cambridge, Vol. II, pp. 96 and 284. Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, pp. 58–9. Mallet, History of the University of Oxford, Vol. II, pp. 391–402 and 463.
Hugh Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen: Universities and Society in Pre-Industrial Britain, 1500–1700 (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), pp. 141–57.
H. M. Knox, Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Scottish Education, 1696–1946, (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1953), pp. 14–7. Morison, The Founding of Harvard College, p. 128. Kearney, Scholars and Gentlemen, pp. 129 ff. and 154–6.
Alexander Morgan, Scottish University Studies (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 56.
Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts (3rd ed.; Leipzig: Veit und Comp., 1919–21), Vol. I, pp. 190–202
and 257–9. Ornstein, The Rôle of the Scientific Societies, pp. 226–7.
Friedrich Paulsen, The German Universities and University Study (trans. Frank Thilly and William W. Elwang; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), pp. 37–8.
Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, Vol. I, p. 524.
Leiden, numbering about 45,000 inhabitants in 1622, had grown to at least 60,000 well before the end of the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century, however, the population of the city had begun to fall sharply, though she remained the republic’s second largest city well into the new century. Amsterdam, of course, remained the largest, with about 100,000 inhabitants in 1622 and over 150,000 a little more than a century later. (J. A. Faber, et. al., “Population Changes and Economic Developments in the Netherlands: A Historical Survey,” A. A. G. Bijdragen, Vol. XII [1965], pp. 56–7.
Roger Mols, Introduction à la démographie historique des villes d’Europe du XIV e au XVIII e siècle [Louvain: J. Duculot, 1954–6], Vol. II, pp. 522–3.) Charles Wilson also describes Leiden as the largest single industrial concentration in Europe by the mid-seventeenth century, surpassed as an industrial town only by Lyons. (Economic History and the Historian: Collected Essays [New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969], pp. 116 and 101).
C. T. Smith, An Historical Geography of Western Europe before 1800 (London and Harlow: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1967), p. 456.
Joannes de Raey, Clavis philosophiae naturalis seu introductio ad naturae contemplationem, Aristotelico-Cartesiana (Lugd. Batavor.: Ex Officina Johannis et Danielis Elsevier, 1654), “Epistola dedicatoria.”
At the request of Prince Maurice, a chair for mathematical instruction in Dutch for engineers and military officers was indeed created and attached to the University of Leiden in 1600. The organization of the instruction, promisingly enough, was outlined by Simon Stevin (see Bronnen, Vol. I, pp. 389*–92*). From 1615 until 1679, the chair was occupied by three successive members of the Van Schooten family of mathematicians; it was apparently suppressed in 1681 but reestablished again at the turn of the century. (J. J. Woltjer, De Leidse Universiteit in Verleden en Heden [Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1965], pp. 28–9. Bronnen, Vol. IV, pp. 158–9 and 189.)
Bronnen, Vol. I, p. 315*.
Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 136–7. It was otherwise in England, where the upper faculties had withered away, leaving the arts, or philosophy, curriculum predominant in university education. Here, however, the tutorial system also worked against a sophisticated treatment of individual fields. In the Italian universities, philosophical instruction was offered as a preliminary to medical study in particular.
(Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden [Oxford University Press, 1936]; Vol. I, p. 235
Vol. II, pp. 320–1
Vol. III, p. 151.)
A notable exception would be the student body at the University of Paris, where all those enrolling in the higher faculties had first to have received a Master of Arts degree. (Roland Mousnier, Paris au XVII e siècle (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, [1961]), p. 296.
de Vrankrijker, Vier Eeuwen, pp. 71 and 60.
Ibid., p. 72.
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Ruestow, E.G. (1973). Introduction: A New University and the Challenge of the New Science. In: Physics at Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Leiden: Philosophy and the New Science in the University. Archives Internationales D’histoire des Idees / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2463-1_1
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