Ephraim Chambers and the disciplinary emergence of a "science of man" in the 18th century

Autores/as

  • Raphael Bezerra da Silva Uchôa Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo

Resumen

The complex process of emergence of a 'science of man' in the eighteenth-century coexisted with a reorganization of the so-called 'trees of knowledge'. In 18th-century England, this conjuncture took shape in an unlikely, though highly relevant dictionary: Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, or the Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728). I will argue that Chambers' dictionary constitutes a privilege historical source for the study of the relatively slow emergence of a science that considered the human being as such, even before the publication of other encyclopaedias in the second half of the eighteenth-century. Two facts underlie our hypothesis: 1) the presence of concept "anthropology" in the first edition of 1728, understood as the science that deals with human nature and investigates the relationship between body and soul; and 2) the appearance of the heading "Man" in the supplements of 1753, which points to the overlapping of two projects of standardization of the scientific knowledge on humans.

Descargas

Publicado

2016-12-18

Número

Sección

Artículos Originales