Reinventing KnowledgeReinventing Knowledge
From Alexandria to the Internet
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Book, 2008
Current format, Book, 2008, 1st ed, All copies in use.Book, 2008
Current format, Book, 2008, 1st ed, All copies in use. Offered in 0 more formatsAn intellectual history of the key institutions that organized knowledge in the western world offers insight into primary cultural transformations that took place from the classical period to the present.
An intellectual history of the key institutions that organized knowledge in the western world offers insight into primary cultural transformations and features coverage of such topics as Alexandria's Hellenistic center, the medieval universities, and the Enlightenment's social republic of letters.
A dazzling intellectual history of the West served up with verve and insight by two brilliant young historians.
Here is an intellectual entertainment, a sweeping history of the key institutions that have organized knowledge in the West from the classical period onward. With elegance and wit, this exhilarating history alights at the pivotal points of cultural transformation. The motivating question throughout: How does history help us understand the vast changes we are now experiencing in the landscape of knowledge?Beginning in Alexandria and its great center of Hellenistic learning and imperial power, we then see the monastery in the wilderness of a collapsed civilization, the rambunctious universities of the late medieval cities, and the thick social networks of the Enlightenment republic of letters. The development of science and the laboratory as a dominant knowledge institution brings us to the present, seeking patterns in the new digital networks of knowledge.Full of memorable characters, this fresh history succeeds in restoring the strangeness and the significance of the past.
An intellectual history of the key institutions that organized knowledge in the western world offers insight into primary cultural transformations and features coverage of such topics as Alexandria's Hellenistic center, the medieval universities, and the Enlightenment's social republic of letters.
A dazzling intellectual history of the West served up with verve and insight by two brilliant young historians.
Here is an intellectual entertainment, a sweeping history of the key institutions that have organized knowledge in the West from the classical period onward. With elegance and wit, this exhilarating history alights at the pivotal points of cultural transformation. The motivating question throughout: How does history help us understand the vast changes we are now experiencing in the landscape of knowledge?Beginning in Alexandria and its great center of Hellenistic learning and imperial power, we then see the monastery in the wilderness of a collapsed civilization, the rambunctious universities of the late medieval cities, and the thick social networks of the Enlightenment republic of letters. The development of science and the laboratory as a dominant knowledge institution brings us to the present, seeking patterns in the new digital networks of knowledge.Full of memorable characters, this fresh history succeeds in restoring the strangeness and the significance of the past.
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- New York : W. W. Norton, c2008.
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