The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (review)
1973; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/hph.2008.0672
ISSN1538-4586
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
Resumo258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY over the earth); Astronomy; and Harmony. These highly detailed sections will be of immense value to historians of these disciplines. In his "Conclusion," Stahl argues that Latin science was indeed in the Dark Ages until the twelfth-century Renaissance. Since Roman society lost contact with original thinkers, living only on handbooks, it fell into intellectual decay. This decline of knowledge, Stahl argues, was largely the fault of textbook writers like Martianus, who gathered snippets of knowledge and put them into a pretty form, without caring about the logical connection between the ideas--and without even giving, let alone critically evaluating, the sources of the ideas. We may wonder whether blaming the decline of science--a decline which was real enough, especially in the mathematical sciences---on textbook writers is not putting the cart before the horse. Textbook writers are always with us; why was this society content to accept the handbooks without criticism? Much more attention is due the economic, social, and religious forces active in Martianus' time than Stahl has provided. Several other questions also seem to me worthy of further consideration. How much, and how and when, did the existence of handbooks like Martianus' help promote the first translations of Greek science from the Arabic or Greek into Latin? In what ways did the rediscovered and translated Greek works interact with Martianus' book? What was the nature of Martianus' influence after the twelfth century? One last criticism: the several hands at work on this volume, together with Professor Stahl's untimely death, have somewhat decreased the book's readability and unity, though not its scholarly excellence. Stahl, together with Johnson and Burge, have produced a well-researched, valuable, and sometimes exciting book. A forthcoming second volume will provide a translation and commentary on the text of the De Nuptiis. Meanwhile, the present volume is an excellent historical introduction to Martianus Capella's book, about which Stahl has so well said: "Half classical, half medieval, his work may be hkened to the neck of an hourglass through which the classical liberal arts trickled to the medieval world." JUDITH V. GRABINER Claremont, Cali[ornia The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory o] Knowledge. By Marcia L. Colish (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968. Pp. xxiii+404. $10.00) The author of this sweeping monograph attempts to study the place that symbols actually played in medieval epistemology. She states in the preface: "I have tried to examine how medieval man actually thought that symbols worked in the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, and I have tried to understand the epistemology of several major medieval thinkers who formed theories of signification in the historical context of their specific interests, ways of thinking, and intellectual environments" (p. vii). We are told that Augustine was the first to set forth a theory according to which signs are fundamentally verbal in character. Professor Colish sees the same "verbal epistemology" expressed in different terms in the four thinkers whom she studies in her book: "Each of them expresses this epistemology through one of the modes of the trivium. Augustine displays it in the mode of rhetoric: Anselm in the mode of grammar; Aquinas in the mode of dialectic; and Dante in a poetics BOOK REVIEWS 259 conceived in rhetorical terms; These differences stem from the varying historical circumstances in which the four men lived, the requirements of their respective professions, and their personal idiosyncracies" (p. x). It is Colish's very particular aim "to stress the role of the trivium in the formation of medieval verbal epistemology" (p. xi) and she admits that her approach is arbitrary in that she rules out other thinkers who also exhibit the influence of the trivium. Her reason for stressing the trivium appears to be that by reason of their education the trivium was for medieval men "as much a part of their mental equipment as their Christian faith" (p. xii). And again: "The distinctive texture of medieval linguistic epistemology was hence a result of the period's corporate response to a uniform mental environment, mediated through the shifting configurations of individual temperament and concrete cultural situation" (p. 7). She assures...
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