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The Ends and the Means

其他書名	Trans-Mediterranean Networks of Calculation and the Rise of the Practical Moral Sciences in Latin Europe (ca. 1100 - 1300)
出版	ProQuest LLC, 2018
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=qveB0AEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋This dissertation treats a body of doctrines, known as moral or civil science ("moralis et civilis scientia" in Latin), that came into circulation among Latin scholars in the middle of the thirteenth century. The moral or civil sciences set themselves apart from other scholarly disciplines because they were explicitly practical. They were defined by their concern with action rather than contemplation. Furthermore, they were characterized by their usefulness in building the ideal state for humankind, and ensuring the salvation of human souls in the hereafter. The Andalusian provenance of the moral sciences is central to the claims of this thesis. I trace their translation from Islamic Andalusian texts on governance ("tadbīr" in Arabic) between 1100 and 1300. For Latin scholars, many of whom belonged to the Franciscan and Dominican mendicant orders patronized by the papacy, the techniques of argumentation found in the moral sciences would be invaluable for their persuasiveness in matters of political negotiation, diplomacy, and religious conversion. In this way, these sciences functioned as a mutually intelligible body of knowledge shared by Mediterranean communities that were otherwise separated by the vicissitudes of law, religion, and language. Three conclusions emerge from my analysis. First, because the moral sciences were explicitly concerned with action, they brought with them a new epistemology concerned with practice. In particular, a form of mathematics known as calculation ("computus/ratiocinatio" in Latin; "ḥisāb/ḥisba" in Arabic) was adopted to deal with problems of commensurability that arose when continuous magnitudes were defined in terms of discrete quantity. Second, the object of study of the moral sciences was the human soul and the political state, and, because of this, epistemological and political concerns were inextricably linked. Third, the reception of the moral sciences from writings on "tadbīr" meant that many Latin scholars equated it with a natural religion observed by their neighbors in Iberia and North Africa. Many Latin Europeans came to believe that the religious doctrines of the Islamic Almoravids and Almohads were built on "tadbīr's" rationalist principles. Each of these claims requires a rather significant intervention into the historiography of medieval science and knowledge.