History and the Disciplines

This collection of essays addresses in specific historical ways and from particular disciplinary standpoints the problem of knowledge and what used to be called the classification of the sciences. What is or what passes for knowledge? What are its divisions and how should they be related? Who possesses this knowledge and to what uses has it been put? How is it transmitted and how can its history be understood and written? Ranging across the epistemological barrier formed by the revolution of modern science these contributions inquire into the changing disciplinary patterns of the tumultuous times between the renaissance and the enlightenment that saw the fragmentation of old ideals and the creation of European modernity.