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Simon Stevin, Polymaths and Polymathy in the Early Modern Period

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Simon Stevin, Polymaths and Polymathy in the Early Modern Period introduction Simon Stevin, Polymaths and Polymathy in the Early Modern Period Karel Davids, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Rienk Vermij and Ida Stamhuis Simon Stevin (1548– 1620) was a slightly older contemporary of Galileo, and can in many respects be considered his Dutch counterpart: a scholar who opened up new, mathematical, ways of studying the world. As such, he has rightly tak- en his place in the annals of early modern science. But Stevin was more than a clever theoretician; he was also an exponent of a new approach to knowledge in the early modern period, when established ways of understanding the world had been thrown into doubt. Ignoring these broader aspects, as has commonly been done, risks failing to grasp his full significance. Stevin remains badly un- derstood, in many respects, and this volume is thus an attempt to understand him better by placing his work in this broader context. In his approach to a wide range of topics, Stevin presents a case – and a very interesting one – of a more general trend in early modern learning, when knowledge was often produced by ‘polymaths’ rather than specialists. Ana- lyzing his situation is therefore not only important as a means of assessing his aims and motives, but also leads to a better understanding of European intellectual history in general. Such a study will shed light on changes in mathematics and natural philosophy in the early modern period, and it will also contribute to a better understanding of the transformation of European learning. Starting with Stevin, this collective volume aims to analyze the transforma- tion of the European ideal of knowledge in the early modern period by com- paring Stevin with similar multi- talented individuals (‘polymaths’) in the Low Countries and other European countries, and by examining the relations be- tween the multiple strands of Stevin’s thinking, writing and other activities. 1 Simon Stevin: a Brief Life Most of what we know about Stevin has been derived from his many published works; there are hardly any letters or other sources of a more personal nature. His career can be reconstructed from official documents, but even here there © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004432918_002 2 Davids, et al. are considerable gaps.1 His life unfolded against a background of political tur- moil in the sixteenth- century Netherlands, a conglomerate of disparate territo- ries united under the House of Habsburg. The absolutism and religious policies of Philip ii, the Habsburg ruler and king of Spain, who never returned to the Netherlands after he left in 1559, provoked revolts in the 1560s and 1570s, lead- ing to a prolonged civil war. This eventually resulted in the separation between the northern provinces – which gained their independence as the Dutch Re- public – and those in the south, roughly equivalent to modern- day Belgium, which continued under Habsburg rule for another two centuries. Stevin was born in the south in or around 1548, in Bruges in the county of Flanders. He was the illegitimate son of Anthuenis Stevin and Catelyne vander Poort, who both came from respectable, well-to- do families. Stevin clearly re- ceived a good education (he later proved to know Latin and French) and be- came an office clerk for the ‘Vrije van Brugge’, one of the four constituent parts of the county. Bruges initially sided with the Habsburgs, but in 1578 the city was taken by the rebels, who imposed their Calvinist religion. Among the local leaders of the Revolt were members of the Sayon family, to whom Stevin was related by marriage; after Stevin’s birth, his mother had married a certain Joost Sayon. Although there is no evidence that Stevin shared the ideas propagated by his stepfather’s family, the political turmoil may well have contributed to his decision to leave his native Flanders. In 1581, Stevin turned up in Leiden in the province of Holland, in the north of the Netherlands. There are some indications that he may have travelled in Europe before settling there, but these cannot be confirmed. Holland had been a major battlefield in the initial phase of the revolt, but by 1581 the hostilities had moved further south. Holland was now establishing itself as an indepen- dent territory and the nucleus of a new nation. Its economy was booming. Stevin settled there as a kind of civil engineer specializing in designing and constructing windmills, which were important for water drainage in Holland’s polders. From 1584 onward he obtained several patents, and in 1588 he entered into a business venture with the Delft regent Jan Cornets de Groot, the father of Hugo Grotius. At the same time, he had clearly set his sights on a more scholarly career. Immediately upon his arrival in 1581, he started publishing an impressive array 1 The standard biography is Dijksterhuis, Simon Stevin (1943) (in Dutch; Dijksterhuis, Simon Stevin (1970) is an abbreviated English version), but this is mostly a discussion of his works. Details about his life are dispersed through the literature. The more recent popular biogra- phy by Devreese and Vanden Berghe (2003) also presented some new information..
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