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Artisanal and Rhetorical Practices In INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF IMAGINATION IN EARLY MODERN KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION: THE ARTISANAL PRACTICES OF ISAAC BEECKMAN MIRRORED TO RENÉ DESCARTES’ RHETORIC Drawing of a mechanical system of gears by Beeckman in 1624 (Waard, 1942: p. 286) Research Master Thesis by Ruben Duinmeijer (5686024) Arts & Culture: Art Studies Graduate School of Humanities University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Prof. dr. Jan Lazardzig Second Reader: Dr. Bram van Oostveldt 21-07-2017 Content Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Methodology .................................................................................................................................................................... 9 1. Developments in knowledge-acquisition of the early modern period: the function of imagination and the education of Isaac Beeckman and René Descartes ................................ 11 1.1 Imagination and its instrumentalization in the seventeenth century .......................................... 11 1.2 Artisanal practice and scholarly theory in the youth and education of Beeckman ................. 15 1.3 Rhetorical Practices in education of René Descartes ........................................................................... 20 2. Perceptual Cognition and Imagination ................................................................................. 23 2.1 Beeckman’s mechanistic account of perceptual cognition ................................................................ 23 2.2 Artisanal practices: repetition and proportionality ............................................................................. 26 2.3 Descartes mechanistic and symbolical account of imagination ...................................................... 30 3. Instrumentalization of Imagination ...................................................................................... 35 3.1 Beeckman’s instrumentalization of imagination: artisanal intuition............................................ 35 3.2 Beeckman’s instrumentalization of imagination: transition of wonder ...................................... 40 3.3 Descartes’ instrumentalization of imagination: rhetorical practices ............................................ 42 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 47 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 51 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 54 2 Introduction In the summer of 1626 there was a breeze of tense expectancy to be sensed in the city of Rotterdam. A greatly improved horse-driven mill was to be created, ordered by one of the larger beer-brewers in town. The new mill was expected to grind three to four times as much malt as an ordinary mill. The mechanism behind it was said to rest on the principle of perpetual motion. When Isaac Beeckman, assistant-rector of the Latin school in Rotterdam, heard of this, he instantly refuted the idea. He claimed that ‘only God makes living gears or perpetual motion’ and warned the investing parties involved.1 Still, the project continued and on the day the machine would be tested, a large crowd had gathered to witness the spectacle. As Beeckman predicted, the new mill did not work, and was allegedly demolished the day after.2 Although Isaac Beeckman had a modest position as assistant rector at that time, he was a respected natural philosopher of his time. While being scholarly educated at the University of Leiden and earning his doctorate in medicine in 1618, Beeckman was also a craftsman, immersed in the production of candles, water circuits and lenses.3 The abovementioned episode of Beeckman’s reveals both the acquaintance with the laws of mechanics, as well as experience with the practical application of these laws: against the inventor’s stark claims, Beeckman was able to predict the erroneousness in these claims.. The combination of his artisanal background and scholarly education allows Beeckman to rightfully imagine whether a machine will work or not. Because of this distinctive feature, he was sought after for advice by regents and burgomasters on many occasions.4 In the discourse of knowledge making, Beeckman was equally imaginative, for example in his account of motion. Whereas the still dominant Aristotelian notion pleaded that motion occurs because of intrinsic motivation, Beeckman simply asked why an object, if brought into motion, ever stops moving.5 Similarly imaginative, Beeckman advanced in mathematical explanations of physical phenomena, which he called physico mathematico. Scholars acquainted with the development of natural philosophy or imagination in the early seventeenth century, will immediately recognize the novelties that Beeckman displays here.6 The imaginative qualities present in Beeckman and his double identity as both craftsman and natural 1 De Waard (II), 1942: pp. 358-359. 2 Van Berkel, 2013: p. 36. 3 Though secondary literature is insightful, in order to get a grasp of what practices Isaac Beeckman was involved in, his own diary is an obligatory point of departure: Waard, de C. Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (1939-1953). 4 Van Berkel, 2013: p. 136 An example of such an occasions Beeckman is his involvement in devising a mechanism for dredging the harbor of Middelburg. 5 Van Berkel, 1983: p. 188. Dijksterhuis, 1950: p. 24. 6 The refusal of the Aristotelian idea of motion is a clear, but also the combination of physics and mathematics is a novelty: it goes against Aristotle’s classification of knowledge, which separates the realms of physics and mathematics and consequently did not allow for intermingling of its principles. 3 philosopher, evoke questions about how imagination is affected by the entanglement of artisanal and scholarly practices with regard to the production of knowledge. These questions become more pressing when one knows that Beeckman closely collaborated with Rene Descartes, the philosopher that is said to have gone beyond anyone else in his understanding and cultivation of imagination.7 This collaboration, which happened in 1618, and the consequential relationship between Isaac Beeckman and Rene Descartes have been discussed plenty.8 One of the more explicit similarities of their methodologies is the demand for a vividness of explanations given to natural phenomena. Indeed, Descartes is known for his ‘clear and vivid ideas’ and Beeckman allowed nothing in philosophy that could not be represented to the imagination.9 In fact, this was one of Beeckman’s two main principles –the other being the combination of mathematics and physics in explaining natural phenomena – and it gives imagination a very significant position in his thinking. With imagination at the core of his scholarly work, Beeckman –and Descartes as well! - fits into the image of the early modern knowledge making. Indeed, it has been claimed that the most distinctive feature of early modern science is the absence of Aristotle from the philosophical scene.10 This has in turn sparked many interpretations of how this epistemological vacuum was filled. Besides the general accounts on perception and imagination, and their the scientific endeavors in the early seventeenth century, various scholars have attempted to create an image of this period by discussing the relation of concepts as instruments, artisanal practices, methodology, to name but a few.11 Whereas Descartes is merely present in all of these interpretations, Beeckman is only now and then discussed briefly. In fact, until the early 20th century Beeckman was by and large known through the biographies on Descartes. The reason for this is Beeckman’s lack of publications: only 7 Sepper, 1996: p.289 8 See: Arthur, R. ‘Beeckman, Descartes and the Force of Motion’. Journal of the History of Philosophy. Vol. 45, No. 1 (January 2007): pp. 1-28. Berkel, van K. Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637) en de mechanisering van het wereldbeeld. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983. Berkel, van K. Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion. Mechanical philosophy in the making. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013. Cole, J. The Olympian Dreams and Youthful Rebellion of Rene Descartes. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Gaukroger, S. Descartes. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Hatfield, G., "René Descartes", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Zalta E.N. ed. Sepper, D. Descartes’ Imagination: proportion, images and the activity of thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 9 Van Berkel, 2013: p. 81 10 Kenny, 2007: p. 501. 11 See, for example: Brann, E.T. The World of the Imagination. Savage: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1991. Bundy, M.W. The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Mediaeval Thought. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1928. Cocking, J.M. Imagination. A Study in the History of Ideas. London: Routledge, 1991. Funkenstein, A. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Hankins, T.L, Silverman, R.J. Instruments
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