In 1876, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo honoured Spanish science in the course of history in La ciencia Española, including art, theology, political science and philosophy. Our planned conference will subject this much-cited standard work to a revision, focussing on the early modern period and including the image of scientists.

A look at the trivium and the quadrivium reveals different requirements in both areas. The grammarian, like the philologist and the humanist, must have a universal education if he wants to understand and explain his texts. He appears ridiculous if he confuses his grammatical knowledge with expertise and presumes to make a judgement where he is incapable of doing so.

Where rhetoric provides aids to argumentation, these are taken from ancient literature. If suitability for everyday life is therefore raised to a standard, this professional group becomes a suitable target for satire, unless it concentrates on teaching agibilia, i.e. everyday forms of interaction and behaviour. Distance from reality also characterises the number-related subjects of the quadrivium. While mechanical arts have an object with which they deal, the carpenter with wood or the blacksmith with iron, arithmetic has no tangible object. Its origin and seat is in the mind. The forms of geometry have such an ideal character that Plato could see in them proof of his theory of ideas. Theoretical arithmetic, which traces everything back to numbers, moves in the realm of definitions and distinguishes types and laws. It has practical applications in trade, astronomy and seafaring. If celestial bodies are cited as the causes of time and their purpose is to illuminate the earth’s inhabitants, decorate the sky and influence conditions on earth, then dealing with them seems speculative.

There are overlaps between astronomy and music, as the latter is modelled on the harmony of the spheres. In music, it is not the hand with which the musical instrument is played that is important, but the spirit, which is metaphysically orientated towards the harmony of the world. Anyone who merely imitates music understands as little about it as an orator with no knowledge of rhetoric understands about persuasion. The artes liberales therefore differ in terms of their subject areas, their prerequisites, their tasks, their degree of abstraction and their possible applications.

What are the criteria for a discipline to be considered a science? Jurisprudence, along with medicine and theology, belonged to the higher faculties. However, the question of whether it was a science was controversial. In 1612, Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza published Arte legal para el estudio de la jurisprudencia, in which he cited a number of arguments against the scientific character of jurisprudence, only to immediately counter them with counterarguments. In civil law, for example, there are different and contradictory opinions, which should not be the case in a science. He counters that although the law as such is constant and reasonable, it varies according to time and place. Moreover, there are also different opinions in other sciences. A further argument against the scientific character of jurisprudence is that real science deals with unchanging and eternal things, whereas civil law is subject to fluctuations and changes. Of course natural law is immutable, Bermúez replies, but it is subject to fluctuating forms depending on the region. This can be compared to the air, which is the same everywhere, but is warmer in Spain than in Germany. Finally, Bermúdez counters the argument that jurisprudence is not based on reason, but on the authority of laws, and is therefore not a science, by stating that the laws are rationally conceived, that the reason of the legislator is therefore decisive and that logical arguments are naturally used in the application of the laws. When considering whether the judge or the law is more important in practice, it is important to bear in mind that the judge can be blinded by emotions and lose sight of the common good. He could also be a mere servant of legal certainty and only comply with the will to enforce the law, or he could apply his own standards.

In medicine, the example of Juan de Cabriada’s Carta filosófica, médico-chymica (1687) illustrates that numerous methods existed side by side. Thus there is a method that seeks to bring about healing through prayer, the mathematical school, which, with Pythagoras, sees everything as determined by numbers, another school that makes the stars the basic principle, the one based on passions, which goes back to Seneca, another based on physionomy, the empirical one, which provides concrete prescriptions, dietetics, which considers moral virtue to be more important than medicines, galenics, which is based on the four humores, physiology, which is based on the physical constitution of the human being, pharmacy, which focuses on the production of medicines, and finally chemistry, which cures diseases and refines metals alchemically. What is remarkable about this list is the juxtaposition of empirical and speculative-esoteric approaches.

For Paracelsus, Cabriada continues, there are diseases that God assigns as punishment for sins, those that are caused by the course of the stars, others that are caused by a defect in nature, those that are caused by the soul’s ideas and passions, and still others that are caused by ingesting a poison. For Paracelsus, the analogy between microcosm and macrocosm means that we can only recognise what we ourselves are. According to Paracelsus, insofar as man unites the essence of material things within himself, he can comprehend the physical world. Insofar as he is an intellectual being of sidereal origin, he is able to recognise the spiritual world. Paracelsus understands the doctor’s activity as an intervention in the course of nature, which must be based on the sympathy of all things and the spiritual connection of the universe. The impact of Paracelsus in Spain shows the hermetic-esoteric side of medicine.
Satirical literature paints a different picture of the representatives of the individual disciplines of knowledge. Jerónimo de Mondragón’s Censura de la locura humana y escelencias della (1598) follows on from the work Encomium moriae (1510) by Erasmus of Rotterdam. He takes ethical criteria as his point of departure when he denounces the glamour and arrogance of the supposedly learned. Saavedra Fajardo also criticised the disciplines and their representatives. In República literaria (1613-1620), he lets the figures Democritus and Heraclitus have their say. Democritus laughs at shortcomings. He mocks the figure of the humanist, who spends his years in vain reading medals, ancient stones, inspecting ruins and parts of buildings and using various manuscripts to find out what shoes Cadmus wore. For Democritus, this is just as ridiculous as the compilation of aphorisms by ancient authors, which only encourage laziness as they save reading the entire work.

Saavedra Fajardo gives Democritus the task of scrutinising the liberal arts one by one: Grammarians are vain and think that just because they know something about grammar and verse they are competent in other sciences and could call Plato confused and criticise accumulations of details without sense in Pliny. The rhetorician is accused of vanity and flattery as well as the ability to achieve with gentle force what would not be possible with truth. Poetry, as the sister of rhetoric, only lies, dispels the truth, limits itself to entertainment and is therefore useless.

Instead of continuing with dialectic, the third discipline of the trivium, Democritus next turns to history and moral philosophy, two disciplines that were added to the trivium in the early modern period. Historians would report more on the vices of kings and mighty men than on their virtues, simply because there were more vices in the world. Also, historians could not be reliable in their reports because they would have to invent the causes of historical developments. After all, they were unable to be present at the secret meetings of the princes. Moral philosophy is provocative simply because of the multitude of its schools that promise happiness: Epicurus through pleasure, Aristotle through virtue, Theophastus through valour, the Peripatetics through speculation and the Platonists through the highest good.

The representatives of the quadrivium are also accused of pride, especially the arithmeticians, whose numbers encompass all disciplines. And the geometers are no less arrogant, especially as their principles can more easily meet with general approval. Astronomers are accused of boldness when they practise astrology. The other disciplines that aim to predict the future make even less sense: Chiromancy by the folds of the hands, geomancy by points, pyromancy by fire, hydromancy, by water.

Democritus finds the higher faculties of the university no less ridiculous. The lawyers, for example, make up for their lack of authority by deriving their laws from divine law or natural law and charging money for everything they say or don’t say. The representatives of the medical faculty are no less interested in profit when they watch over the health of the powerful. Medicine is criticised because its knowledge is provisional and incomplete and suffers not least from the possible deception of the senses. The inaccuracy of medical diagnosis shows how little medicine or those who profess it can achieve. Thus, not only the errors of the individual scientific disciplines, but also those of their representatives become the subject of satire.
The following questions are to be answered in detail:

Which disciplines are also practised by the magical and hermetic side?
What were the intellectual connections between Spanish Religion and Science?
To what extent did intellectual atmosphere in Spain favoured or difficulted the development of science in Early Modernity?
What hierarchies exist between the individual subjects of the artes liberales?
What reference to reality and practice do the subjects of the quadrivium have?
What role does ethics play in the foundation of the sciences?
Does the Salamanca School’s emphasis on metaphysics have consequences for the sciences?
What criteria must the sciences fulfil?
Are there relationships between the different methods of medicine?
What means are used in the satirical portrayal of experts?
Should satire only entertain or improve the sciences?
How and when did Early Modern Spanish Science initiate?

The conference will take place from 8 May to 11 May 2025 in Münster, Germany. The conference venue is the “Akademie Franz Hitze Haus”, Kardinal-von-Galen-Ring 50, D 48149 Münster, where accommodation and catering are also available. To support the funding, an application will be made to a foundation that promotes science. The conference is organised by Christoph Strosetzki, Münster, with the collaboration of Silvia Arroyo, Cork, Ireland, María de los Dolores Cabrero Rodríguez-Jalón, Madrid, Spain, Rosa María Stoops, Montevallo, USA, Vicente Pérez de León, Glasgow, UK. It will take place exclusively in presence. The conference languages are English and Spanish. Presentations will last 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Proposals for topics should be submitted by 31 July 2024 with a content outline of no more than 10 lines to: stroset@uni-muenster.de