-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Fis] Sustainability through multilevel research:
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2015 08:13:36 +0100
From: Loet Leydesdorff <l...@leydesdorff.net>
Reply-To: <l...@leydesdorff.net>
Organization: University of Amsterdam
To: 'Pedro C. Marijuan' <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>, 'fis'
<fis@listas.unizar.es>
Dear Pedro,
Although I agree with some of your remarks, the following note:
/Revolution was preceded by what has been called the silent “corporate
revolution” (Huff, 2011), which opened the way for collective
organizations legally autonomous in European cities during XIII and XIV
centuries: universities, parliaments, counsels, municipalities,
professional colleges, guilds, mercantile associations, charities,
schools, etc. It was this Medieval awakening in the cities of Western
Europe what made possible the later hyperinflation of autonomous
collective organizations, –“information based”– growing exponentially
and propelling all the further complexity of modern societies./
Various authors have attributed the transformation (“modernity”) to
different factors. Marx, for example, pointed to double bookkeeping,
Weber to the protestant ethics, the printing press, etc. It seems to me
that the source of the protestant/individual revolution has to be found
in the individual mandate provided by the Gospel itself: one is
responsible for one’s own soul. (This was a collective fate of the
Jewish people in Judaism.) First, Christianity took the Roman form of
Catholicism. When this eroded, a return to the original Gospel became
possible: /imitatio Christi/ (Thoma a Kempis), Luther’s /sola
scriptura./ Indeed, Luther had the major advantage of the printing press
(when compared with Jan Hus a century before him.) Both Jan Hus and
Luther translated the bible into the vernacular. (Henry VIII followed in
1535.)
The issue is that the order of meaning processing changed from top-down
(/Roma dixit/) to bottom up. This was institutionalized in the Dutch
revolution (1581) which led to war with Spain. (You may wish to put me
in your virtual prison. J)
Best,
Loet
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