Divisions of Knowledge in the European Renaissance: A Case Study

A broad distinction between “the sciences” and “the humanities” is not only essential to our sense of knowledge today but also foundational to the structure of our academic institutions. We find from the earliest of times an idea of separate disciplines that operate within the overall spectrum of knowledge. The different ways in which this separation of disciplines is conceived over time and how it guides our idea of knowledge is the subject of this essay. Specifically, I shall be taking as a case study a crux in the European Renaissance that saw a radical shift in the idea of knowledge and its various disciplines, leading to a solution that can be seen as pointing toward the parameters that govern the modern Western world. The concept of knowledge that underlies this essay unites logic, empirical reasoning, and fact to the imagination and creative impulse of the artist or more visionary thinker. It is claimed that it is just this unity that defines a particular concept of knowledge that dominated the period of European history known as the Renaissance.