Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

The idea was soon followed but it was the foundation of the College of the Sorbonne, begun c. 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX, which really created the system familiar today. This college was intended for graduates, for established scholars who had already gained an MA, and were about to embark on the doctorate in theology.

English colleges originated later than in Paris and were always intended for graduate use–undergraduates were a later innovation. Originally housed in taverns, or hostels, Merton College was first, in 1264, followed by University College c. 1280, and by Balliol in 1282.

In the 1427 census, wool merchants were the third most numerous profession in Florence after shoemakers and notaries. The spirit of capitalism was also evident from the growing concentration into fewer and larger firms, which reduced in number between 1308 and 1338 from 300 to 200.

Physiognomy became a craze in the late eighteenth century but a more enduring legacy of Kant’s approach was the founding of two journals in 1783. These were the Zeitschrift für empirische Psychologie (Journal for Empirical Psychology) and the Magazin für Erfahrungseelenkunde (Magazine for Empirical Knowledge of the Soul). With close links to medicine and physiology, this was another stage towards the founding of modern psychology.

Faced with a Spain buoyed by its successes in the Americas, and with vast reserves of silver now at its command, the Ottomans began to display some curiosity about the New World. Around 1580 a History of the West Indies was written and presented to the Sultan Murad III. Relying mainly on Italian and Spanish sources, the author wrote: ‘Within twenty years, the Spanish people have conquered all the islands and captured forty thousand people, and killed thousands of them. Let us hope to God that some time these valuable lands will be conquered by the family of Islam, and will be inhabited by Muslims and become part of the Ottoman lands.’

‘A Turkish book on the New World was written in the late sixteenth century, and was apparently based on information from European sources–oral rather than written. It describes the flora, fauna and inhabitants of the New World and expresses the hope that this blessed land would in due course be illuminated by the light of Islam. This book also remained unknown until it was printed in Istanbul in 1729…Knowledge was something to be acquired, stored, if necessary bought, rather than grown or developed.’