Pansophism

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Pansophism, in older usage often pansophy, is a concept of omniscience, meaning "all-knowing". In some monotheistic belief systems, a god is referred as the ultimate knowing spirit. Someone who is pansophical is someone who claims to have obtained omniscience.

It also has to do more specifically with pedagogic ideas of universal wisdom (pansophia), as it occurred in the educational system of universal knowledge proposed by John Amos Comenius, a Moravian educator.

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[edit] Pansophic principle

The pansophic principle is one of the important principles of Comenius: that everything must be taught to everyone, as a guiding basis for education, something like universal education (Characteristica universalis).[1]

Pansophism was a term used generally by Comenius to describe his pedagogical philosophy. His book Pansophiae prodromus (1639) was published in London with the cooperation of Samuel Hartlib. It was followed by Pansophiae diatyposis. Pansophy in this sense has been defined as ‘full adult comprehension of the divine order of things’.[2] He aimed to set up a Pansophic College, a precursor of later academic institutes[3] He wrote his ideas for this in a tract Via lucis, written 1641/2 in London; he had to leave because the English Civil War was breaking out, and this work was eventually printed in 1668, in Amsterdam.[4]

The term was not original, having been applied by Bartolomeo Barbaro of Padua in his De omni scibili libri quadraginta: seu Prodromus pansophiae, from the middle of the sixteenth century.[5]

[edit] Pansophic Freemasonry

There is a group within Freemasonry that is called Pansophic Freemasonry.[6]


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ [1]:His education system was focused on teaching everything to everyone, since, from the outset, it was intended to educate all men of society to develop their democratic qualifications. In a word, the system of education proposed by Comenius is universal by its very nature: "as he says, it is 'pansophic', it is intended for all men irrespective of social, or economic position, race or nationality. [...]he attempted to unite all kinds of human knowledge in the universal science of his pansophism on a larger or smaller scale
  2. ^ Czech Baroque Literature
  3. ^ [2]: If he did not succeed in securing the establishment of the international center, or Pansophic College, for the coordination of the knowledge and sciences of the world, he did participate in, and probably contributed to, the discussions which ultimately resulted in the founding of the Royal Society.
  4. ^ A biographical time chart
  5. ^ On the Historical Source of Sanctian Linguistics
  6. ^ Pansophic

[edit] External links