Petr Pavlas, Lenka Řezníková, Lucie Storchová (eds.) Cognitive Metaphors and Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Exploring Semantic Transformations in Early Modernity

Petr Pavlas, Lenka Řezníková, Lucie Storchová (eds.) Cognitive Metaphors and Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Exploring Semantic Transformations in Early Modernity. Praha: Filosofický časopis a Filosofia, 2025 ISBN: 978-80-7007-810-5 

Special Issue of The Philosophical Journal 1/2025. OPEN ACCESS: https://filcasop.flu.cas.cz/images/PDF_NA_WEB/MC_2025_01/FC-2025-1-special-issue.pdf

Metaphors in science, philosophy, and the arts are fundamental to the history of thought, serving not only to simplify complex matters but also to foster invention, speculation, and theory. Among other functions, they played an important role in the emergence of modern ideas of the encyclopaedia and encyclopaedism, thereby contributing to programs of universal knowledge, general education, and, more recently, open science. While conceptual history is widely recognised as crucial and has been thoroughly studied, the history of metaphors has so far remained in the background. This publication aims to bring it to the forefront.

Petr Pavlas, Lenka Řezníková, Lucie Storchová: Editorial

Alessandro Nannini: Georgics of the Mind: Cultivation of the Self as Agriculture in the Early Modern Age

Petr Pavlas: From Circle to Book: The Evolution of Metaphors and the Birth of Early Modern Encyclopaedism

Lenka Řezníková: The Metaphor of Harmony in Early Modern Knowledge Organisation: Comeniusʼ Pansophy Caught between Aesthetics and Mechanics

Lucie Storchová: Metaphors of the Human Heart and Their Epistemological Shifts after 1600: A Case Study in Changes in Wittenberg Natural Philosophy and Discourses of Power

Martin Žemla: See, Hear, Taste: Sensory Metaphors and Their Use before and in Paracelsianism

Márton Szentpéteri: Metaphors of Universal Architecture and the Architecture of Vanities in Miklós Bethlen’s Works